How to navigate the online cliques

When I first became a life coach, I thought that there were online cliques. I heard people sometimes say that the only way to become successful was to “break in” to those cliques, because without other people promoting your work, there was no way to navigate the online cliques successfully—they were always going to leave you on the outs.

But I have to say: the online cliques are not doing what you think they’re doing.

I get the frustration of a new or emerging life coach–or anyone else trying to bust into biz–who says, “How am I supposed to build my network if I can’t make friends with people who have large networks because they’re all so closed off to me?”

Again: They are not doing what you think they’re doing. (I mean, sure, maybe some people are, but 99.9% of the time, I don’t see that as the case).

What’s Actually Happening

What’s happening is this: Once you start to get a decent following and some traffic, people start emailing, all of the time, asking if you’ll help them promote things. It wasn’t until this was my experience that I understood that those years of thinking the online cliques had held me at arms length and that it was some vast conspiracy to only lift one another up, were wrong.

They were just really fucking busy, with inbox overload, and a lack of capacity.

I recently had a week where I had six different requests, three from book publishers, asking me to review and help promote some new offering.

That’s in one week.

That’s not counting the requests that came the following week, from other people, or those that had come in the week prior. That’s not counting the fifty other emails that need responding to in my inbox each day: from coaching clients, family, friends both online and off. That’s not counting DMs on social media and that’s not counting texts. That’s not counting messages from my team.

At a certain point the systems just start to shut down. It becomes simply impossible to maintain friendships and connections with the people you’ve already befriended in the online world, PLUS become friends with more people. That’s why people don’t respond to the pitch.

So–the online “cliques” aren’t doing what you think they’re doing. No one has ever said to me that they’re “only” talking to certain people or intentionally trying to exclude anyone. There are no back door conversations happening. No one is being elitist. If you send an email and are trying to befriend someone online, and they just aren’t very responsive, it is SO not personal.

People are just simply maxing out on the number of relationships that they can maintain, over time.

Promotion Dilution

The online cliques are not saying “no” to helping someone with promotion simply because they’re new on the scene. They’re saying “no” because like the inboxes, they’re maxed out on promotion.

Consider: If I were to say “Yes” to helping promote those six requests that came in during one week, that means that I would completely crowd out writing any of my own content for my blog Monday-Friday.

My blog would change from becoming something that benefits the people who follow it, to becoming a sales platform.

Then the people who follow it would get pissed (understandably) and leave (also understandable).

That means that the power of promoting anything through my blog would become incredibly diluted.

Also, I can’t, nor do I want to, promote everything. I don’t have the desire for it, nor do I have the energetic bandwidth for it.

Nah, I’m not Hot Shit

Ugh, I know. Maybe talking about email overload and lots of requests makes it sound as if I’m saying I’m all hot shit.

That’s not what’s happening, either.

I’m just trying to explain what I experience each week, and what I know some of my online friends experience–it’s just overload, and the line has to be drawn, somewhere.

This is my reality. That’s it. Like everyone else, I’m juggling a lot. So are a lot of other people. Some days I’m on top of things, and other days, I’m not.

I’m not sharing any of this because I’m hot shit. I’m sharing it because I’d like to save you the time that I wasted, thinking it was “me.”

It’s not “you.” It’s just that people are busy. It’s also that actually? Breaking into the online cliques to get cross-promotion isn’t really what you think it is—it won’t do for you what you think it will, anyway. The algorithms have changed EVERYTHING about being online. Someone with a big following can promote you, yes, and it’ll only hit 1/3 of their total followers.

If I can spare someone else the resentment of thinking it’s personal, then I’ve done my job for today. If I can spare someone from thinking that they’re going to hit it big if they pair up with an influencer? I’ve done my job for life. 

There’s a Call For You

If you’re listening closely, you’ll see that there’s a call for you to rise, in here.

There’s a call for you to just ditch the limiting thinking that “cliques” are somehow masterminding a scarcity plot to keep people out.

Recognize that kind of fearful thinking as the excuse that it really is.

Instead, start creating your own collaborative marketing groups.

You don’t need people who have a ton of followers to start your own beautiful online revolution.

Just create really beautiful, incredibly useful, exceedingly meaningful work, and share it openly, and start making connections with other people who are interested in doing the same.

Why in the world would you want to give your power over to thinking that other people are what will leverage you to the top of your game?

Honey, if you’ve got game, you’ve got game.

Leverage up through the networks that you have, and do it based on being excited about each other’s work, as well as strategic. Connect with the people who want to work hard, who have a shared vision for success.

And just keep creating the very best work, ideas, and resources that you can create. That’s where your power lies, anyway.