Meet Nick Kellet...

When Nick Kellet got in touch with a former co-worker through LinkedIn, he was interested to hear that she was teaching Chinese to the inventors of the board game Cranium to help them work with their factory in China. Kellet had recently left his job to publish a board game of his own, called GiftTRAP. His friend arranged an introduction to the factory owners in Shanghai, and soon Kellet had a manufacturer for his game. Next he turned to photo-sharing site Flickr and found images from more than 500 different photographers that he could legally use for his game. Once GiftTRAP had been produced, Kellet used social networks to find buyers at Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us. “It’s not easy to get into those places,” he says. “You get stonewalled at reception.” Then he plugged into BoardGameGeek to connect with influential players in the tabletop-gaming community and get his product into the hands of reviewers. The long hours online paid off. Games Magazine declared GiftTRAP the best party game of 2008; it has been translated into eight languages and is now in its third print run. Kellet isn’t done with social networking, either — he’s just developed a Facebook application that lets people play his game online.

What About Connections?

“You want to add a ton of connections. The power is not in the first-degree network, it’s not in whether I have 50 connections or 100 connections, and the power comes in the 2nd and 3rd degree networks. If you have between 100 and 500 first degree connections, let’s just say you have 100, you probably gonna have around 3 to 6 million 2nd and 3rd degree connections. What that means is only 3 to 6 million people can find you, can contact you and can hire you for your services. But if you have more you can get 10, 12, 15 million people and you want more and more people to be able to find you when they are searching for key words”
- Lewis Howes, author of the book Linked Working

But Who Reads This Stuff?

Barret Swatek is the star of the online comedy series, “My Two Fans,” about an average single girl who rebounds from a broken heart with the help of her two fans. Having blown all their budget on production, “My Two Fans” had no money for advertising, so off a friend’s recommendation, Swatek decided to start Twittering as her character, Kate Maxwell (@KateMaxwell). To get some fodder for Twittering and to find her audience, Swatek began following businesses and people that could relate to her show, such as dating sites, single women, girl power groups, fan clubs, etc. In just six weeks, Kate Maxwell/Barret Swatek has collected more than 500 followers. More importantly, she’s being followed by key industry players at Sony, Lionsgate, and NBC to name a few. But Swatek Twitters because she loves how people respond to her character and it really inspires her as a writer.
Stories like these are EVERYWHERE!! What are YOU waiting for?