Chris Gethard: Not an Anomaly
Called it.
My third book is coming out on Tuesday. In it, I have over 80 case studies detailing, in great depth, exactly how to create great content for today’s Social Media platforms. In the process of building out the chapter on Twitter, a comedian by the name of Chris Gethard was brought to my attention because of what a fantastic job he was doing of engaging with his followers.
It was just revealed that Comedy Central has ordered a pilot to be made of his show that currently airs on Manhattan Public Television. Needless to say, I’m pretty stoked to have put him in my book six months ago.
Here is some of what I had to say about him:
He tells jokes, of course, but he also retweets and engages, responding to and talking to fans and letting them know that he’s paying attention and appreciating the time they take to let him know what they think.
For anybody who doesn’t understand what I mean when I talk about “Jabs” and “Right Hooks”, this is what jabs look like. It’s the quality content and human interaction with the end user in mind that builds brand equity and emotional leverage so that when it’s time to sell (throwing the right hook), he can be as shameless as possible when it comes to asking his followers to tune into the premier of his new show.
Now don’t get me wrong, here. I’m not sitting here saying that Gethard got his TV deal because he subscribes to my philosophy of online engagement. He’s clearly an obnoxiously talented comedian...
...but I am saying that it damn sure didn’t hurt. Getting cast is very much a B2C kind of conversation, and the kind of awareness that active engagement online provides to someone just has to be attractive to a network looking to pick up a new star. You can’t tell me that Comedy Central doesn’t take this kind of stuff into account. With every engagement, every @ message, every wink and nod, Chris is bringing more eyeballs to himself, his brand, and his new TV show.
Back in the day, there were some critics of my first book, Crush It!. They accused it of being some kind of get rich quick scheme. That totally missed the point. The point was that “Hey maybe you can make $80k a year doing what you love or are great at instead of $55k doing something you don’t enjoy.”
Look not everybody’s Bieber. Not everybody is going to have a dramatic, meteoric rise to fame because they put out some good YouTube videos. What’s actually happening is that there are going to be tons and tons of people having (relatively) smaller wins like this all over the place.
I really hope you found some value in this. If you did, it would mean the world to me for you to scroll down and hit that recommend button!
