photo by Richard What & Tom Ryder

Since 2006, my team and I have searched high and low for examples of digital leadership from people like Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales, Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk, and even studied President Barack Obama’s use of digital technology to win the election, and then the Nobel Peace Prize. From there, we turned to companies as far ranging as Cirque du Soleil, BT (formerly British Telecom), the TED conference and Best Buy. After lengthy interviews and in-depth analysis, a few simple patterns emerged. Here are some of the top rules for positioning yourself as a leader in the digital age. See if any of them surprise you:

Your Influence Is Greatest When You Are At The Center Of The Action.
Just being online isn’t enough. You need to get out there and start building bridges with several communities (professional organizations, industry organizations, minority-run organizations, woman’s organizations, tech meet-ups, innovation meet-ups, emerging market meet-ups etc.) Follow up with all new contacts via social networks. It is the easiest way to keep your new contacts abreast of your new developments, without having to constantly pester them with newsletters and emails. The more connected you are and are perceived to be, the more visibility you have- that’s a given.

What might not be as obvious is that being in the center of your network also gives you access to more information, sooner - a competitive edge with which to make better business decisions.

Your Online & Offline Presences Reinforce One Another.
Leverage your social capital (the power of those amazing friends who want to help you succeed! Just ask a question to your facebook/twitter and linkedin friends and see how many great responses you get- that’s your social capital at work). When your social capital starts affecting people outside of your networks, I refer to that in my first book, 33 Million People in The Room, as ‘cultural capital’ (you are now influencing the culture at large). Why? Most likely because you are perceived to be adding value to the lives of the people in your community. The next step is to translate your social connections into real-world influence.

Keep Strengthening Social Ties As Your Influence Spreads.

Photo by Richard Vandentillart

When your influence spreads beyond immediate social circles, your social capital turns into cultural capital, which has the power to attract financial success. Why? People and companies are attracted to ‘leaders’ and digital leadership is no different. The more you are perceived as an authentic leader within the culture, the more you become a magnet, an attractor. Offers come to you by the thousands. The old quandary changes from ‘how will I pay rent this month’ to ‘how do I decide which opportunities to pursue’.

Social Capital + Cultural Capital Attracts Financial Capital

Are you a future Digital Leader?

Just think of the issues digital leaders like Gary Vaynerchuk must face daily for example. With about 1 million Twitter followers (depending on the day), Vaynerchuk’s success is astonishing, yet the pattern to his success is quite simple: social capital + cultural capital attracts financial capital. The proof in in the pudding so to speak- this year Vaynerchuk signed a 7 figure book deal and released his best selling book, ‘Crush It‘.

If the words “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems” come to mind:  wouldn’t you like to have those problems too?

Obama did it. Filmmakers are doing it and now you can do it too. ‘Crowdfunding’, a spin on ‘crowdsourcing’, is the latest funding opportunity at a time when our funding institutions are failing. With the success of crowdfunding campaigns like wikipedia.com and threadless.com, the financing of projects and people by large crowds is on the rise and a new tool to fund even the smallest of projects is now available to the general public.

In the best of times, there is always a sense that there are great ideas out there with little or no chance of funding from traditional channels. According to web-preneur Perry Chen, “the biggest trend we’ve seen so far: even during this economy, people are generous.  One reason why: people are getting big responses from their networks as people leverage their Flickr groups and other niche communities to spread the word about their projects‘. Also, small amounts are key.

“We need to move away from looking for big checks and learn to embrace small amounts.  I love people who pledge $1 or $5 to a project. Why shouldn’t we be able to become a patron each other for the price of a cup of coffee?“

Enter KickStartr.com a free online platform that uses ‘crowdfunding’ to seed small projects with big communities. Although still in beta, the funding platform launched 2 weeks ago is for everyone from artists to entrepreneurs to students. Contrary to online investment mechanism’s Kickstarter’s site says that: “People who use KickStartr to fund their projects (”project creators”) keep 100% ownership and control”.

Crowdfunding yourself to success (image:stevegarfield.com)

How does one crowdfund that project you’ve been forever putting on the back burner? To find that out, I turned to KickStartr.com founder, Perry Chen.

What is the key to crowdsourcing for money or ‘crowdfunding’?
A focused project. I think we want to rally around things with specific goals. Making people feel like they are a part of something.  This starts with a compelling story — why I should support you — and then a determination to spread the word.

There is a great concept coined “Empowered Interactivity” by marketer and author Mark Hughes. Paraphrasing: Create a mechanism where people have an observable impact, and it becomes their brand, their 15 minutes of fame, their outcome.

If you already have a large social network, will it help you get funded more quickly? No question. Each person you know is an amplifier to each person they know. We all have a social network, and the key to crowdfunding is sculpting your project and presentation so that it amplifies past that first degree of your network. If it’s compelling, people will forward it.

What if you don’t have lots of online presence before using KickStartr, how do you raise awareness and get funded? It might not be the sexiest thing, but email is still extremely powerful. Send a rallying cry to friends and family, encouraging them to forward along.  Reach out to relevant blogs and organizations.  Become a marketer.

You can also go small.  One of our first projects (and we are only starting our 2nd week) was a programmer named Dan Phiffer who raised $99 to build a Wikipedia iPhone application. The funds will go to pay the Apple’s iPhone application fee. He was fully funded in a few days.

What can people do to make their idea stand out overall?
Video! It’s not required to fund a project, but we strongly encouraged it. Doesn’t need to be Kubrick, some of the best video are just people talking about their projects.  Their passion comes across, we can connect.

Along those same lines, offering benefits or rewards that have charm or value is a huge boost.  If you just put your hand out, it’s not that interesting.  Everyone can offer something in return.

One great example is a project by Earl Scioneaux, a musician from New Orleans, who is offering prospective backers some home-cooked gumbo and music theory lessons. His rewards really connect us to his project and make us feel like patrons.

What are some of the projects currently being funded?
They cover all the bases: group of New Yorkers self-publishing a book where everyone gets a page, a photographer exploring Iceland, a writer funding travel for a regional cookbook, a NYTimes crossword puzzle creator funding the release of Brooklyn-themed puzzles.

The day after we launched, two projects were already completely funded. That really blew us away. Five projects have been funded in the first week.  Five more are quite close.  The smallest funded was $35, and another is already close to it’s $3,000 goal. Several new projects are attempting to raise $10,000. I think projects will mostly be started by: people with particular ideas that have been burning in their hearts for awhile; those people that have ideas falling out of their heads; and people in creative industries that no longer want to wait to be tapped on the head. Then the second group are the audiences and networks of those folks. We think, eventually, that’s almost everyone.

KickStartr was a back of a napkin idea, and everyone has those. What if you could easily aggregate enthusiasm with resources? What project would you like to kickstart?

Juliette Powell is an entrepreneur, media consultant and author of 33 Million People in the Room (Financial Times Press, 2009), a book about social networking for business. Powell is co-founder of the Gathering Think Tank Inc., an innovation forum at the intersection of media, business, advertising and technology. You can connect with her on Twitter and facebook.