Connecting with New People

Here are some simple to follow steps toward developing your people skills and enhancing your network:

1. Be nice, and everything else will fall into place.

Our friend and mentor Liz Strauss has a motto for SOBCon, “Be nice.” How hard is that? How many people do it? Being nice creates likability and trust. People do business with other people that they like and people they trust. Ask yourself “How friendly are you?”

2. Project yourself in a way that creates a positive attitude in others.

Your handshake is an indicator of your self-image. So is your wardrobe. Everything from your hair to your shoes is an expression of who you are and what your style may be, or not be. Is your image acceptable to those you seek to connect with? Do you make them feel comfortable in your presence. Reach out with your personality in a positive way and help the people that you meet be positive too.

3. Make eye contact.

Making eye contact is a display of confidence and a display of respect for the other person. Do you find it easy to make eye contact? Do you feel suspicious when others do not make eye contact with you?

What are some other things that you can do to meet new people and grow your network?

The Power of the Strategic Alliance

After reading this post from Jason Falls - about the ROI of Social Media - I have been thinking a lot about a quote from Jeffrey Gitomer:

“Most people have powerful connections. Very few people have harnessed the power of their connections.”

“Because of”- Not “With”

It occurs to me that there is a lot more to a Strategic Alliance than simply promoting yourself. In fact, Gitomer gives pages and pages of reasons to do it in his Little Black Book of Connections. I would like to suggest that the strongest reason for creating strategic alliances is that you can build your business because of your them, rather than with your strategic alliances.

Just as with all of your other promotional efforts, networking is a way to establish yourself as an authority - the “go-to-person” in your field. Establishing your credibility and creating an emotional bank account with the people that you meet are important tools for building your business, not on the backs of those that you meet, but through their own word of mouth.

Put the Strategic Alliance to Work

The real benefits of creating a network of powerful friends and an alliance of business-people are many. Here are just a few:

• To make an impression - Meeting new people and asking them about what they do is a great way to make an impression. This is also the time to ask them about what you might be able to do to help them, not your company, you. For free.
• To get an audience - Attending meetings, after-hours events, and lunch-and-learn events can be a great way to meet new people. You will also discover that these events are nearly always looking for speakers or presenters. Volunteer to speak or give a presentation. You will have the opportunity to put a face with your business. You can do similar things online through guest-posting and forum discussions.
• To get to the decision-makers - As in the above example, speaking at an event will often get you noticed by the very people that make decisions about your products and services. They may have questions. Networking gives you the opportunity to answer those questions in a safe, non-selling environment. Again, the online forum is a good facsimile.
• To build business with your existing clients - It is easier to build your business with your existing clients than to get new ones. It is easier to build your business with your existing clients if they know you and if they know other people that know you. Word of mouth is one of (if not the) the most powerful methods of advertising. Becoming known in your industry is your primary goal when networking. When you are known, you will get business.
• To expand within your industry - There comes a time for every business when it is ready to grow and expand, into new fields or markets. The best way to do this is through networking. Your strategic partners can give you advice and direction, introducing you to new clients and markets. Then it’s time to make an impression again.

What do you use networking for? Which events or functions do you attend in order to interact with new people? Do you do more networking online or off? Why?

Leave a comment.

Enlist, Engage, Empower

What do you do with those that you attract to your community? The short answer is “Talk to them!”

The long answer is that you treat all of them with respect and dignity, find out what it is that they are looking for, and help them to find it.

Once you begin to build a community, you will find that there are some that are more interested in getting involved than others. One of the things that this kind of community member is looking for is Engagement. These readers and “doers” will enlist in your community expressly to get involved with other people - to talk, to listen, to help. They are looking to be a part of something larger than themselves.

Your goal should be to empower them to do so

How does your blog or website deliver to this type of reader/community member? Is there a comments feature that allows people to post their own opinion? How about a forum where the members can engage each other in a much broader fashion?

There are two schools of thought on allowing comments on a blog. One holds that it allows the readers to engage the author, and each other, in a discussion - a conversation - about the topic of the post. This can be a very powerful method of getting the word out about your site, as more people talk about and comment. The downside of this is the possibility of spam - fake comments from pr0n sites - and that you need to monitor the comments for inappropriate behavior. This is the primary rationale for the second school of thought on comments - don’t allow them.

How should you manage your empowered community?

Creating and nurturing a community takes time and effort. It means that not only do you need to give of yourself to create the content that the community is looking for, you need to share part of your creation with the community. A Web forum is an excellent tool for sharing this content and the responsibility for managing it. Sometimes called a bulletin board or message board, a Web forum is an online center for ongoing, in-depth discussions of specific topics and issues.

One of the more interesting features of the Web forum membership is that users frequently self-select for monitoring what is going on. As the “leader” of the community you can enlist these active volunteers to become moderators for the various topics and keep an eye on the postings and comments.

Seek these people out, encourage them to take the next step. Share of yourself and see what happens!

5 Keys for Positioning Your Successful Blog

Last week we talked about how you can drive a successful business through your blog and without being a salesperson. Today we will go over some of the steps that you can take to position yourself as an expert and your blog as a valuable resource.

Remember, while the goal is to increase the presence and reach of your blog in order to grow your business, it is not all about you. It is about getting positioned properly to showcase your customers and how their problems were addressed successfully.

Creating Value as an Authority

1. Use your blog as a platform to communicate value. What benefit do your readers get from coming to or subscribing to your blog? Is that benefit immediately obvious? Is there a suggested path that readers can take to find the information that they are looking for? Also write about your customers and vendors, featuring them as the hero of the story. They will spread that story around for you.
2. Use offline resources as well as online. Newspapers, while losing circulation (and, increasingly, any objectivity or relevance) still have some readers, and may be your only method of introduction to the less-than-savvy consumers that are not frequent blog-readers.
3. Offer your services as a speaker. Your local Chamber of Commerce is an ideal resource for networking and exposing yourself to the business community. The Chamber is always looking for speakers and presenters at a variety of events. Your presentation should focus on an aspect of the business market that showcases your knowledge and expertise, but not your business specifically. For example, if you are a motivational speaker or job coach, you could give a presentation on employee morale and how its ups-and-downs affect productivity and the bottom line.
4. Become active in your trade association. There is an association for nearly every industry and professional service. Get involved. Go to the meetings, volunteer to lead a group or head up a project. Get to know the movers and the shakers, and learn from them. Soon your knowledge and credibility will be at a point where you can offer to teach courses or give a presentation at a regional or national conference.
5. Cultivate a different presence. I am not advocating crazy or risque attire, rather something that sets you apart from the rest of the pack. Everyone has a business card, you can hand out CD-ROMs, or flash drives, or something else particular to your industry. Computer-related items are particularly useful for adding value to your marketing, as they can include links to your blog, your portfolio, and other examples of your online presence.

I happen to know that the SOBCon crowd is particularly innovative - and I invite you to share your own positioning tactics. What would you add to this list?

Your Blog is a Business, Do You Have to Be a Salesperson?

Many people started blogging as a hobby, in the traditional sense of the online journal. In the last couple of years, however, blogging has become an industry with legions of entrepreneurs telling you how to make money online. The number one means of making money online? Sell something.

But what if you don’t know how to sell? Or like to sell? Can your blog be a business if you are not out there selling?

Yes it can.

How to blog your business without being a salesperson

Going online and trying to sell something can be a demoralizing experience. There is a lot of competition out there in every market and every niche. The secret to being a success in your online business is to focus on your potential customers, rather than on your products. Communicate with your possible purchasers and build a relationship.

It is much easier to build trust with your pool of customers than it is to expect them to find your product or service and give them a sales pitch, or jam them into a squeeze page. Providing value to your readers, getting involved in their communities, and building relationships should be your core business model.

6 Steps to Providing Value

Instead of studying books on sales techniques, I’d like to recommend that you turn your attention to a series of other skills that will make your business much more powerful and successful:

1. Learn how to position yourself and your business
2. Learn how to promote yourself and your business
3. Learn how to interact with your community
4. Learn how to make effective presentations
5. Learn how to engage your audience
6. Learn how to connect with your potential customers

Over the next few weeks we will discuss the steps that you can take to develop these skills and take your blog and your business to the next level. Our goals?

• Empower our audience to get involved
• Engage our audience with useful content
• Enlist our audience to spread the word and grow our business

What is your potential customer looking for?

This is your homework assignment for the week: Think about your business and the product or service that you provide (or are considering providing).

How does your blog deliver value to that customer or market?

Does your blog make it obvious what actions to take to get that result?

Next week we will discuss how to position your blog to take advantage of this value.

Next Page »