Buffer Slack Community’s AMA with Bryan Kramer, CEO of PureMatter

This week, we had another great guest who did his AMA with us — Bryan Kramer!

Bryan has an amazing track record:

• Founder of PureMatter, a very successful content, social and digital marketing agency.
• Both of his books, There is No B2B or B2C: It’s Human to Human and Shareology, have made it to the #1 position on Amazon.
• He has been named as one of the top few influencers to follow by Forbes, Business Insider and Huffington Post.

I think, most importantly, he has shaped the Human-to-Human movement.

You can read more about Bryan here and follow Bryan on Twitter here.

Bryan did a Blab with us for his AMA and I’d like to summarise some of my key takeaways from the session.

1. Humanising Business

Businesses don’t have emotions; humans do. There are too many things that are being automated, which should be done by a person.

It is hard to identify with a business emotionally if we are unable to connect with them. We might be able to relate to an ad by the business. However, even then, we still do not connect with the business as much as when we do with someone.

For example, Bryan encourages his newsletter readers to respond to his newsletter so that they can have a dialogue — either through emails or on Twitter.

2. Active Listening

There’s a difference between listening and active listening.

Someone who is only listening is able to regurgitate an answer to try to get a response to the question.

On the other hand, someone who is listening actively is able to respond with intent. He or she would give the other party a thoughtful response based on what was said so the other party can continue to add to the story. Both will feel they had a great conversation and got some value out of it. Perhaps they feel more connected or want to connect more.

This can be done not only in real life, but also online too — social media, emails, etc. When people make an effort to reach out, it is important to listen to them actively and respond with intent.

3. Producing Content

We all consume content differently. People who are more visual might prefer visual content (eg. infographics, images) while others who are more auditory might prefer audio content (eg. podcasts).

The key is to personalise the content according to your audience’s needs and preferences.

However, your audience might have many different preferences and it might not be practical to try to meet all their preferences — recording podcasts, creating videos, making infographics, and more. While it is important to listen to your audience, it’s also crucial to do what you are passionate about.

Furthermore, it is essential to consider the amount of resources and capabilities we have to be able to do all these. Bryan doesn’t believe in doing everything if it is going to slow you down.

4. Co-creating Content

The best content are co-created.

Meaningful conversations (see point 2 again) can spark new ideas, which can be turned into valuable content. For example, when people work together to solve a problem (even if they end up agreeing to disagree), they can turn the discussion into a piece of content that a wider audience can have a conversation about.

Also, building content with others gives the contributors a sense of ownership in the content. This makes them want to share the content with our audience more.

5. Processes and Systems

Bryan believes in having processes for the things he does. Essentially, it is a very well-defined task list, which outlines every single step in the process.

For example, every time he and his team launch a H2H chat, there’s a certain process they go through. The process goes down into the tiny details such as what would be shared, where it would be shared, what would be said, who would share what, what image would be made, when the landing page goes up, and so on.

He knows exactly who’s going to do what and when the tasks would be done.

(Bryan and his team use Asana as a team collaboration tool.)

Here’s the entire Blab session. (Sorry for the slight interruption at the start.)

Thank you again, Bryan! :)

Let’s get (even) better on social media together, join us here!