Building Authority Organically via the Inception Model

Why start organically?

Because we want the algorithm to take whatever content we feed the system and to let us know if it is working because if your content is not working organically, then you’re basically trying to force it through on the paid side via Ads and that’s just like driving with the emergency brake on. You can get down the road, but it’s very inefficient. We don’t want to cheat the algorithm. We want to work with the algorithm. We don’t want to try to beat the machine. 

What is Inception?

Inception is whoever I want to buy, I’m trying to influence the people they respect. And if I have enough content with people they respect organically, then the underlying audience will buy from me. 

Here is a perfect example:

And then you have people that are engaging, liking, and commenting on the post made by Brendan. Now, who are the people that are engaging, liking, and commenting? How was this inception?

Brendan, because he’s the CEO of this company, the people in his company that work for him and his community and the other people in local, because he’s very well connected in the world of local online marketing and because I want to demonstrate that I’m an authority but I don’t want to say it myself.  

The whole point of inception is I’m trying to get someone else to say it. It is planting an idea in someone else’s mind and making it look like it’s their idea and that way, you are getting them to promote you but in a non-spammy way. 

How did I do it? Here is how:

1. Check your connections and their power

Think about your network. Can you get other people to say good things about you? 

You need a piece of authority. You need something that gets the audience to say, oh, this guy knows what he’s talking about. So it should not be only on your landing page.

 2. Build your LIGHTHOUSE

Heather is what we call a LIGHTHOUSE.

LIGHTHOUSE is when you have a preeminent example, that is someone who sells for you because they have a lot of authority with a particular audience.

I’ve been on her show many times and you’ll see that midway through the video example above, several times I hold up a particular document and then she promotes it. I’m holding up one of our guides and she says, this is amazing. If you guys don’t follow this six-phase process, this is what you need to do.

And this is inception because I’m getting her to promote us. And its not just her personally that’s promoting us, it’s GoDaddy.

3. Put out Initial Content Organically

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4. Pull out One Minute Video Snippets

That’s the thing that I think most coaches and anyone who’s doing marketing misses is that you put out the initial content organically, and then you’re going to cut out different pieces that you can then turn into derivative content that then drives your leads and sales and different points in your funnel, which is what we call the topic wheel.

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5. Share

And for you to be able to post, you have to have a Public Figure Page which should be set-up similarly like your profile.

A public figure page is a page that has your name, but happens to be a page. We are intentionally trying to make it look like a profile. We’re trying to make it look like a person. Use the same picture and if you’re an author, speaker, or coach, then you want to have these sorts of things in your Cover Image like speaker reel showing you on stage in front of famous people, doing famous kinds of things. 

But because it’s a page, I have the ability to do ads and analytics and all these kinds of little things. So I’m going to take snippets from me with Heather Dobson or Brendan King and instantly and willingly seed authority and expertise to someone else who’s great. 

Then I’m taking it and I’m boosting it. 

6. Boost to fans of your LIGHTHOUSE

Another example is when I was invited on CNN and I spoke in front of three and a half million people live.

Why am I spending money to boost? 

It’s because I’m targeting the media and I’m targeting the potential high-net-worth clients. I’m talking to people that I want to buy. Who did I boost it? 

To the fans of my LIGHTHOUSE because now they are also my fans. Because I’m incepting his audience via creating that content and boosting it to his fans.

You can do it with anyone who’s got an audience.

7. Crosspost 

Organically on Facebook or just Facebook video in general, the average is six seconds. That’s how long people stay to watch a video, 3-7 seconds then I’m getting hundreds of thousands of views or whatnot on those snippets I draw out and boost. And then I multiply that by putting it on Instagram, on Twitter, and on a blog post. 

Use those content everywhere.

I’m relying on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn to automatically sub-target and sequence for me because the point of a social network or a feed is I want to let the network with all the data figure out what the next piece of content is.

In Summary

Inception is influencing the influencers to build something called Perceived Authority. Perceived authority equals implied endorsement.

Implied endorsement means that we’ll actually grant Cardone did say, “Dennis is a bad man.” but even if he didn’t say that, the fact that he said, “Hey, Dennis wanted me to answer this question.” So then people like, oh, well Dennis must be kind of important because at least Grant Cardone is making something for him. So that creates implied endorsement. 

He doesn’t have to actually endorse you. He doesn’t have to say, “Oh, Dennis is really good at running Facebook ads.” 

What I’m trying to do is avoid the most direct naked spammy technique, which is, “Hey, you should join our Facebook program and we’re going to teach you how to run ads across LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, analytics, hire up a team of virtual assistants, all this kind of stuff. If you join our program, it’s $1,500 a year at the bottom level and you get support and all these”.  

What I do instead is I interview other people that went through the program and I’m interviewing them so they’re not testimonials. I’m interviewing them about how they were able to achieve a certain kind of success, just like a podcast or interview somebody and I’m grabbing snippets out of what they said and then creating a series of remarketing audiences.

This is the main point that wraps it all together with inception– finding the signal for word of mouth. Word of mouth is when people, you do a good job, you have a good price, you actually care about your customer, multiply the good signal. 

So the expertise is not in programming and tools and technology and systems. What we’re doing is using a specific process to magnify what is already the goodness that’s there.

Bill Gates wrote about this in his book, the road ahead, which is one of my favorite books. It was written 30 years ago and he said, technology is an amplifier. It’s neither good nor bad. It takes something. If it’s good and it makes it bigger and better. And if it’s something bad, it multiplies the loss.

It’s like a friend that gets drunk. When they get drunk, it makes the happy times happier and it makes the sad drunks mad and sad and it makes the angry drunks angrier. 

So that’s how I think about the idea of all these things with inception, about taking high authority content, boosting it, and making different combinations. 

Need more convincing on why you need to strengthen your Authority to drive the Algorithm the right way? Here is an Office Hour Episode that discusses just that.

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