The con­cept of influ­ence is not new – it appeared when humans first began com­mu­ni­cat­ing and learned that one of them knew more about some­thing than the oth­ers. So the crowd (tribe, etc.) lis­tened to that human. Knowl­edge + com­mu­ni­ca­tion = influ­ence.

Knowl­edge in and of itself, while won­der­ful, does not yield influ­ence – it needs to com­mu­ni­cate itself to oth­ers to gain influ­ence. Over time, humans have devel­oped big­ger and big­ger ways to ampli­fy their abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate knowl­edge. The print­ing press was rev­o­lu­tion­ary in its day for how it expo­nen­tial­ly expand­ed the reach of an author.

Even in our lives, we’ve seen the jump from mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion via radio and tele­vi­sion, to social media – where lit­er­al­ly any­one can use a social plat­form to build an audi­ence.  For most busi­ness­es and peo­ple, build­ing an audi­ence is the pay­off. As they acquire more fol­low­ers, they gain influ­ence – and that means that the one who builds the audi­ence can con­vince them to do or buy things, to vote a cer­tain way, to make peace or war, or… Well you get the pic­ture.

What is ‘get­ting an audi­ence’ or ‘acquir­ing fol­low­ers’ often called by mar­ket­ing types? Well…mind share, for one. Or head­space, to use a slight­ly dat­ed term. Or influ­ence. You are lit­er­al­ly get­ting a slot in the mind of thou­sands – or mil­lions – of peo­ple.

So what does this have to do with job boards? Plen­ty.

For a job board to suc­ceed, it must gain influ­ence in its cho­sen mar­ket. It must obtain a slot in the tar­get audi­ence’s mind. That slot can rest on many dif­fer­ent types of influ­ence, such as: ‘the largest job board in the world’, or ‘the only place pale­on­tol­o­gists find work’, or ‘where your favorite actor found his first role’.  The job board has to obtain its slot through relent­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion, via every chan­nel that mat­ters to its audi­ence. Is the movie Juras­sic Park actu­al­ly the rea­son why every pale­on­t­o­gist orig­i­nal­ly chose their career? Yes? Then you might con­sid­er hir­ing T. Rex as your spokes­di­no – and then pump their mes­sage through every geeky pale­on­tol­gi­cal blog, Tik-Tok, radio show, and jour­nal out there!

Do that long enough, and you’ll gain influ­ence. You’ll have a share of your audi­ence’s mind. You’ll have a space in their head. They’ll use your job board.

And you’ll be suc­cess­ful!

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