Internet Fame vs. Real Fame

You’ll notice that the “I” in How To Be Internet Famous is capitalized. That’s not a coincidence given what I laid out for you last week here in this column. This week I’ll take you through how to establish credibility and continue on your journey toward (Internet) fame.

By the way, now is as good as time as any to suggest you read this series from the beginning so you’re all caught up. The framework being used here to make your product / pitch (Internet) famous doesn’t work if you skip around. It has to be done in order. This is also not a race. You should take your time, do the research, and make your decisions carefully. If you mess up somewhere, it’ll bite you in the ass. And it won’t be a little bite. It’ll be like Jaws coming out of the water to tear you a new one. That kind of bite.

As a quick reminder: The lowercase “i” in internet refers to the hardware running the internet and the capital “I” for Internet refers to the world that exists on top of that hardware. This is an important distinction to make because when you’re talking about the Internet, there is an exploitable pattern that can be followed to become famous within the world of the (capital I) Internet. That’s what this series is focused on. That larger world is also what most people are referring to when they say “Internet”.

Real fame? The kind Jennifer Lawrence has? You need a massive infrastructure behind you to make that happen. As much as I like Jennifer Lawrence, this is by no means me picking on her, it’s not hard to be famous when you have a conglomerate of multinational corporations pushing you within the media outlets that they own, you know? Take it from someone who has seen the inner workings of both the Lady Gaga and Britney Spears camps (before the latter exploded). There are a lot of people and a lot of companies and a lot of money all moving and shifting to make that kind of fame exist and persist.

The upshot to recognizing this is that if you become Internet famous, that infrastructure I’m talking about with Jennifer Lawrence might snap you up. But of course, there’s a catch. You need to work just as hard as the people behind you. If you get lazy or arrogant, or both, thinking your “fans” on the Internet are going to translate into offline fans, you’ll have another thing coming.

Remember that fame on the Internet doesn’t matter to a certain extent. For example, it doesn’t matter in the sense that you can be famous on the Internet and be totally unknown in real life. For another,  your “fans” online may not make the jump with you from one platform or medium to another. In other words, if you build up a significant audience on Twitter, you might think that’s going to help drive ratings to your television show, but this has, and I’m capitalization for emphasis, NEVER PROVEN TO BE TRUE! (For more, read my last book, “Social Media Is Bullshit”.)

Despite this, a common, and weird, thing that occurs is that a YouTube star, for example, gets Internet Famous, and then they do something offline, and the sheer amount of press coverage about them drives a lot of that offline success, if there is any, not their YouTube audience.  You follow? Yet the media and other people will go, “Oh man, look at the power of the Internet” because there’s profit in the lie.

This, by the way, has been true for a lot of multibillion dollar tech companies from the first Dot Com Bubble to the current one. How did those unicorns everyone is talking about actually reach multibillion dollar valuations? Press coverage.

But because, as I mentioned last week, the media is dumb, they, the YouTube star in our example, is getting that press coverage due to the size of their YouTube following. Even though the associated coverage is driving up their numbers online and off. See how dumb that is? That’s the world you’re operating in.

It’s not fair, and it’s often dumb.

So, there is a pathway from (Internet) famous to actual famous, but if you think you can coast on Internet fame, you thought wrong, because the second the infrastructure snaps you up you need to work twice as hard to make sure you have real, offline assets, in place to support the transition from medium to medium. If you follow this series, you’ll know how to do that.

That’s all there is to know about the difference between Internet fame and real fame. On the Internet, and within the world of it, there’s a pattern that can be exploited to achieve the desired results. In the real world, you need the people with the power and influence to get behind you. If they don’t, you’re screwed, but hey, you can be (Internet) famous, and that might get you what you’re looking for anyhow.

How To Establish Credibility

If you’ve been following this series, you’ll see it’s really just a series of tests. If you pass one, you move on to the next. Each time you pass, it ups your probability of success. So, don’t be shocked, but there’s another test you have to pass now. Yup. Sorry. Another test. This one is called The Credibility Test.

But to be more blunt about it, the credibility test is easy. If someone were to say about you, “Why should I listen to you about this subject?” You need to provide them with a great answer. If you can, congratulations, you’ve passed.

Let’s break that down a bit, because like a lot of things, that’s all easier said than done.

The Credibility Test has two questions you have to answer: Why should people listen to you on this subject? What makes me an expert on this subject?

Let’s go back to Liberty (my comic) and the mostly fictional case study I’ve been using throughout this series to show you what I’m talking about and how you could answer those questions.

If you’ll remember, the goal of Liberty is to get me work as a freelance comic book writer. It’s a very simple, basic goal for the project. But if you work on a project that’s for you, and not just to sell and turn a profit on, you face a difficult battle. Projects designed for other people are easy to optimize and sell because you don’t really have a stake in how it looks to the world.

You just gather your data, make tweaks, test the product, make more tweaks, launch the product, and perfect the pitch. Then you pitch, and pitch, and pitch, until it gains traction, all the while supplementing those pitches with strategic advertising placements.

But a project that’s personal is way harder to sell because you have a lot more of a stake in how it looks and what it’s presentation is. It’s your baby, so you don’t want to make a lot of tweaks to it because that might change or harm what you’re going for. If any of you write fiction, or have hopes of creating fiction, this is something you’ll have to deal with.

Especially because, as is the case here with Liberty, there’s no “hook” to a personal project. There’s no thing to pitch beyond you going, “So I self-published a comic”, in which case most people will yawn at you … unless you either A) have a GREAT pitch or B) Have some kind of credibility. We’ll talk about great pitches (and not so great ones) in this series, but for now, let’s focus on that last part involving credibility.

I don’t come from a comics background. I don’t know (many) people in the industry. I’m starting off completely cold with no credibility. So the first thing to be done is to look and see what the problem areas are for my audience and industry. I’m lucky in that I’m good at what I do when it comes to marketing, and in comics, a lot of people want to self-publish comics but have no idea (or really bad advice) on how to draw attention to those comics. So in this example, what I would do is start a blog and start appearing in community forums (subreddits, message boards, whatever) and be a resource for others when that problem comes up.

There are few things you can do exclusively on the Internet that will help your cause. And there are fewer things that will prove to be effective, but this is one of them. Find the problem for your audience / customers, then be a resource in helping to solve that problem.

Two words of caution though:

1. Do not be a slimey and / or manipulative douche. You should only have a blog if there’s a purpose, and in this instance, the purpose is to solve a problem. Do not take this as an opportunity to manipulate people or deceive them in any way. (This is pretty much what ever social media guru, growth hacker asshole, and viral marketing ninja has done for years now.) Stick to solving the problem, be yourself, and remember the golden rule of the Internet: Don’t be a dick.
2. I don’t expect you to immediately become an expert, and you should never fake it either. Take the time to thoroughly research the problem, talk to your audience (never, ever, pass up an opportunity to talk to your customers / audience), and do the work. Research. Read. Talk to people in the industry. Form strong opinions, back it up with data, and when you can thoroughly and expertly solve the problem, then you launch your blog / newsletter. It doesn’t have to be a blog, I am a big believer in email marketing, I just go with blog because it’s easier for people to wrap their head around.

So, that solves the “What makes you an expert” part of things. You did the work. Ninety-nine percent of people haven’t.

What about the why? Why should people listen to you?

The easy answer is actually another question: What reasons have you given them not to listen? *Insert long rambling thing here about what some dipshit decided to call “Personal Branding” but was actually just a repackaging of what Dale Carnegie said in the ‘30s. As my ex-wife used to say, “For serious.” Go read Dale Carnegie’s “How To Win Friends and Influence People” (it was on the recommended reading list) and then look at your online presence.

If you have an online presence, or even if you don’t, it should be completely tweaked and focused on the audience / customer and solving their problem. Don’t post anything there that’s not related, no matter how hilarious you might be or how interesting people think you are. I know. What a bummer. But if you noticed, as you’re taking each of these steps, it’s easy to mess up and lower your chance for success. So if you want it badly enough, this is what you need to do.

It certainly helps if you have traditional markers of expertise to back up what you say. I have a book St. Martin’s Press published, plus the fact that I’ve been doing this marketing / PR thing since I was 18 and have worked with major ad agencies and brands ever since. But assuming we’re starting from scratch, without those indicators, the thing you need to do is focus on providing quality answers again and again and again. If you’re useful, people will pass on what you have to say. That’s one of the reasons why people share things in the first place, because passing on something that’s useful makes them look good and smart and useful to their peers. See how that works?

To be clear: I’m not talking about likes and shares here. I’m talking about people taking your link and dropping it into the same forums and other community areas (online and off) where the problem was being discussed without your prompting. As that starts to occur, credibility is established.

Now, getting people’s attention? That’s a whole other story. Stay tuned.

Image Credits: Jaws book cover and slow turtle crossing via Wikimedia Commons. Quiet, from Liberty: The Second City Saint, courtesy of … the author. Duh.