Courage and Connection

How to Turn Cold Calls to Warm Outcomes

Create meaningful and sustainable connections and grow with courage, growth mindset, and serendipity

Leadership requires courage to connect with new people and create meaningful, and sustainable connections. Creative leaders depict entrepreneurial traits. They show no fear of criticism. They use criticism as an innovation tool as I point out in this article.

As leaders, we need to be bold, determined, and persistent to achieve our goals. Instead of focusing on what others think about us -which we cannot control- we must focus on the importance and value that we can create for society which we can control.

There is a distinction between being persistent and being pushy. We confidently persist to achieve our goals but don’t pest people with arrogance and ignorance. Our emotional intelligence and maturity can guide us to maintain the right balance in our approach.

Persistence, determination, and commitment are critical leadership attributes based on respect, courtesy, empathy, compassion, kindness, reciprocity, and care principles.

In this article, I want to highlight the importance of a cold calling technique in content marketing as a growth strategy on Medium.

Cold calling can create anxiety, stress, and fear in some people. However, this anxiety and fear are perceptual. Humans naturally fear unknowns. It is in our DNA. We need to understand that the ramifications of cold calling do not create a real-life danger. It is a sales and marketing tool widely used for centuries by business people and organizations.

Yes, call calling can be confronting and uncomfortable, but this discomfort is essential for our growth. Cold calling is an effective marketing technique to generate new business leads and opportunities.

How does cold calling apply to content visibility on Medium for our ILLUMINATION writers?

One of our primary goals is to create visibility for our content and amplify our messages to a wider audience. To achieve this goal, we must apply a cold calling approach to our content marketing strategy.

I want to explain how to apply call calling approach on Medium platform using a simple example which is applicable to all of us.

We can consider cold calling as a type of conversation starter in a party. Imagine we are going to a party, there are hundreds of people. We don’t know anyone but we are keen to meet new people.

We start getting anxious and stressed. We don’t know how to start and who to connect. This is a natural human condition. Our comfort zone, based on survival mechanism, holds us in the homeostasis. Our goals is to move to our stretch zone.

Once this condition is understood and accepted, the process can be straightforward. All we need is eye contact and smile, continuing with use of the magical word “hi”, and mentioning our name. Once we initiate this 10-second procedure, that’s it. The rest is a known story by many of us who participated in parties, gatherings, and networking events.

We can model this technique to reach out to new writers on Medium. “New” is the key term in this context. The purpose is growth, not to keep steady state.

For example, we can start by choosing an article in our interest areas from a writer we haven’t met yet. We click on the article just like saying “hi” at a party. We read the article. We highlight a few important statements. We clap it. Ensure we clap multiple times to show our care for the value of the content. Medium allows us up to 50 claps. Then, we can leave a brief note.

Our comment can be a witty statement complimenting the topic. Our feedback can also be a point to extend or expand the opinions of the article. We can comment on the writing style of the writer and anything else that can be relevant and appropriate in the right context. As our messages reflect our character, behavior, and perspectives, we need to be careful to depict acceptable behavior with sensible and supportive approach.

Trust is one of the essential requirements for creating connections and maintaining sustainable relationships. We need to refrain from unpleasant and undesirable behavior such as spamming, patronizing, arrogance, attention seeking, or belittling.

If we approach new people with professional behavior and a constructive mindset, I can assure that nobody on Medium would confront us for contacting them. Writers enjoy their content to be appreciated. Our awareness of this fact can create serendipitous encounters.

I know this can create anxiety and even induce fear for some us, but we shouldn’t concern to approach new writers on Medium. Medium is a collaborative platform mainly consist of mature content creators.

Consider Medium as a safe neighborhood where no one would harass you or scream at you for your door knocking. I saw very few angry or rude comments. They are in the minority on Medium. Medium policies are protective of the writers. Exceptions should not dictate our progress and shouldn’t encourage us from creating new connections. Nothing to be feared but to be understood!

Once we build a good relationship with a writer, we may briefly introduce our articles relevant to the topic. This is where the magic happens for our content marketing strategy. Suddenly people can start discovering us and our articles linked to the other articles we commented.

In addition, the owner of the article can start following us and enjoying our articles. By using this simple technique, we can turn cold calling to warm outcomes.

This approach seems simple, but it is an effective method to create new connections and satisfying relationships. New connections can create more visibility and reading times for our content. This is key to our growth.

To get started, I recommend our writers to begin exploring new articles and meeting new writers on Medium. If we make this a habit, for example, each day if we approach five new writers, we can increase the number of our followers in a few months. We can grow rapidly.

This is a proven technique recommended to me by my mentors on Medium. By using this technique, I increased my followers from 0 to 500 within three months. During this process, I met fascinating writers whose content extended my knowledge and provided me with new perspectives. Number of views and read times for my articles increased substantially. The new writers I met via this approach also turned to connections in my other networks.

Thank you for reading my perspectives.

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