Being Partly Private Beats Reaching Out To Everyone
When your work is partly private, it is not just you that creates the best work, others chip in too.
There is a place for more intimate and meaningful connections to create belonging, rather than thinking that the only way to engage others, is to relentless broadcast to people who don’t know you.
This article is about saving your best work for some, not all.
When others help out too, something much stronger happens, that is beyond looking for acceptance.
What you are reading here comes from sharing something that happened last week. I am putting it into context of people willing to help out when they don’t feel part of a mass audience.
This is about keeping elements of what you do saved for some. What happens is you create a network that supports each other.
What Is Partly Private?
Being partly private represents the side step from a world where we have encouraged others to ‘follow us on Facebook’ type messages on Twitter and the constant drive to be seen by anyone and everyone.
It is a place that is distant from an objective where volume becomes the goal. You cannot create for mass. That way, it takes away any sense of who you are out the way. Have a look at this clip that shows what a click farm is and a meaningless world that is driven by numbers, not interaction
Partly private represents the places such as the Facebook Group (there is the You Are The Media Facebook Group, why don’t you join us), it’s the email newsletter or the live event where there is a sense of privacy but for anyone who is part of the community. It represents the places where there isn’t a bunfight for attention.
What you do doesn’t have to be bellowed on every channel so other people think you are good.
The world doesn’t need another LinkedIn Group for someone to go BIG by telling everyone they have reached a milestone by tapping another 100 or 1,000 people. We are all fed up of people who brag about volume, when in reality hardly anyone has engaged since they clicked and joined a group on a whim three years ago and is more of a graveyard than a party that is continually fed Long Island Iced Tea.
The Evidence To Share
Being partly private works when others are involved and feel active.
Let me share with you.
You Are The Media Podcast superstar, John Espirian, shared a video recently for you to see everyone who has been looking at your LinkedIn profile, even if you have a free account.
Here it is:
I took this video and shared it in the You Are The Media Facebook Group. I liked the idea that it was something that shooked the LinkedIn tree and would be useful for others.
Then things happened.
Someone else from the You Are The Media community, Gordon Fong, from Datacenta Hosting, took this to the next stage and made it more
It is still something that is experimental, it is rough, it is ready, it may not work on all browsers, but if it works for you, then hope you can see the many others who are looking at you.
This wasn’t about fighting the algorithm, it was going toe to toe with it. Someone else picked it up and ran with it.
So, why did this strike a chord
?Gordon wasn’t asked to do it (someone else also volunteered to do it too, it was just that Gordon and his team turned it around quickly)
?This was going to be seen by the people who are part of the You Are The Media community, not in a vacuum as a post (I shared this in last weeks You Are The Media weekly email and this page represented 52% of total clicks)
?It felt raw and in a way something that goes against the rules of a social platform
?It was a way for the community to take action and extend the usefulness of a message
?It felt real. For instance, there is an occasion coming up that will bring everyone together, no matter where they live in the UK (the You Are The Media Conference)
?It was 100% communication and reaching out, not broadcasting
?The world is moving from public acceptance on social media to private media spaces
?This represented engagement between people and not mass reach
The Genuine Move To Partly Private
Being partly private means you create the best, for some.
This is something that Chris Marr, from the Content Marketing Academy and speaker at
I asked Chris why he decided to go off-radar and share with subscribers his private letter and not make it widely available for everyone?
Chris said, “I wanted to create something that didn’t operate within the usual marketing and business boundaries, such as sharing, promotion, measurement and monitoring traffic. I was influenced by people such as Paul Jarvis, so my email activity is what people want and what I also feel comfortable with.”
“When I write it goes straight into someone’s in-box, nowhere else. It becomes a contract between me and someone else. This way, people value it more and more likely to read it. If people stay, this is a signal. I know they are reading and I am connecting. It becomes very personal.”
“When creating for a connected audience, you let go of SEO and focus on the creation.”
What Chris is doing is a prime example of becoming private. The network he is building is helping him connect on a far deeper level than recognising that the answer is always to be paying to be seen.
Putting This In The Context Of You
Rather than throwing the net out to the world to be accepted, we are all made up of small cottage like businesses that are networked together.
We all want our work to be recognised, people to sign-up, subscribe and attend. When there are the right people inside, a network genuinely develops.
Being partly private means that the occasions when people come together, the world feels more social. For instance, I have a weekly email that is also an in-person event (from the You Are The Media Lunch Club to the You Are The Media Conference). The weekly email has been the thing that connects everyone. It is the path where journeys start, people are featured on the email and projects are shared. By having something that is not wishing for broad acceptance, becomes a place for people to be a part of.
The example I saw that stated from John (Espirian) and Gordon (Fong picked up), was about helping out and feeling like you are doing something for some, not everyone. This is exactly what Chris Marr is pursuing at the moment.
Let’s Round Up
When you create value for others within a group, new value is created and then exchanged.
It is happening. The focus is leading to a switch from mass relevance to more personal conversation. This means that there is less emphasis on finding something to be shared and liked but more about the association we have
We are moving by being defined from what we own, to what we are interested in, to being enriched by feeling and being a part of something that others feel connected to.
If you can create a buoyant trusted space, where there is activity, you get a lot more visibility.
