Archive for Social Networking
LinkedIn – In Plain English
Posted by: | CommentsLee LeFever Strikes Again!
One of my original posts to this blog was one of Lee LeFever’s videos on Social Networking.
I just got an email from a friend with this new video that does a great job of explaining the power of LinkedIn.
Please pass this on to the people in your network who are asking you what this "LinkedIn thing" is all about. You will be their hero.
And if we can help you or your organization – or even the organizations of people you know - master the use of the system for your bottom line business results, please contact us.
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Your Outsourced Business Development Training Partner
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Social networking is not new for business owners and entrepreneurs. Many of you belong to Professional Associations, Chambers of Commerce, Leads Groups, etc. For some of you, it may be your single largest source of business. Some of you have given up on social networking as a business generation strategy because it was a “waste of time”. Regardless of your opinion, when done well Social Networking can be an enormous source of leads, deals, and connections to resources.
Well, you’d have to be in a cave not to have noticed that the process has gone online – and that has some pretty staggering implications for business generation and lead generation.
Social Media describes a wide range of on-line applications which provide a technological backbone where you can manage and create relationships with current and potential customers, suppliers, vendors, team members, channel partners and experts.
In future articles, I will be exploring how Social Media can impact your bottom line by taking the documents, articles, photos, conversations, problem solving, and issue management that you deal with on a daily basis and involving the people in your networks in such a way that they come to know and engage you and your business deeply and profoundly.
Increasingly, the current and potential stakeholders in your business are going online to find out about you and your services. If you are not managing the process of strategically placing information about you and your business online, your current and potential customers will be migrating to your competition.
Where do you start? I recommend www.LinkedIn.com. It is one of the largest B2B centric Social Business Networks online. By completing the profile well, you will become instantly findable on the Internet.
In my next post, we will discuss the impact Search Engines have on driving business to you and examine why Social Media – worked into your already existing business networks – can make or break you as your stakeholders move online.
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Deep Business Development
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The Magical, Wholistic Nature of Social Networks
Posted by: | CommentsThose of you who subscribe to my blog know that I am as strong believer in building solid, strategic, well-thought out networks. Further, I am a HUGE proponent of LinkedIn (that’s why I teach courses on getting started with LinkedIn) because we spend the majority of our lives engaged in our professions – and the social falls out of that.
I got an email and a request to forward and introduction today that I thought I would share with you. It illustrates the magical, wholistic nature of networks. The introduction request looked like this:
Hi Chip, you’ve inspired me to explore LinkedIn in more depth! See my note to XXXX. This is a CLASSIC example how this power here.
A—-A—- R—’s note to XXXX:
Hello XXXX,
I found your profile today when I was doing a search for Bob Proctor. I love his work and get his Daily Insight email. Then, your profile shows that we have a contact in common, Chip Lambert. I also noticed that you have a Nikken site. My good friend J– W—’s wife is really into Nikken here in Arizona. You two should talk!Gotta love how LinkedIn works!
And it was quickly followed by an email to both myself and J–:
Just wanted to share this experience I have with LinkedIn this am. You and Chip have inspired me to explore it further, so I was doing some searches for people I know and admire. I typed in Bob Proctor to see what I could find. At the top of the list was a woman named XXXX. She must work for Bob’s coaching organization. Then, I saw that Chip was one of her connections! In reading here profile I saw that she is a NIKKEN rep! I contacted her and told her about (your wife) and that the two should talk.
This illustrates the power here! Literally one blind search connected several dots with people I know. (emphasis mine)
A—
While names here are withheld to protect privacy, this illustrates the power of networks. Especially online SOCIAL networks. The technology unlocks the true potential of your network because it connects the dot for HUMAN BEINGS.
We are social creatures. Our friends – social. Our colleagues – social. Our prospects – social? Our customers – social? You betcha. And if you miss that point, you are missing the opportunity of a lifetime.
Why do you think 18 million people use LinkedIn?
Why do you think the blogosphere is so enormous?
I suggest that we are in the middle of a revolution in our capacity to relate. And revolutions cause chaos, confusion, misunderstanding, uncomfortableness, skeptics, zealots, humbugs, and millionaires.
Which are you?
Jump in. The water is profitable.
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Deep Business Development
Social Networks and Prospecting
Posted by: | CommentsA good friend and colleague of mine, Michael Goodman, posted this question in LinkedIn Answers this week:
"Wtih all the social media available, including linked in, Blogs, twitter, plaxo, second life, et al, what is the best way to utilize all this stuff, stay ahead of the techno-bleeding edge, and really, just find another customer to tell my story to?
I can’t keep up with all the social media, web 2.0 marketing movement. Really, all I want to do is find the next customer. I am hoping someone has figured out the magical answer to taking advantage of technology and simply find new people interested in what I have to offer. Anyone?"
Now what you need to understand is that Michael is a brilliant man. In fact he’s a fantastic resource for the Sales Community as founder of the International Sales Pros Association.
His question, I posit, goes to a fundamental misunderstanding of Social Media, Social Networking and its relationship to sales.
Remember, these tools are there to help you tell your story when you are NOT able to be in front of a prospect. They help your potential prospects have somewhere to go to find out more about you than you will ever be able to disclose to them. Social media tools are a way to "tell your story" not only to the prospects you do know, but the ones you’d never be able to get to in a million years of calling on people.
LinkedIn is especially valuable. Because not only are you putting yourself out there and giving people a chance to check you out, but you have advanced search tools to do some serious targeted prospecting – AND finding a way into said prospect via referral or introduction.
Most sales people who use LinkedIn do not have any true understanding of this. Precisely because they are focused on the next transaction. I spoke about this in a different post.
Network Building, positioning, marketing, and such activities are not Sales. But done well, they position us in front of our perfect client so our likelihood of having a sales conversation goes up dramatically. And, again, when done well, it removes a lot of the barriers that sales people experience when they cold call.
Network development is a medium to long term strategy. Prospecting for sales is something that MUST be done to meet quotas. I don’t argue that either is more or less important.
The important thing here is to have a keen understanding about what you are trying to accomplish with social media, and then go to work building that – via blog, twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
As a sales person, you will always need to tell your story to another potential client. The point with social media is can they relate to you and interact with you both before and after the sale in a way that is meaningful to them.
That’s the formula for a long-term clientele that grows virally!
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network2Networth
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A Conversation on Abundance
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I am an avid reader of the My LinkedIn Power Forum on Yahoo! Groups and from time to time I interact with a post there.
One of the moderators and founders of the group, Vincent Wright posted this on the board this morning:
Many of us yearn for abundance, pray for abundance, align ourselves for abundance but, forget to prepare ourselves for abundance.
Now, some may think that aligning oneself with abundance is the same thing as preparing oneself for abundance. However, that’s not necessarily the case any more than aligning your car with a
superhighway without making sure that it’s prepared for the increased speeds of a superhighway.The reason I ask this question is because I caught myself being
inundated with a multitude of good looking offers and while looking around my work space, I realized that I was not quite prepared to properly process the abundance of incoming offers.(Of course, I can and will remedy this!
)
So, are you prepared for the abundance you’ve been seeking?
–
Thanks,
Vincent Wright
www.VincentWright.com
www.TeachUsAbout.com
www.MyLinkedinPowerForum.com
www.MyLinkedinPowerForum.org
www.MyLinkedinPowerForum.net
Here was my response:
Vicent,
This is a great observation. One which I share with my students in the Business Development Intensive.
In terms of Network Development and Resource Development, our current networks and resources are arranged and "trained" to deliver us exactly what we have.
To manage a breakthrough into abundance – meaning actually being able to hold it – on must consciously arrange our networks and resources to hold abundance.
Think about this – the wealthiest people I know work less than I do, physically "do" less than I do, and out produce me dramatically. Why?
Because they have teams of people who help them produce their results. They have structured their resources differently than I have, and they don’t rely on their own "knowledge" to get them through. In fact, the opposite is true. They go to their networks to find what they need.
Think Ford.
I posit that a breakthrough into abundance has more to do with your relationship to the resources and people in your network than it does with anything else.
Of course – brilliance helps.
And you, my friend, have plenty of that.
Thanks for all you do.
Raymond "Chip" Lambert
Deep Business Development
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Recession and Relationship
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I was on the way home from a client meeting this morning, listening to talk radio and the announcer, Daryl Ankarlo, talk about the possibility that with gas at nearly $4 a gallon, the weak dollar, 500% increase in foreclosures, we are on the precipice of a recession.
It struck me that the people who really suffer in recessions are people who have not taken the time to build their networks.
I wrote about this in an earlier post. Taking care of the relationships we have, while sometimes daunting, is critical.
This is especially true when things get scary or shaky. If we have not taken the time to build and nurture our networks, we go it alone.
Who’s there to help you when you fall down? Who’s there to help you build your business? Who’s there to turn you onto new resources? Who’s there to help you find a new job? New clients? New sources?
If you haven’t really begun the work in earnest – don’t fret.
People are intrinsically generous. Especially the ones we’ve made a difference with. If you reach out now and begin to let the people in your life know what you need, know what you are working on, and offer to be a resource for them as well, they’ll rise to the occasion.
AND THEY’LL BE THERE WHEN YOU NEED THEM MOST!
If you haven’t taken the opportunity to do our LinkedIn Webinars, please consider doing that now. Build it before you need it.
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Deep Business Development
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What is a social network ? Shouldn’t it be based on trusted and known relationships?
Posted by: | CommentsAsked by Akim Sissaoui in Linkedin Answers
Akim, I appreciate the question and enjoy looking at the responses.
From my POV we all live in the middle of an enormous network: friends, family, colleagues, customers, prospects, interest groups – etc.
I view "social network" kind of like a tag – that is it is a way of sorting through the enormity of what we are confronted with each day.
Under the "social network" tag we could have thousands of sub-tags that allow us to further segregate the types of relationships that happen in our "social network". I agree that it is useful to have a sub-tag of "trusted" and "known". This allows us to accomplish some of the things we are already conditioned to use these sub-tags for.
As far a LinkedIn goes, it is a tool to help us capture our network and see into it in a way that has never been before. We can see the INTERRELATIONSHIP between network connections. And we can discover pathways though our "trusted" and "known" contacts to get access to those relationships and resources that we need to get where we want to go.
We can also be that pathway for the people in our networks.
It takes an order of magnitude jump to be able to see this. But I feel it is what is unleashing the individual from their own "blindness" to what networks really have to offer.
Linkedin is a tool. Nothing more, nothing less. The real power is understanding your network and putting it to work for you – and being willing to do the same for those key people in your networks.
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Deep Business Development
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LinkedIn Question: In which way does LinkedIn help you?
Posted by: | CommentsIn her recent post to LinkedIn Answers, Yvonne Keijzers asked the following question:
In which way does LinkedIn help you?
Here is my response:
LinkedIn helps me connect with resources I never knew I had.
I teach a program on network development and LinkedIn is rapidly evolving as a topic of supreme importance.
Imagine this – in the real world you know X number of people. Your relationship with the majority of them is fairly casual. Even with the few people that you know well, there is a fair amount about them which you will never know unless it becomes the topic of a conversation; or you may discover things about them accidentally or in passing.
With LinkedIn, I have been able to look into the networks of the people that I know well and begin to have conversations with them that have led to significant new relationships, business, information sources, business intelligence, etc. Not only do I get know the people in my network much more deeply, but I get to continually expand my network and thus my value to my clients, my friends, and the group of people that I am looking to serve.
I’ve got a link to my blog where I posted a video on the power of a network and more deeply network development. Funny and very easy to understand. Check it out.
LinkedIn and social networking 2.0 in general, have bridged the gap between my father’s advice that "in your lifetime you’ll be able to count the number of true friends on one hand" and my mentor’s admonition that "you live in the middle of an enormous network of resources and relationships" and have allowed me to tap into and leverage both.
Great question and thanks for asking!
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Deep Business Development
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