Are You Ubiquitous In Your Market?
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Do you know what ubiquitous means?
Ubiquitous
“Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time”
When you apply this term to business, to be ubiquitous means to dominate your niche.
If there is a conversation going on anywhere in the world about the thing that you do, your name comes up. When people ask where to find help with something your name comes up. People talk about you, reference you and discuss your actions. You dominate the conversation, occupy mindspace and are a thought leader.
Do you think that leads to more sales?…Ahh, yes it does.
Today with the Internet it’s much easier to become ubiquitous because of the free flow of information. Thanks in part to Google style algorithms and a conversational blogosphere, in general the cream should rise to the top, so provided what you do has substance and you know how to position yourself, you can become ubiquitous, to a degree at least.
Ubiquitous At What?
If you ask Rich Schefren what it is to be ubiquitous in a market, he would not say it’s about being in the list of top people in an industry or even the best in a given industry. It would be about being the ONLY choice for a solution to a given problem.
In order to become the only solution, you have to carefully define the problem. The problem derives to your offer, so if you don’t clarify this aspect of your message, you will struggle to dominate.
Ubiquity Tools
In the world wide web there is a whole host of tools that, if used correctly, can help you become ubiquitous. Blogging, obviously, is one of the tools, as are social bookmarking, social networking, article marketing, guest writing, speaking, networking in general, book publishing, comments, forums, podcasting, teleconferences, joint ventures, email marketing, RSS content syndication, etc etc - the list goes on and on.
The problem, which should be evident, is the sheer amount of tools out there, and if you really want to be everywhere all the time, you have to use them all.
It’s not possible to do everything by yourself. Maintaining just a blog is challenging enough, let alone doing everything else. You need help.
Recruiting The Conversation
The key is to realize that you can’t be truly ubiquitous - that’s only for the realm of god-like beings - but you can dominate a niche if you recruit the right people to talk about you and they use all the tools available so you don’t have to.
Your first step is to define the problem, slice it down to the very essence, the exact itch that you intend to scratch. Then present your amazing solution and demonstrate your complete understanding of the situation and how you have solved the problem for yourself and for many other, normal, everyday people.
The final step is to take your message and attempt to influence the influencers. The people you influence then go on to influence others and so on and on. When you become part of the conversation, when your name, your brand and your solution are the de-facto message for a certain topic of conversation, you win.
This is exactly why big companies care so much about branding. Small companies tend to look at specific ROI - return on investment - relationships and metrics that influence the bottom line in clear and congruent ways. With X amount of leads you get Y sales resulting in Z profits.
Big business obviously care about ROI and financial metrics too, but they understand for market domination and longevity, the brand carries the biggest punch. A good brand is the closest a company will ever come to being ubiquitous.
Small Pond Ubiquity
I was at an Internet marketing conference a couple of weeks ago, talking about blogging, and I went up to one of the other speakers to introduce myself. I said my name and asked whether they had heard of my blog.
To that point every other person I had talked to knew me and read my blog, or at least knew “of” me. This time I was faced with a blank expression and a response of “ahh, sorry mate, never heard of you“.
Can you imagine that!
Bruised ego aside, I continued to introduce myself but the conversation ended quite quickly (clearly we had no common ground 
) and we both moved on to talking to other people.
Sometimes, even when you are inside your own pond surrounded by frogs just like you, there will be people that don’t know you and never will.
For most of us we can aspire to become big fish in small ponds and dominate the conversation in our neck of the woods only. That’s okay though, because domination of a certain topic even in the smallest of ponds can result in millions of dollars in sales, as long as you tap into markets that actually have people in them.
Yaro Starak
Ubiquitous blogger
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Aww poor Yaro
I think you can have little niches within niches. I mean, there’s a little world around Internet Marketing and I would imagine that most people that choose to write a blog in that niche would find their way to the various top blogs in that area.
But there is more to IM than just blogs and there are probably some very big and successful people out there who have never heard of Yaro, or John Chow or ShoeMoney simply because they don’t run in those circles.
To be truly ubiquitous, you need to find all those little sub niches that have their own groups and worm your way into them. Each one is probably a large different audience to the last.
With smaller niches - I think it’s easier to be ubiquitous. However, when blogging about personal development you’re just not going to get there for a couple years.
I think you’ve done an incredible job at gettting there, and I’m sure that bloggers in your niche know who you are… but what of the general population? Man, there are hundreds of millions of people out there. Not everyone knows who Darren Rowse is yet. I even met someone the other day that didn’t know who I was here in Thailand! ;0 It’s bound to happen.
Actually I’ve been surprised when people do recognize me from my Thailand sites and blogs not related to this one. It’s funny. But, I don’t think I’d ever get to the point where it felt comfortable. I enjoy a little anonymity. shhhhhh.
I’m the Ubiquitous Goddess.
Interesting thought. Maybe politicians are ubiquitous enough since they are on everybody’s mind. Well, at least in Oz right now.
As a blogger to be ubiquitous only comes with fame, and even then some people will have no idea on how exactly you are.
To have a chance at world domination I will take one ubiquitous goddess step after the other.
Some you win, some you loose. But who cares, as long as the experience is a ton of fun.
Don’t feel bad Yaro. They come from a place of only dial up.
Seriously though, this is certainly one of your pillar articles. It really struck a chord. It is indeed to be truly ubiquitous when it comes to anything online, although it is possible to come close to it.
Being a bigger fish in a smaller pond cam make all the difference. It is important to note though that the “struggle” to become the big fish in the big blue sea can inadvertently make you the big fish in the small pond.
Analogy aside, it’s all branding.
Poor Yaro!
Rather than ending the conversation, you should have offered to write a guest article on his site. Chances are pretty good that if he doesn’t know who you are, then some of his readers won’t either and that is a potential untapped area of your market.
I agree this is a pillar article yaro! To proove it i have de-lurked and joined in the discussion! This really strikes a chord with me, as about 2 days ago i got chatting to someone online i hadn’t spoke to in a number of years and their exact words to me were “i have been seeing your name pop up everywhere!” I had actually taken Caroline’s post on commenting strategy to heart and stepped up my discussions on blogs/websites i visit and love (by combining my organic approach with some organisation), obviously this has been paying off and i am really enjoying becoming more involved and adding to the conversation.
Yaro you have hit a very good point in that it is more beneficial to target a specific niche first rather than try to be every man to every person, so to speak. This can then in turn lead to an even larger audience.
Yes, defining the niche is the crucial step. Especially if you’re niche is already crowded with players that have strong PR and marketing efforts.
In that case, can defining a “personality” that makes you more interesting to talk about help?
I think so.
I like the way you defined the term “ubiquitous” relative to business Yaro; quite creative and more importantly, directly to the point.
“Take your message and attempt to influence the influencers” is powerful advice, able to generate the viral dissemination of information or a brand quite quickly. This may account for some “overnight successes!”
Great post. That is so true about a niche within a niche. I have found to be true a couple of occasions, but you have to walk that fine line of being a leader and a follower in terms of marketing.
I wonder if ubiquitous is actually what you should be striving for? Perhaps a different approach might be better with unique. Define your uniqueness so that it is clear to all around and you define your own ubiquitousness - if that is a word at all.
The market is about defining what makes you different - you can be everywhere but not be different and it does you little. The second key is to define your unqueness such that it matters in the marketplace and there is value to that uniqueness - then you have “IT”.
The idea of marketing to a niche is thrown around quite a bit on the internet, but making yourself a leader in a niche of a niche, as you said, can really make your name known without having to be everything to everyone. Interesting stuff.
Also, I love the point about hiring out promotion - bloggers are so prone to be do it yourself-ers, and so often, thats a bad idea.
I agree mostly with Rick–but sometimes the ubiquitousness of something is overrated. I think the term itself reinforces a brand-awareness that doesn’t necessarily need to exist to be…well, ubiquitous.
You can certainly be unique/have a unique product with no ubiquity at all.
The way you descibribed ubiquity in relation to business is so apt.
‘When you apply this term to business, to be ubiquitous means to dominate your niche.
If there is a conversation going on anywhere in the world about the thing that you do, your name comes up. When people ask where to find help with something your name comes up. People talk about you, reference you and discuss your actions. You dominate the conversation, occupy mindspace and are a thought leader.’
I guess that’s what Darren Rowse has become to bloggers(my humble self inclusive)and you,Yaro!
Lest I forget,this article is a wake-up call(at least to me)that complacency should be given a wide boot.And that I should strive to be ‘ubiquitous’ in my niche.Thanks!
Dear Yaro -
You are the only one I know that when you put “Yaro” your name comes up first on Google.
So, not feeling too sorry that a few people at the conference didn’t know you.
While I am about this comment, I want to give your Blog Mastermind a plug. I was one of your first subscribers.
I do EVERYTHING you say to do and it all works.
Have placed in 15 Carnivals out of 15 for example.
I sent you a guest article and you printed it. You walk the talk.
Wikapedia even took my bio this week.
So you are my hero! Thanks!
Corinne
Wow Corinne - Wikipedia even took your bio! That is awesome. It won’t take mine, they keep deleting me saying I am not famous enough - it’s really bugging me.
Do you mind if I use your comment as a testimonial too Corinne?