The long road to internet success, part 5: Community

Part 5 of the series, “The long road to internet success”. Read Part 4 here.

If you recall, we began this journey—this journey to build my online profile and, more harrowingly, increase my wife’s confidence by approximately 23% in my ability to one day host the Academy Awards—on the back of Name.com customer Helene Kwong’s three rules to success: Content, Consistency, Community. We have taken some detours like, for example, when we covered fear. Fear, it turns out, is detriment to all three Cs. But then I realized that freaking out over fear is dumb. Sure, if you’re getting attacked by sharks, be afraid and probably act on fear, but when it comes to creating and promoting content, you’d better be bold. Or at least pretend to be. Here’s a photographic example:

Now we’ve finally made it to the C in Community. Which can be as simple as telling your friends that you’re doing a thing and they should check it out. But there are problems with that.

As many of you know, sharing things on Facebook can be like shouting into an abandoned cavern. And ‘liking’ something has become the new pretending to listen. I’m not discounting Facebook, and I think you should still talk to your friends, but community means something a little more than simply promoting. Promotion can make me feel skeezy. And then I realized if you make it about the community and not simply yourself, then it feels better. Let’s examine Community in this video.

BTW, these are things that I’m just figuring out as well.

Quick story and then I’m done.

Once I went to a seminar at the Raddison Hotel. I’d been doing a lot of comedy but wanted to get to the next level. I’d opened for Bob Newhart for Pete’s sake, how was I to make it to the next level? That level where Bob and I were playing golf and stuff. At this seminar I did a sample comedy bit and the crowd liked it. This one guy, however, balding with a pony tail (I have an aversion to this but he more than compensated with his advice) said, “You’re pretty good, but you’re never going to go anywhere.”

Now at this point I wanted to get loud and reveal to this arrogant naysayer that at least I’m losing my hair with dignity.

Yet he continued.

“You know, it’s the average ones who make it. Because they know how to market. They realize how necessary it is. The good ones don’t know what’s wrong with them.”

And then my Radisson Jesus disappeared into the drapery of the 70’s era meeting space.

OK he actually stayed and talked a lot more than I’d hoped, but that alt ending sounds pretty cool.

Epilogue

We’ll be testing our methods and updating the progress of this ongoing journey to internet success at www.jared.live.