BrainSnax (S1E02): What is Harvesting? - [Carcast]

What is Harvesting? The Beginnings of Establishing Trust

Harvesting is the byproduct of your efforts in providing services or value to individuals that are listening to your podcast, your posting, and so forth. It can take time and can build trust, which in turn will become professional relationships with customers and clients.

It's important to understand that harvesting requires some planning. For example: If you're posting about a product and how good it is, and you send them to a landing page where their email can be captured so they can purchase your product, that can be considered a very low level of harvesting. And it is not what we're referring to.

The idea of harvesting is the idea that you are providing a synergistic value to the person listening to your podcast, your show, your broadcast, or any other thing at the moment that you're presenting. Think of it as building a relationship.

But you need to be clear, easy to understand, and easy to find. It's important to be able to give people an outlet or a way to follow you, understand what you offer, and so forth. These are the tools that you would use to be able to collect your information and most importantly collect their interest.

Successful people say it’s not about the one person you harvest. It’s about the time you take to build the relationship and who they know. So harvesting is more about creating an interest that will allow that person to come back to you and bring other people with them that are like-minded. In today's market one would consider a harvest to be something where you would go out and do a presentation or seminar and you would collect the information of people only to sell them a one-time product. That's more salesmanship and more of gathering for the purpose of selling a product or service rather than creating a synergistic approach at harvesting.

So, just what kind of things could you harvest? When you're dealing with social media, you are the brand and you are the person that they want to listen to. It's important to understand what type of information you are giving to individuals so that they can want to come back voluntarily and listen to more of what you have to say. Within your content or show or your media that you are promoting, you would place small lines or small bits of information dealing with a product or service that you have. Better yet, you get them to understand that, in a way, you are this product.

For example: Let's say that you’re talking about subjects and happenings dealing with laws and legalities. You then make it known that you are not just ranting about legal information. You make it known that you are seeing some vital information that's well needed in the community. You also establish yourself as the expert on the subject matter and allow them to reach out to you or comment. Or maybe you create a forum of questions and answers for individuals seeking that type of information. The harvesting occurs when you go to your forum and you find information on individuals that are asking the questions that relate to a product or service that you have. However, the individual requesting those services are there because they want to know more about what you have to offer and what you have to say...which, in the end, builds trust and familiarity. They will then be more likely to try whatever products or services you have to recommend.