It was October, 4th 2017. I was on the bus returning home from a little local event for the Chinese mid-Autumn festival and in my mouth I had still the taste of the mooncake that I had eaten. I started looking my facebook notifications to chat with some friends. There was a message from a nice guy that I got to know through VR communities and that is building a and a . I opened the message and the text was like “Well, congratulations… #34 is absolutely not a bad ranking in the top 100”. Honestly, I hadn’t even a single clue of what he was talking about, until I noticed the link that he had added to the message. It was this one: VR enthusiast , Enrico Speranza VR-Awesome repository VR worlds platform called Mayaverse _2016 was a pivotal year for the virtual reality industry, with almost 100 million VR units shipped worldwide. We…_www.onalytica.com Virtual Reality 2017: Top 100 Influencers, Brands and Publications In that moment I discovered that I’ve become a Virtual Reality influencer. Wow. Last year I was considered by almost no one and now How has this happened? I’m in the top 50 list of world influencers of virtual reality! Since to enter this classification I used advice read on the web, , telling you how I got my little share of popularity, so that you can benefit from this post and become an influencer as well… hope even better than me (honestly speaking, , I even hate that word, as I’ve explained in ). I want to return the favor back to the community I feel strange in being defined as an influencer this other post of mine The long road Let me be honest, . Or better, there are some, but are not always viable: there is no simple way of becoming influencers , ghost writing for your posts, influencer marketing and such and gain followers easily; If you have a lot of money, you can start spending a lot in marketing . Maybe you just publish online a photo of your cat and become super-famous. Maybe your video becomes viral on Youtube. Maybe. . it is like winning the lottery. So, don’t count on this… if then it happens, well, I’m really happy for you. You may have luck But this happens really rarely. No, it won’t happen Unfortunately, . So, I had to conquer everything working hard, over time. Every damn day. I’ve little money and even less luck If life gives you lemon… well, make a gin tonic. . Keep that in mind. You will need a lot of time and lot of efforts to arrive where you want to arrive, it will be damn long and hard The long road. Actually, this is even too short… Just start When I was working at my , my buddy one day told me that I had to recover my dormant Twitter account to start spamming a bit about our project. It was 2015 maybe and I absolutely wasn’t into social media. I had no willing to do that (I was too lazy), but Gianni encouraged me to start, just to tweet a bit some links of our blog posts. In the end, I did that and . I started tweeting them with some random hashtags (#VR, #gamedev, #VirtualReality, etc…) and I noticed that I started getting some followers. I still thank Gianni for his initial effort: it helped me in getting where I am now. Immotionar startup Gianni Rosa Gallina in the first times I just started tweeting some VR-related links that he gave me to read . As you can see, there is not some epic beginning: I just started using again a twitter account I left dormant some years before and tweeting random VR-related links. This is how it all began Takeaways from this: So, if you want to have visibility, you have to start having a social account and using it. It may seem obvious, but it is not; You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy the ticket. What I’ve learned all over these years is that the best is doing things in continuously improving iterations. . If you want to start the perfect way, you begin reading a bazillion marketing links and in the end you never begin. JUST START. You must not start in a perfect and beautiful way. Start doing crappy things, then continuously improve over time I’ll report this sentence that everyone uses because it is very cool quoting some Chinese people Improve over time Starting in a crappy way is awesome and . Over time you’ll start realizing all the errors you make and you’ll correct them. , or you will get stuck into being just another social media user. You have to aim at the stars, so you want to make a great use of your digital tools. lets you get confidence with the mean You have to improve your social media strategy over time What have I done to improve myself? Well, various things… for instance: . I know that if I tweet something when here in Italy is like 10 am, I get almost no retweets. If I tweet the same thing at 10 pm, I get likes and retweets. So I concentrate my tweets on the most promising timings; I started analyzing when tweets get the most attention : some hashtags give you retweets from some twitter bots: when I started, for instance, adding #alldev got me automatically a retweet from the “All Dev Bot” that had something like 700 followers. So, when tweeting something related to development, I always added that hashtag; I started using the right hashtags ; I started using Tweetdeck to schedule my tweets I started following and interacting with other VR influencers. . Furthermore, interacting with them, I got the attention of some of their followers; I learned how they behave, what makes them successful and tried to emulate them a bit These are the most used VR-related hashtags on Twitter (Image by Onalytica) Then I went to the next level, mixing different platforms: Being part of communities let me gain even more followers (the already cited Enrico Speranza, known on Facebook, is now a follower of mine on Twitter, for instance) and read new interesting news as soon as they come out, so I could repost them on my social media and increment my userbase. … for instance, now I’m improving my presence on Linkedin, after having started in a crappy way there as well; I started using other social media, like Linkedin, Reddit, Medium, Hacker News, Quora and try to give my contribution on all of them. More social media means more place where starting and improving . Social media were not enough to express my point of view and a blog was the right fit for me: Publishing interesting content got me more followers and since the restyle of my blog that I performed on April, my followers base is growing every day. Even with my blog, , like this one on . I opened my blog so I started my adventure with The Ghost Howls . I started writing very rough posts and then evolved to write complicated posts Brain Computer Interfaces and VR So, . Continue this way, forever. Then start using a new platform in a mediocre way and start improving with that, too. the process is always this: start, someway. Then learn how you can improve and iterate But, how can you improve? Well, there are 3 means: . For instance, if you notice that every time you write “potato”, you get 3x retweets, just talk every time about potatoes; You just notice things . If you see that someone of your favorite YouTubers tweets in a certain way that is successful, you can just copy a bit of his style; You imitate someone else Looking for “how to become a twitter influencer”, “how to use social media”, “10 secrets twitter strategies” on Google, you’ll surely find a lot of advice on twitter. Then there are dedicated courses and books. You learn by dedicated articles. Just to show you how in my opinion you just have to start and then improve, I wanted to experiment with Twitch and Youtube, so I made this review of a game, just to discover, during the review, that the experience wasn’t actually a game. and I got a comment from a guy saying that watching the video is like “watching a baby taking its first shit”. I’ll show you this terrible video I’ve done some time ago. The result is pretty horrible . But I’m proud that I’ve tried experimenting with a new platform. But that’s ok, I’ve just started using the medium… I’ll be better Be personal No one likes following bots just tweeting news. . On Linkedin, for instance, I’ve discovered that is better adding a little personal sentence together with each link that I’m sharing. Start expressing your opinions, start interacting with other people , people have to recognize you. For instance, in my blog, I like having an informal style and using memes while talking about Virtual Reality. Someone may not like it… but for those people, there are more serious magazines like Upload VR or Road To VR. Give your personal touch to everything The meme used in my post where I explained the difference between presence and immersion This also means finding your right path: (I think you got it looking that horrible video above), so even if most people prefer making videos and become Youtubers, I still like Wordpress and Medium. That’s me. for instance I’m more into writing long virtual reality posts than into making videos Be great Apart from the personal touch, . Imagine the kind of influencer that you would like to meet and become that one. For instance, I try to: my advice is to try also to be kind, helpful, funny , comments, and tweets (or put at least a like); Always answer to e-mails : I tweet about indie VR projects, I write articles on them and I’m happy if thanks to me they get even a single customer; Help other fellow VR enthusiasts in having visibility Joking with all people writing to me; . Being informal I think that this willing to help people and have a nice relationship with them is the one of the reasons for my little success. . And I advise you to be this way, both on social media and in life since people will look at you as a positive person and this is really beautiful. This post itself is the product of my willing of helping other people entering the VR social world These are things that I like in all other influential people. , because not only she’s a very talented person, but she also makes me always laugh with her comments. Be awesome as her. For instance, I love interacting with the super-XR-influencer Malia Probst on Twitter Be confident Most of my followers are better than me in XR, startups or such. That’s ok. I’m honored of having such smart people in my communities and I’m happy of learning with them. I’m never the smartest guy in the room. I accept this and continue tweeting. Don’t let the “I’m not smart enough” syndrome stop you. As Chinese people say, “There are people beyond (this) person, and skies beyond (this) sky”, meaning that “ ”. Even the smart people that you envy have people somewhere smarter than them. That’s part of the game. Just start and improve. No matter how good you think you are, there is always someone out there that is better Believe in yourself Be interesting . “Interesting” may mean different things, but the gist is You have to write interesting stuff to have people following you that following you must be worth it. Talking about Virtual Reality, this may mean for instance: as soon as they happen; Reporting virtual reality news (better if this happens for products in preview). TESTED VR guys have become popular this way; Making amazing virtual reality hs/sw reviews of the various events of the virtual reality ecosystem; Giving your personal point of view , especially for poorly documented topics; Making virtual reality tutorials There are a lot of other interesting examples. But I think you got it: be interesting for your readers. Remember the old sentence “ ”. To obtain value, you have to give value In my case, inside my blog I write a bit of all the above contents. Furthermore, each week , so that they can avoid reading all the VR news every day and stay updated the same. I try being of help. I send to my newsletter subscribers a selection of the most interesting virtual reality news of the week Some people for instance just make fluff posts on VR and pretend to have lots of followers. It doesn’t work this way: just reporting Upload VR news won’t take you anywhere. Be damn persistent If you have ever seen the movie Any Given Sunday, . Otherwise, take 5 minutes and watch it. you surely remember the motivational speech that Al Pacino makes to his players That is exactly what you have to do, . You have to die for every single inch. Every inch you conquer will cost you a lot, but in the end you may arrive at the touchdown area. fight inch by inch for each one of your objectives, day after day I’m saying this because : you tweet and get not even a retweet. You write an amazing article on your blog and only 10 people read it. You write to journalists and interesting people and they don’t even consider you. … you start thinking about giving up: those social media are so useless. the beginning is really depressing You invest a lot of time and you get nothing . With time you’ll have your success… but it will really require a lot of time to see even your first results. Don’t give up. Never. If results are not coming the way you wanted, then it just means that : learn new tactics and try again. trial&error plus persistence can take you really the long way. You have to fight for each new follower, for each like you have to improve It will require you a lot of time, . Because every day you’ll have to open your social media channels and use them, . It is an investment you have to do. A sacrifice. Using the social media is not only fun, it is a job. it will require you a piece of your life even if you’re tired and you don’t feel like doing it So, you have to plant a seed today and keep growing that little tree with water, manure, and fatigue, until one day, after years from the initial moment, you start seeing the first apple. And it will be so sweet, and biting it you’ll realize that all your hard work has been worth it. If you’re thinking about giving up, and I’ll remember you that you have to continue fighting and optionally I’ll also send you a panda GIF. send me a tweet Continue forever . On the contrary, the more you go on, the more you have to improve and give value to your followers. , so start only if you are confident in having this job for your whole life. There’s no stage where you say “Ok, I’m an influencer” and you can start resting The process never ends Look at me: … I would like to climb the ladder to arrive at least at #25 next year. I would like more engagement. I would like to connect better with virtual reality corporates like Oculus and Valve. I would like to help more the VR community. I’ve a really long long road to go in front of me. I’m just at place #34 of the classification And I hope to continue this journey with you all. — Hope you liked this post. If this is the case, please share it on your social media and come visiting me at my AR/VR blog The Ghost Howls . And if you want to connect with me, just contact me on or . I would be glad of hearing from you. Twitter Linkedin

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How I have become a virtual reality influencer (…and you can, too)

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How I have become a virtual reality influencer (…and you can, too)

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TonyVT SkarredGhost

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