The Audience Growth Strategy used by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

I’ve found that connecting with a few people at the deepest level is so much more valuable than an expensive add campaign where you flash a million people with what your doing.

I first learned about this strategy in a training in community organizing I went through when I jumped a year-long volunteer program right out of college. Then I came upon it again when I visited The Gandhi Memorial Museum in Madurai, the same place where Martin Luther King Jr. stayed to study nonviolent social change during his pilgrimage to India. I encountered this same technique a third time when I did some volunteer work for the Obama campaign. All that to say, by the time I got around to applying it to my own writing community, I was pretty confident it would be useful. If you have a message and you want to spread it to the masses, this strategy has proven effective by some of the biggest movements in history.

Drum roll, please…

In community organizing lingo they’re referred to as one-on-ones, but I like to call them “coffee dates.” Here’s what they consist of: you sit down with another person, ask about their experiences, passions and dreams, and then you also share a bit about yourself. They’re more efficient than ever these days because you can do them via Skype, Zoom or Messenger. This is different from a sales call or any other type of negotiation because the only objective is to have a meaningful interaction.

It’s a great place to start because it creates a foundation of trust unmatched by any other technique. People you listen to and care about become the underpinning of your community. It’s the core of the snowball effect when it comes to audience growth. These are running buddies you can count on to show up to your first poetry reading or webinar. They are your allies who buy your book and recommend it to others. They’re the friends you can confide in when you’re suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Later if you work together in any kind of professional capacity, it’s much easier because you know one another as human beings first.

In order to understand the numerous benefits of this time-honored tradition, you just have to set up some coffee dates. I’ll tell you, years of coffee dates are the reason I get excited to chat with the familiar faces on my social media feed and have created a high vibe community that good people are attracted to. Many complain about the toxicity of social media, and a to a great extent this simple practice has helped me steer clear of that.

If Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama found them worthwhile I decided I could block out time for them too. It’s a building block for any movement based on thoughts and words that repeats itself through the ages. The throat chakra is referred to as the chimney of the heart. There is no better way to grow your message than to spread it to people you care about. This is where you find your voice.