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day 1519: Building Social Currency: Part 1 – Advocates Trump Followers

“Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations,baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

I clipped out an article in 2010 from Fast Company  that was written by Ben Paynter, titled “Five Steps to Social Currency”.  I was so struck by Paynter’s five steps/lessons that I thought they would be worth exploring in depth and applying some of our purposed worKING thoughts to what he has written.  This will be a five part series, starting with part one; “Advocates Trump Followers”.

The idea of a net promoter score (NPS) is not new.  But on digital/social platforms, those who just follow a brand or a fan page mean little in comparison to those who will actually speak up and advocate for the brand, company or service.  Paynter draws a picture of those who hear something positive about a brand being the ones who are moved to make a buying decision.  And then, when there are those who way they would never recommend a brand goes up, well that is when we are in dangerous territory.  So, even though we chase Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram followers and the amount of each of them, we are still much better off with fewer followers and more people who will advocate and step up talk about the brand positively.  They are the ones that really matter.  So, which have we been working towards building and who gets the higher priority?

Jesus only asked His disciples and us to follow Him, but we can’t forget that He didn’t just stop there.  He commissioned us to go into the world and be His advocate.  Usually around Easter time we will recount the story of when Peter, maybe the most devout of the following disciples, had his moment of weakness and could not only not advocate, but ended up denying that he knew Jesus.  And Peter went on to be the rock which the church was built.  So, let’s step forward together to be strong advocates of our Lord!  It is in this that others will become followers.

Reference: Matthew 28:19-20 (New Living Translation)