January brings new promise. Business people have plans and quotas and individuals make attempts to do better with their personal goals. This was evidenced in a recent networking event that has its roots in Meetup.com's online portal.
I organize four "Meetups" on the meetup.com system. I wanted to share the ongoing results of that work. Over the last four months, I and another colleague have fostered a networking event at a local W Hotel in Franklin TN. The event started with my invitation to two of my groups to come out and mix and mingle. Bring cards, a smile, and see what happens. The most important part of any networking event is the meeting that takes place after the meeting. If I can facilitate the connection between someone so they can then follow up for coffee or a luncheon, then I feel my work with meetup.com and its tools is being accomplished.
In our most recent event, four different groups were present. There was no agenda in place. Simply networking with others in a similar demographic and place. So far, the successes seam real. I know personally, I have made worthwhile connections. Some of the people I now do business with, get referrals from, am in business with as vendors, or partners, are a direct result of my work in the meetup.com environment.
The event in January had approximately 60 to 70 people present. There were new faces and for the first time, I had no chance of shaking the hand of all present. This is a little bit of a challenge in that part of the work of a great host is to "connect" those who are new with those who have been around a bit. Not everyone has the personal presence or confidence to start shaking hands and collecting cards. Anytime we get together for a casual or "purpose" driven event, the connections are what it is all about. My greatest frustration is with some of the group who feel without immediate tangible SALES at the meeting they have failed. Frankly...they aren't getting it. Selling something to someone comes with relationship with someone. If one isn't willing to be in relationship with me or make me feel that way..I have no interest in buying from them. Part of my mentorship to others is facilitating the relationship. I count my relationship capital as my most important commodity. It is nearly as important as family, friends, and love. Without it, nothing else is supported.
Take a look at your online presence. Are you bringing value to others? If not, reconsider your position in the marketplace. If you aren't delivering something of value to others, you are by default just taking.
For more information about how Sherman Mohr has leveraged an online presence into local results, feel free to connect with him on twitter or linkedin.com
During my last posts, I discussed the use of meetup.com as a vehicle to tie traditional business models, in this case, a Chamber of Commerce together with a robust social networking site. We learned that the methods are time consuming, one must give before they get, and the results, initially, are difficult to measure.
In today's post, I share a significant bit of progress. The Chamber adopted a "Premium" package associated with the social networking integration. The Brentwood Chamber of Commerce in Brentwood TN, allowed its Tech Strategies group to launch a true social networking portal for its members.
The upside is significant in that the sites initial members may actually be none members, allowing for cross sales, promotion of Chamber membership, and special events used to recruit into the Chamber. Particiapation is being led by the Brentwood Chamber of Commerce Tech Strategies team.
For purposes of review, the Brentwood Cool Springs Chamber of Commerce has approximately 1000 members. This powerful group consist of some of the key decsion makers in Middle TN. There exists a vacumn associated with the Chamber's desire to provide networking options for its members. The online portal, http://bcsconline.ning.com serves as a portal or method for tying its members together 24 hours a day.
While this isn't a pitch for Ning, it is a pitch for easy to navigate Social Networking building tools that can be customized down to the CSS level and brought up from the ground level with nominal costs and tremendous benefits. The Chamber model is a great one. The installed user base of niche oriented "participants" in the network know why they joined. They are purposed to collaborate, share, cross promote, and buy from one another.
If you have questions regarding this level of service to your Chamber or community, don't hesitate to email the author. Its his passion!
Last year a colleague and I began to host a series of "Tech Strategies" Luncheon meetings in association with a highly successful Chamber of Commerce. The purpose of the series was to provide free or low cost technology solutions for the small independent business owner.
Topics included online social networking, wikis, google apps, widgets, and other free tools. The attendees were provided lunch and given an hours worth of free technical advice, mostly in the web marketing space.
As of mid-September 2008 its too early in the game to call what I am experiencing a case study. I can share that the series is benefitted by the effects of "linkedin", "meetup.com", "Fast Pitch Networking" and "Fast Company.com" in a very real way.
This particular Chamber of Commerce features 1000 members or so and is one of the more mature Chambers of Commerce in the country. Their membership and demographics feature one of the most prosperous markets in the country as well. The age of the average Chamber member in this particular Chamber skews a little above the average I would suppose. The reason? The location of the Chamber and its area businesses. This becomes relevent in just a bit in case you are wondering.
This past week, I co-organized a session where Meetup.com was used as part of the invitation mechanism for the monthly "Chamber of Commerce" event. This is the fourth time I have used the Meetup.com business model and my expertise in its use to benefit a traditional business. I organize 4 different "Meetups" in the Meetup.com system. Included in my use of Meetup.com is an entrepreneur meetup, a "new in town" meetup, a cigar afficionado meetup, a forex meetup, and a new meetup associated with the Chamber's tech strategies luncheon series.
My colleague and co-organizer, Celeste Raines of CRTechPros.com provide speakers, facilitation, and expert administration over the event. It serves the Chamber, our clients, the members, and the speakers as well.
I have found that after one short year, the invitations for my Entrepreneur Meetup to attend the monthly event now lead to more attendees than the Chamber membership. Through the proper use of tying the Chamber's agenda to my entrepreneur meetup on meetup.com the Chamber is seeing 15 to 20 guests at each luncheon. They are now in a position to cross sell their memberships, features, and benefits. Each luncheon appeals to a slightly different group but teh overall consensus is that the marriage between and online social network and a purveyor of traditional business models is working extremely well.
Another example of tying two disparate entities together involves a community bank promotion. Again the Meetup.com group or "meetup" in quesiton is my 300 plus member Nashville Entrepreneur Meetup. The bank in question made a commitment to the Women Owned Business Community by hosting a luncheon where a woman of local note and reputation was the keynote speaker. The luncheon content was highly entrepreneurial and the bank provided lunches to attendees as well as a drawing for tuition to the speakers entrepreneurial "incubator". The cap of 100 attendees was met within two weeks, much to the banks pleasure. When the speaker mentioned the October event to me, I asked if I couldn't invite the women in the Nashville Entrepreneur Meetup that I organize. She of course, said "Go for it" and I did. As of mid September, the October event has 40 RSVP's without any mention in the press by the bank. Why? The ladies in my entrepreneur group were informed of the October luncheon and nearly 40 immediately RSVP'd on the first announcement. With another couple of automated announcements provided automatically from the software, the event may end up fully subscribed soley from my entrepreneur meetup group. The winners here include my friend, the bank, my lady entrepreneur group members, and the business community in general.
Next steps and goals for me surround tying LinkedIn groups to local meetups to local tradtional businesses. The power of any online network should be about its potential to expand ones business. Without your willingness to reach out via email and phone, nothing will happen.
How does success happen? How does one manage to tie social networks to traditioinal business?
It is a process. It doesn't happen overnight. Relationship capitial has been built by providing programs, referrals, and expertise to the group. When my colleagues and I post something up in the way of an event or "Meetup" the group now knows that it will be a speaker or program that is worth attending. Has it always been the case? No. There have been a couple of less than stellar events. One just has to keep going. When trying to give something to others, you will always get an A for effort.
Greetings and salutations from the front lines of a new product launch. Since we visited last your author has gone through another of life's professional changes. During May of this year, I transitioned into the role of President for a small but growing software development firm. The company has a 12 year history in custom applications, development projects, and a world wide team of programmers managed by one of the sharpest guys I have ever known. I am responsible for building the brand and delivering to market one of the company's most exciting products yet....an automated trading system or "Expert Advisor " to the foreign exchange market.
We have been discussing the role online social networking plays in business over the last months and specifically the last two posts. In review, we discussed different platforms and then began to learn that the online arena provided an opportunity to control one's online DNA to a certain extent. The general rule of thumb online is not different than that of offline, if you do right by people, take care of yourself, and others, you will have a clean reputation. If you do wrong, lie, cheat, steal or misrepresent, you will have a bad local reputation. The same holds true for online environments. This may seem obvious but the point is this...since you don't control the servers that house what someone else says about you and your company, the best you can do in life online is to do the right thing. Okay, that's covered, now to the point.
I thought is appropriate to share a real example of how social networking for business applied to us and our company recently. I have a presence personally on perhaps a half a dozen social networking sites. Fast Company included. The traffic that landed on the websites of my previous employer was a full 35% provided by the organic traffic that came from people viewing my profiles, blogs, links, and so on on the social networking sites, I propagated. Upon my departure, that traffic left. Those inquiries went away and within one week, where do you think they began to land? You got it right, they landed whereever I sent them.
This leads me to a more than avid interests in what companies and their employees are doing in the social networking space. If a company is made up of people and people seek to connect, are there opportunities for businesses in the social networking space that surround marketing outside the traditional arenas? I think so. When you now search the name of my new employer, my social networking links will at some point come up in the search. When you google me specifically, the new employer is very well represented. The power of organic traffic potential from your own profiles may be profound, especially if you blog, write, contribute to an online community or work to facilitate local groups through meetup.com.
Our newly launched product line will be introduced in great part through an online widget that makes the video, blog, forum, and feedback all viral. We're equipping users with automated ways to propagate the "experience" of the product's use into their current social networking portals so eyeballs over which we would never have had access see the product and view its message. The entire marketing plan is taking into consideration the social networking space as it relates to the launch of the product. It all begins with online networking. What may have once been about a casual discussion over a shared interest now includes the granular ability to drill down on spacific networking requests. I am even using one of the networks, linkedin.com to request a connection in the reinsurance market. With millions of users, the likely connection to someone that may assist is highly probable.
Business networking online works. Check out my friend's company, http://goyodeo.com. Goyodeo received a short review and shout out from a social networking blogger many in the industry know and follow. The review and recommendation went out to 10,000 recipients in one of the blogger's networks. Of the 10,000 who received the message, a full 3500 adopted the tool, used the widget, and began to build their profiles within the Goyodeo platform. A phenomenal 35% participation rate out of the first recommendation. Nowhere else in marketing is that type of result possible.
You and your team should be prioritizing social networking for business as part of your marketing, sales, and public relations plan. If you need assistance, contact me. I'll be glad to assist and share resources.
Innovation in today's business environment calls for accepting the need to be visible online. You will be searched and researched. This relatively new process for learning about vendors, prospects, employees and others is one of the earmarks of our online age.
In my last post, I discussed how to research and choose an appropriate online network or social network for exposure to you, your company or your products and services. Hopefully, you took
the leap and got involved in one or two of the available networks.
As you did so you were prompted to fill out a profile. Your online profile is most likely the visible part of how you are identified to the community. It is your individual or corporate tag line. When you are filling out personal profiles, you have to be extremely aware of the
implications. When you visit online research tools like Alexa, you see the top five sites in North America are social networking sites. Myspace, Facebook, Youtube etc. The traffic these sites maintain allow for incredible visibility. If you place a profile on one of these sites
and feature less than complimentary pictures, statements, threads, or contributions from others, you are risking your professional reputation or that of your company. I am familiar with one professional sorority for instance that has strict rules regarding the presence of certain
pictures surrounding certain activities on Myspace.com when posted by members. In other words, personal activities shown on a personal Myspace.com profile page are expressly prohibited if you intend to stay in the organization.
Additional considerations in the development of online profiles surround the message you want conveyed to the broader group. In the case of this author, he uses a professionally made head shot for the photo used in most all profiles. The use of a professional headshot sets the stage for initial impressions made by the profile. The profile will be the first place for a first
impression. Online profiles are where first impressions take place. When someone googles your name, what do they see? Is it nothing. If so, that is okay. You will soon see, as I do on a regular basis, that when you can't be found online, certain people hold you out as suspect.
Online profiles, corporate presence, and visibility are now so pervasive that it is common for a person to be found online. You have an opportunity to control what people first read and see through the use of accurate and well thought out online profiles.
Depending on the sites or communities in which you take part, you will have opportunities to build fairly specific profiles that will include contact information, corporate addresses, email addresses, your role in the company, your company profile, and sometimes its history. Be
thorough and thoughtful as the information you share will be discovered by people researching you and your company. This is exciting because the indexing of these sites begin to lead to organic traffic to your site. In short order, you can facilitate a press release,we will cover that in future articles;, build a profile in a heavily indexed social network, post a video, and you will have organic web traffic,i.e. traffic you did not have to pay for, coming to your site. Obviously all of this is predicated on the premise that you have something worthwhile to share or offer.
One of the more common mistakes I see made comes from the Opportunity or Home Business community. The profiles and subject matter offered is nothing but a pitch and as a result, the individual and company are diminished. You have to build your personal brand through the profile. You have to elevate and raise the bar through your profile. Give the process some considerable research and thought. Visit sites that promote those skills.
On a final note for this section, make sure you have the authority to establish profiles for your company or division. You would be in a world of hurt legally if you did not have permission to
establish the online network account, build the profile, or grow the online presence of your company. Some of your online profiles, comments, releases, blog threads or contributions can become very, very difficult to get rid of in the online world. You don't control these
networks in most cases, you simply belong to them.
In our next visit, we will discuss content and how important your contributions are to the future of your career and company. Helpful sites for the online business networker are numerous. Two that come to mind are http://15secondpitch.com and http://logomaker.com Both of these sites may help those just starting out because they do very important things to the new social networker. 15secondpitch allows
you to go through an automated sequence of building a 15 second pitch through answering well thought out questions built into their site. Its free and very useful. Logomaker allows you or your small company to go through a well thought out process for building your logo and even
allows you to use the logo free for online purposes like websites and profiles.
Sherman Mohr serves the entrepreneurial community through consulting for Castle Venture Group, a Private Equity firm based in Brentwood, Tennessee.
Online networking can lead to local results for you and your company.
This first in a series of four articles will detail the initial steps in converting online efforts to local results. The end result of your time spent in reading all four segments will be the development of a road map for building a strategy for you and your company. It is a safe bet that your work is this area will separate you from your competition!
At the time of this writing, your author is involved in approximately 6 active and growing online social networks. Most of these are in the areas of business and entrepreneurship. The underlying theme of most of the networks was the provision of a "social" connection in the initial design. Through the development of online tools for connecting diverse individuals together, the sites have slowly become absolute necessities for some aspects of personal branding and building an online presence.There is a plethora of evidence associated with the fact that most people conduct online research prior to making a decision regarding the purchase of any product or service. You can check out the data easily enough through MarketingSherpa.com, ClickZ.com or BNet.com or other online resources. What does this have to do with the premise of my article and the series? Everything!
If you, your company, or your product or service are going to be researched online prior to someone "pulling the trigger" would you not want to control as much of the resulting information as possible? Would you also want to manage to some degree the dollars spent in managing the results? Would you also like to grow the network of available prospects and relationships you need to grow your business through the use of the same online resources? I am sure you are interested in all of these things. There are four key areas we are going to deal with in this series. Number one will be the identification of appropriate online venues for exposure to you and your company. When we have flushed out some potential arenas for you to work in, we will then move to our second consideration.
The development of "Profiles" and their role in identifying who you and your company are, the history you wish to reflect and the message you desire the world to receive. Thirdly, we will discuss your contributions to the networks. What is it that you desire the group to know about your company, you, your areas of expertise, your views, and your company’s strength. Finally we will discuss the sustaining of these profiles, the content, and the day to day management of your online identity.The first quarter of 08 marked a significant event in the life of online messages, video, social networks, and what it all should mean to you. In February, a couple of passengers were escorted off a Southwest aircraft for unruly behavior. The official message offered by Southwest, took place, not at a press conference, not at their corporate headquarters, not even on their corporate website. Southwest made their public response and policy statement on youtube.com. What are the implications for you? Southwest knows as do millions of others that when you want an audience, you go where the audience is. Not overly complicated. Southwest knows the traffic numbers of youtube.com, Google video, myspace.com, and any other number of social networking sites assures them their response will be seen. As a matter of fact, if you Google, i.e. search online terms as nebulous as "southwest", "unruly", "passengers" you will see the top two results on Google will be the youtube.com video uploads.
Your selection of appropriate online networks is important. Video is important. Content is vital. The community you serve is most important. Who is your customer? Where do your prospects hang out online? Southwest knows that they don't have a narrow rifle shot type of demographic they are seeking. They have millions of different passengers, stockholders, and employees. Youtube.com uploads and corporate identity development in that area makes great sense.Let's talk about what your considerations are on a local level. Do you want to share expertise? Do you need to grow "relationship capital"? Do you need more people to simply know who you are? How does all of this happen? Some important suggestions would start with some great online groups through Yahoo or Google. You should investigate whether or not your community paper or radio stations have online communities that they are beginning to build. On a local level, our primary print media paper, owned by Gannett recently revamped their online newspaper offering to include a social network. As a result, our company immediately built an online profile and provided some content concerning who we are and what we do. Within one hour, we had an inquiry regarding our core private equity business. Many of these online communities don't have huge traffic yet but there are connections being made if you cultivate the online community like you would a Chamber membership list or a business networking event list.
Other significant ways to immediately begin growth of local visibility is to utilize online networks that are specific to your industry. Start by looking at meetup.com, linkedin.com, fastpitchnetworking.com or social network blogs. Once you have found appropriate online sites you will want to opt in. Generally all of the sites are free to belong to with a nominal fee to utilize their complete tool sets. Meetup.com, for example, allows the joining of limitless meetups at no charge and with a fee of just $45.00 per quarter you could elect to organize up to three meetups in your local area. Linkedin and FastPitch have free and very capable versions with upgrades that will lead to local connections.
Start your identification of online networks with a review of "Who, What, Where, and How" you want to be seen and discovered online.
Next in our series will be a discussion of building great online profiles. These profiles are analogous to biological profiles. The thread you begin to build will become your online DNA. The author has made mistakes that sometimes jeopardize his online profile. We will discover those together in article number two.
Sherman Mohr serves the entrepreneurial community through consulting for Castle Venture Group, a Private Equity firm based in Brentwood, Tennessee.
Greetings on the 22nd. As stocks tank and the dollar falls, I am drawn into thoughts of past training in direct sales, mortgage marketing, and professional sales training.
The bottom line in all of those arenas was this, you had better do the behaviors every day. No one was going to be giving it to you. You made the dials, you did the face to faces, you ask for the business and if you didn't make payroll every Friday....so be it. You didn't pay your bills. Oh, and by the way, you "behaved" the way you desired to feel. You didn't let the way you felt determine the way you worked.
Today's news warrants the same type of attitude. I am surrounded by so much opportunity it is staggering. My conference room has been literally full all day long with one parade of potential buyers after another. Why is this happening when it appears the sky is falling? In our operation, we choose for it to be that way. We work hard on something and if it doesn't sell, we move on. There are technologies, collaborations, relationships, and opportunities that exist for everyone out there. Just grab one and hold on.
I have always been a "burn the boat at the shore" kind of guy. I take a step off into something and don't look back. Sometimes, I have been starved on the beach, sometimes I have experienced the benefits of landing in a new country. No matter what type of person you are, people need to know you. The more people know you, the more they perhaps will know you care, you are capable, and your are ready to serve them and solve their problems.
The follow link is one way I convey that to folks. Take a look see.... copy and paste the link. It features one way to brand yourself for the world to see. The visual and audio nature of the technology allow me to build relationship with people 24/7 without any need for phone calls or personal presence. Just imagine what it could do for someone as talented as YOU!
There is a flood of technolgies hitting the market today. The average person is so overwhelmed with the onslaught, she hardly knows what to do. If however, you pause for just a moment, do a little homework and investigate what is needed by that overwhelmed person, you will find yourself meeting the needs of countless people.
My first exposure to this world of need meeting technology occured while I was a Director of Business Development with an early to market web-based medical information company. Individuals I met during my time there were using the internet to find clinical trials for the treatment of various illnesses. Without the internet, many of these fortunate people would never have been exposed to life saving technologies meant to make their lives better. Their own doctors didn't have the first clue.
Technologies surrounding "Search" are far beyond my area of expertise but I certainly saw, beginning in 2001, the internet actually starting becoming useful to me. Now it helps me cross a magical threshold and actually become useful to someone else. How I monetize that is a separate entry.
I have recently seen technologies surrounding "Functional Beverages", "Nicotine Delivery Devices" that provide nicotine without harmful tobacco, bluetooth messaging technologies that will vastly lower the costs of traditional advertising, currency trading software that actually works, and a variety of web based marketing technologies that could revolutionize the way celebs pitch products. What does it all mean? Each of these products, technologies, and innovations are going to make someones life better, more complete, and will likely lead to job creation and all the benefits we know that brings.
Each blog entry made by this blogger will "march" you through the technology, introduce it from the perspective of the user, the marketer, and at times, the company selling the product, service or technology. My hope is that each entry will lead someone to investigate and improve their life or more importantly, the life of others.
Sherman's March this time around is about building a better world through sharing information, resources, and collaboration.
