Isn't a Community in the Eye of the Beholder?

Matthew Kobach is the Director of Content Marketing at Fast, a PhD dropout, and former social media manager at NYSE. Matthew joins us in this episode to share how he used community building lessons to create gripping content, grow social media channels, and communicate more effectively. Matthew shares his three steps to building a social media brand, which consist of being unbelievably niche, being consistent, and compounding tweets. He teaches how to become a lighthouse on social media and his routine for planning and ideating social posts. We wrap up talking about the necessity for passion in what you do and letting what you're good at become a passion. Check out this episode to improve your social media presence and become an effective communicator. Who is this episode for?: B2B & B2C, Online, Revitalizing 3 key takeaways: - Three ways to build your social media brand: Be Unbelievably Niche, Be Consistent, Compound Tweets. - Be the lighthouse for topics you’re interested in. 90% of people don’t post, they just read. Get this 90% to look at your content. - Need to be passionate about and enjoy what you’re doing. Being good at something makes you passionate about it. No matter what you do, there will be aspects you don’t love - but make sure it’s something you’re curious about. Notable Quotes: “You need to be passionate about it. You need to actually enjoy it. So being good at something makes you passionate about it. You know, so if you're, if you're able to, uh, tap into something, you've got this really active community and, and you're, you know, you're the one kind of heading it, you're going to be passionate about it. So it's probably going to work out, but for you to go through that kind of the muck and mire of it when it's not really going that well, that's when it should be something that you're actually interested in.” “90% of people don't really post on social media, 9% post, a medium amount, and 1% of post most of it. So those 90% of people, they have interests, they want to participate. Maybe they'll reply once in a while, but for the most part, they just want to read interesting thoughts. So that's the lighthouse - you’re trying to get those 90% of the people, and they're looking for topics that interest them. The only way for them to find you is if you turn your light on and you start talking about the things that interest you, and you've just got to hope that they're actually attracted to what you have to say.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? How to win friends and influence people 2. What’s your most memorable story? When at the stock exchange, Snapchat had just started and he needed to enlist Snapchat in the stock exchange. His goal was to make his snapchat really good. Recognized in NYC as the “New York Stock Exchange Snapchat Guy”. 3. What’s a Community tool or platform that you love to use? None, doesn’t like using them. 4. If you could only follow 3 people on Twitter, who would they be? Danye Taylor, David Parrell, OrangeBook 5. What’s your ultimate tip for someone who wants to improve their reputation online? Get better at communicating exactly what it is you mean. 6. Weirdest community you’ve been a part of? Traded and burned CD’s with others from the band ‘Fish’. 7. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? Say what you mean to say, say what you want to say. So much in life is about not communicating what we feel because we can’t or are scared to articulate it.