When Kim Garst launched the book Will the Real You Please Stand Up: Show Up, Be Authentic, and Prosper in Social Media on January 13, 2015, it became an Amazon best-seller in a couple of categories on its first day, joining the likes of social media gurus turned bestselling authors Guy Kawasaki and Ekaterina Walter.

Roughly twenty years ago, Kim never thought of becoming a best selling author nor did she envision that there would be such a medium we now call social media. In fact, Kim had her sights set on becoming a lawyer. Now, Kim is considered one of the top social media influencers by Forbes magazine.

From Political Science to Social Science

Kim’s original intention to enroll to law school after earning a political science degree went the opposite direction after the birth of her first son, Tyler. While being employed as a paralegal at that time, Kim decided to quit and focus solely on becoming a new mom. Kim and her husband later realized that they won’t be able to give their son a good life with his husband’s meager income. Putting her resourcefulness into action, Kim turned to the Internet - circa the Dial-Up age - to find work. Earning money by working at home through Internet was a novel concept in those times.

“It was not easy! When I started I could not even cut and paste. I remember writing email addresses on postcards of people who I found on B2B boards that I thought might be interested in my services. I would then retype their emails into my email client (Eudora – anyone remember this one? I spent HOURS and HOURS teaching myself how to do certain things. If I didn’t know how, I simply found a resource and taught myself. Before long, I was perceived as an “AUTHORITY” because I knew more than the next guy or gal, which wasn’t hard in those days because of the newness of the Internet. When this happened…my business really took off,” Kim recalls.

Kim earned her first 7 figure income working at home through word-of-mouth referrals. She paid a high price for it though when her part-time online gig became an 18-hour-a-day job.

Kim began to loath the incessant phone calls and despite being physically at home, she wasn’t there for her family, who during that time had a new addition - Logan, her second son. KIm eventually decided to sell the seven-figure business and retreated back into becoming a full-time mom.

When Social Media Found Kim Garst

Kim is one of those social media influencers who often joke about social media finding her rather than the other way around.

Soon after she sold her business, a friend got in touch to ask her if she would like to be involved in a direct sales company. She committed to it and got hooked up in an instant! Kim was a natural when it came to building relationships which came easy when finding a better way to exercise such people skills with online networking.

Consequently, she mastered the art of harnessing social media and personal branding in online marketing and got astounding results from it. In 2010, she began to offer her social media branding expertise to other businesses via Social Media Branding with Kim Garst. Two years later, she partnered with Terry Williamson in founding Boom! Social, a digital marketing company promising massive results to businesses mainly by social media selling.

Since 2012, Kim has consistently remained in the Top 50 Social Media Influencers by Forbes and Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Blogs. As a highly-sought after public speaker, she organizes and hosts Social Boom, an annual conference of social media strategists around the world. You can check out the event in September here - http://socialboomevent.com/

Kim’s Tools and Tricks of the Trade

Over the years, Kim has almost always emphasized the following nuggets of social selling wisdom:

Down with the Fakes

In a recent article by Kim published at the Huffington Post, she pointed out that authenticity, above all else, is the secret ingredient to social selling that consistently works. Here’s an excerpt of the article:

“People and businesses fail because they are frauds, fakes and phonies on social media. They come across as they cannot be trusted and they only have their interests in mind (which usually always involves money). They don’t know what I like, what I care about, what I value and they have no interest in being useful to me. They are inconsistent and all over the place. I only hear from them when they want something from me. It's all about them, them, them!

In short, they are not authentic! I do not know, like and trust them because I do not know who they really are.”

Are You Being Useful?

Being useful within your social media community is another concept that Kim reiterates frequently.

“Let's say that you own a landscaping company. What if you wrote an ebook called 10 Ways to Make Your Yard Absolutely Beautiful and used Facebook advertising to target and give it away on social media to people in your city? You are not “pushing” your landscaping service. You are just being useful. Guess what? Some of those people will get your ebook and want you to do the exact same things you told them to do in your ebook but pay you to do it. That is being useful, and that is pull marketing,” Kim explains in this article published in the Entrepreneur.

Stop Being Everywhere

In the same article, Kim also suggested that trying to be present in all social media platforms out there is a recipe for failure. She recommends finding out the first two platforms where a huge chunk of your target customers’ demographic are aggregating, and strategically spending your time creating content and engaging with customers in those channels.

Ultimately, Kim Garst’ success in social media branding is founded on her ability not just to network but her genuine concern to deliver value to clients and customers. How’s your social media marketing going? What similar values have you utilized in the past? Share your story below!

About the Author

 

About Kyjean Tomboc

Kyjean likes to think of herself as an online content machine but her love for all things feline makes her human after all! She writes mainly about health, science, social media, and online content marketing. If she’s not writing, she’s either scaling mountains or taming tardigrades. Follow her tardigrade taming attempts at Twitter - @autodidactikai