Build Your Authority | Abul Hussain

Today, I want to talk to you about why I believe the fastest way to build your credibility, authority and rapport with someone is through video.

If I look at my own experience, a couple of years ago when I was launching products and needed partners to promote the product to their own mailing lists, I would try to add friends on Facebook — like everybody else!

After getting nowhere for a while I realised that when you are perceived as an authority in an industry, you tend to get lots of friend requests from people across the world.

There are a lot of emerging entrepreneurs from South Asia that have turned Facebook Messenger into a hunting ground for their SEO, web development and other services.

On Facebook many authority figures are close to reaching their friends limit and only want to add meaningful connections. I have even stopped adding people who are not from North America, Europe, Australia and Canada, unless they are already an established figure in their industry.

Now, if you have a foreign sounding name, the chances of people not accepting your friend request to auto-deleting you shoots up even higher. This is nothing racial but rather people are fed up of getting pitched constantly.

So what did I do? I started shooting videos for people I wanted to connect with. I took a human approach and went zig, when everyone else was going zag.

These were not high-production videos that I meticulously planned out either.

I simply whipped out my phone, put it on video mode and recorded a personalised message for the person I wanted to connect with.

Social Media seems to have become so robotic that people often forget that there is another human at the other end of a message.

Treat them like a human and the chance of getting their attention is much higher!

So if you have been trying to get someone’s attention, why don’t you try recording them a personal video? I promise you, you won’t regret it!

Originally published at https://abul-hussain.com on January 10, 2021.