Social Media

Today I had a simple, yet totally profound interaction on Twitter. Here’s what happened: While reading Dan Olsen’s The Lean Product Playbook I found myself with a lot of unanswered questions — primarily around his central case study (which is used to illustrate his lean process with an actual product). I tried Google… Nothing. Then I thought, why not just ask him?

Twitter provided the easiest path, and within an hour he followed me back and offered an answer:

@emerywebster good question :-) The MVP validation after we pivoted led the company to acquire a startup in that space

— Dan Olsen (@danolsen) December 9, 2015

Admittedly, this answer left me half-satisfied (and with even more questions)…but still, he got back to me. Within an hour.

For some reason I didn’t expect to get a response at all. I’m not sure why. Dan only has about 4k followers…but he’s a busy guy: best-selling author, speaker, business consultant, high profile silicon valley guy, etc. Still, it felt like a pretty cool move.

My point is that even quick and seemingly insignificant touch points like this can leave your readers/users/fans/whatever feeling pretty special.

Gary Vaynerchuk is the king of this kind of thing—constantly building and engaging with his audience/customer/community through various social touchpoints. About a year ago I was looking for a video interview of him and reached out to see if he could point me in the right direction. Within minutes he reached back to me, cc’ing a partner/employee of his to help me out. I had the video link within 20 minutes ¹.

This is a guy with millions of social connections, running multiple businesses, and is likely much busier than most people. He’s basically moving 120mph 120% of the time…so it was reassuring to see that he walked the talk when I raised my hand.

One of my favorite quotes of his:

If you’re hustling, good shit will happen. Period. What the hustle looks like varies. All I ask for is that you work hard and fast.²

I highly recommend you give him a follow on Twitter and Medium. After digging a bit I’m sure you’ll learn something new (and understand why he’s so successful).