Today I spent a little more time reading Darby Checkett’s ‘Leverage‘ (aff) and was drawn to a chapter titled ‘The Best Investment You’ll Ever Make’.
Darby’s book is about how to achieve ‘tipping points’ through different leverages and this chapter focusses upon Relationships as one of those leverages.
Early in this chapter he refers to all the other leverages that he’s talked about as being ‘personal power factors’ and goes on to identify relationships as having ‘the multiplier effect’ (sounds like something out of a bad Si-Fi movie or something). Let me hand over to Darby for a quote (from page 97):
‘The minute you involve others in your vision, the minute your desire impact others, all your personal power factors will benefit from the multiplier effect. This is real leverage. it is obvious that, when you alone hold a visioin, you speak with one small voice. When you recruit others to the cause, you speak with a high fidelity, mega-watt sound system.’
Ultimately Darby isn’t saying anything new in this quote (or chapter) but he does put his finger on an incredibly powerful factor that I think most successful bloggers have stumbled upon (sometimes intentionally and something by accident).
Relational Blogging
One of the reasons for the viral like growth of the whole blogosphere is that it’s relational in its very nature (having comments, interlinking, conversational style) – but if you look at many individual successful blogs you’ll find that they often take this relational focus to the next level with significant impact (the more voices spreading the ‘message’ the further it will go).
They do this through many techniques including:
