Dale Carnegie wrote the famous book How to Win Friends and Influence People that was the bible for business people going back to 1936. Today he might write, “How to win friends and influence content.”

I have a great legal marketing friend Roy Sexton out of the Detroit market. If you’re not aware, I’m in Los Angeles.

Whatever content I write and share, whether through my blog, Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook accounts, Roy shares it with his network. He usually adds a personal note showing me that he really read the content, and explaining to his network why they need to read it.

What happens from there is what I call the Roy Sexton Effect. My content goes viral, as you can see from this picture of a recent LinkedIn post of mine:

As you can see, the majority of the views of my post are coming from outside my direct network, and the majority of those people are in the Greater Detroit Area. Home to, you guessed it, Roy Sexton.

By way of comparison, posts not shared by Roy get a couple hundred views.

Be a Roy Sexton

Roy is very important to my content circulation. I completely recognize and value his influence. Roy is a social content influencer.

So the question I have to ask myself is, “Am I a Roy Sexton?”

I notice that the majority of his shares of my content happen at the same time of day. So he is either using Hootsuite to do this at a particular time, or he is taking a specific time of day and sharing the content of his network with his network. Either way, he is being very intentional, and it shows.

I also have to ask myself:

Am I taking the time each day to read what you, my faithful network, post? Or am I only reviewing my notifications of who is reading and liking what I post?”

Yeah, I hate to admit it, but I’m more often that not, in that second bucket.

#BeARoySexton Challenge

Roy is as important to me as any content redistributor I could pay. And the best way I can return the favor is to pay it forward. So I challenge us all to #BeARoySexton. Share some content, include a note of WHY it’s important for your network to stop what they are doing and read it. And do it for fun and for free.