Best Selling Author Begs For The Right People on Facebook

On Wednesday, July 22, Michael Port, best-selling author of Book Yourself Solid and The Think Big Manifesto, sent this message out to his friends on Facebook:

Wed at 10:20am
Please, I beg of you, stop sending me event invites via FB email.

Here are some of the responses:

• If I get one more invite for ______ whatever-the-heck-it-is-game, I'm going to scream.
• Better yet, they need to learn how to segment and target market ;)
• I get so many group invites too and they are so random.
• It's a major problem and is abused by event promoters and "coaches" and wannabes a lot.

Here is a situation where you can see how frustrated and annoyed people get when the "wrong" people (meaning people who are not offering the right opportunity) pitch at you. I am using this example not to single out Michael Port, but to demonstrate some points about what makes people want to connect with us, or distance from us.

Imagine if Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric had sent Michael an invitation on Facebook. Think he would have begged Jeffrey not to send him an invitation?

Now each of the people that sent these invitations to Michael are his "friends" on facebook. They are the "right" people as friends on his list. They are not always the "right" people to send him a continuous stream of irrelevant invitations.

Allow me to digress for a moment - there is a point here.

Just saw a segment of a late night talk show where Sean John Combs talked about a party he gave recently. Suddenly, his security people came over to him and whispered in his ear: "Mr. Michael Jackson is here and would like to come to your party." Now Sean had not invited Michael Jackson. Somehow Michael had known the where and when of the party. Do you think Sean said, "No thank you" to Michael Jackson? Hardly. Sean was thrilled (excuse the pun) to have the King of Pop come to his party - invited or uninvited. (An aside here - Michael wanted Sean to introduce him to Beyonce at the party because he wanted to dance with her !)

We all want the right people and the right invitations.

Back to Michael Port, invitations to events,and friending on Facebook or other sites.

We have to become the right people and make the right invitations for people to want to connect with us.

Blanketing people with un-targeted invitations is a turn-off and will diminish your power. For your invitations to be engaging you have to give people a "what's in it for them" message. This message needs to appeal to what's relevant and important to them.

The next time you attempt to connect or invite someone to an event, a meeting, a conference, or even a party, think carefully about these three things:

1. Is my message distinctive and engaging?

2.. Have I requested this person's permission to reach out to him/her if I don't directly know him/her?

3. Do I have a strong "what's in it for...." message for this person? Is my invitation relevant to each person? Can I offer this person something they might really be interested in?

The more relevance and value you offer people with whom you interact, the more you become The Right People to them.