Event Launch Strategies

I have a question for you. What are your idea’s worth? Nothing if you don’t execute them. What are your word’s worth? Nothing if others can’t take them on face value. As a general rule; people who honor their words, talk in a decisive tone and act on ideas will gain the respect of the community. Without determination and deciding internally what you want to achieve, chances are that you won’t go far in reaching your goals. Sometimes we undervalue the importance of the fact that when your mind becomes determined and committed to achieving a particular goal, the world conspires to help you. People will come out of the blue to support your cause. Opportunities you hadn’t seen before would come knocking on your door.

Building your network:

In my previous “If you were a corporation, whats your stock worth?” I mentioned how I think online networks should create more traffic and value by augmenting your existing relationships rather than playing a number game. Take time to think about what you want from the time that you invest online - it is an investment after all, not a cost. You need to invest time in building strong contacts.

One successful contact at a time will result in an empire eventually. While it is important to add new contacts slowly, maintaining and growing the relationship with the ones that you already have is even more important. If you don’t have time to invest into adding value to these relationships, is it wise to keep adding more connections to your list that you won’t ever have time for? Isn’t that what groups are for: to attract an audience - whereas friends should be reserved for quality connections (like a privilege of some sort)? Are social networking sites encouraging online networking practices that lead us away from beneficial human networking practices.

I allocate time every day to spend interacting with my existing contacts. I talk with them on their walls and ask something of them to see what they are made of. I do this not to stir people or annoy them but to determine if these people are worth having as a number in my trusted friends list and I can tell you a lot of people completely ignore my attempts to communicate with them. Scott Brandon Hoffman, one of my trusted connections in Facebook noted that someone sending him a friend request without a message was like them walking up to him at a party and just standing there, saying nothing. Now imagine introduction yourself to a person at a party and have that person turn his head in the other direction, instead of responding with a handshake. Yet by current social networking standards these people are still suppose to be considered your “friends”. Before I “got it”, I accepted invitations from such people without screening them, leaving my party half filled with people who don’t talk back. I mean it’s not like I am hitting their walls like a spammer (the only contact that’s worse than a contact that doesn’t talk back) and asking them to click a link to a page that’s all about me..? I usually say something more like;

“hey {name}, I just noticed we’re friends…boy, and I didn’t know anything about you…I took a look at your profile and can see you are into “what ever it is they are into“…tell me some more about yourself to fire this relationship up a notch..oh, and I write notes from time to time that give a pretty good insight into me…let me know if you’re interested and I will tag you to one…

Now, what do you do with someone who is on your list of connections who flat out ignores an approach like that. What value is there to having this connection in my friend’s list. Is it only because the technology demands that doing so will allow me to tag more people to my content. I am not blaming the humans here. I hold the machine responsible, please tell me what you think?

The answer to my concerns are going to be played out through the emergence of smarter technology like Google Friend Connect that will hopefully lead to us towards not feeling so compelled to maintain these type of connections for the sole purpose of distributing content through them. One way media (like TV) was flawed because it disrupts an entire household’s viewing pleasure in order to show an advertising message about a product or service, that may only have been of interest to a very small percentage of the people.

The internet and then Social media was the multi-directional communication platform that was going to change our media scape forever. It allowed for global collaboration where every individual could publish a message without having to pay media corporations huge fees to have it distributed to millions of viewers throughout their audiences. Should I really need to continue investing time and energy into hundreds of benign connections in order to find the people who are interested in what I have to offer. Isn’t social media meant to be a platform that facilitates our ability to walk into a targeted audience and communicate with them, without the expense, non targeting, static and cross noise that come with offline media platforms. Are we not polluting our own pond here? Isn’t it a case of quantity based connecting strategy? This makes it harder to find people we are looking for in business who are above this noise created by so many connections that lead to nothing? Do we have a choice or are we simple creatures of the technology that defines us now. Is the greatest machine ever built (the internet) changing the way humans interact forever? Do we have a say in it or must we continue to network and connect the way the machine is training us, if we want to excel at the game by the games rules. Must I just learn to accept people who flat out ignore me when I attempt to engage them in conversation, my new and technically super charged social network of 2008. Please leave your comments on this one. It’s important…

Here’s a thought. Aren’t pages and groups in Facebook designed for people to become fans and members of an audience or to join targeted groups or communities. Shouldn’t tagging and syndicating through profile pages be limited to people we are connected to through these networks. Shouldn’t my friend’s list remain sacred, reserved for people who I trust most - my friends, family, good customers (evangelists) or partners, “my circle of trust”? If tagging and networking like we do amongst our friend contacts now was extended through to fans or members of the same groups as us, wouldn’t it be easier for us to find targeted markets to whom we could promote our products and services to whilst being less compelled to have to accept everyone as friends. Isn’t it time we started looking for ways to better segment networking with commercial intent and networking with social intent. Why are all the powerful syndication capabilities in Facebook tied to our friends lists and not pages or groups. Isn’t this causing the boundaries between family, friends, audiences, leads, opportunities and customers to be blurred. Is it because Facebook pages and groups were an after thought, added years after the machine was first built for social networking amongst university students. Has the machine taken control and is now influencing the way humans interact socially through it’s technical limitations and inability to merge faultlessly with what social networking between humans has always been.

Someone asked me recently how to separate the good contacts from the bad? It’s a question you don’t get asked so much offline although the answer would be the same. You’ll just know. As an example, I spoke to a person I had just met a few days ago and after one conversation, I knew he was a person I wanted to invest more time into. If I had to go to battle with someone I had just met, it would be someone like him. Why? Because his attitude instills me with the confidence of knowing that if I did invest more time into him, he will not let me down. Because of the words he used I knew he was the real deal and not fluff and that I would be bonding on the same wave-length. I knew “he got it” and more than anything else, he was passionate about the fact, “he gets it”. Here’s an excerpt from an email I received from him:

“At this stage in my life, as an only child, with my parents long-deceased, being divorced since leaving my hometown of Macon, Georgia to move to Los Angeles in 1980, I’m committed to spending the rest of my energy to achieve, enjoy, and share the best of what life offers for myself and the people around the world I feel compelled to meet and treat as the only family I may ever have. So, I’m in it for the long run. Let’s do it! - AWJ”

The web, as we know it, is a fantastic opportunity - not because you can reach thousands of people, but because you can reach 10 people like “him” who you know is going to be connected to at least 10 people like “you“. Who “you” are, is determined by your own mind set which you control, so if “you” are someone who “you know” adds value to anybody lucky enough to earn a place within your circle of trust, then an opportunity to connect with 10 people like “him”, that you know has a similar network of relationships with other people like “you”, then you have the beginning of something very powerful in terms of doing business online. Say that 5 times quickly. No, I am joking….say it 5 times slowly and make sure you “get it”.

Don’t be short sighted in your attitude towards your connections - adding value to other people’s efforts makes your relationship more valuable, this can only increase your value. How each of us attract an audience through social networks that we can segment into leads and grow into opportunities that will become great customers who will eventually transform into evangelists will invite more and more followers into your revolving conversation marketing campaigns designed to walk them down the same path is what my Book “Social Traffic” will teach you.

A limited number of copies of the book go on sale at 8.00 am EST North America, next Wednesday 12th November. You can put your name down here.

Become part of a community executing the principles laid out in the book. Leverage this community to enhance your value in business though maintaining focus on increasing your intent towards members of your inner network of trusted business associates all applying the same focus here.

Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)

Today’s tip! If you want to source the best JV partners in your niche, you need a software that sources those selling the most product’s in your niche!

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