Netwink
Yesterday, I attended a short presentation on Social Networking. The information was great and I am excited to share what I learned with you.

When I consider social networking, I compare it to the ATM machine. When ATM machines first came out there were alot of people that felt uncomfortable about using the ATM machine. They did not want to use a machine because they did not trust the machine to count the money properly and were worried about getting short changed. They also felt that it was a privacy concern. Then there were those that just felt the machine was too complicated to learn and just wanted to stay with what they knew and trusted, the teller at the bank.

I can take each one of those issues and tie them to online social networking. With social networking people felt that if they hire someone to help them manage their social networking that they will be short changed because of money spent and no results. Then there are those that are concerned about getting involved in the social media world because in order to participate they would have to become too personal and be sharing with others things they would rather just keep to themselves. Finally, there are those who just don't understand the social networking commerce and feel that it is too complicated and time consuming to participate. Sound familiar?

Lets say someone refuses to use the ATM, they can still access their money and make withdraws and deposits. It will take a little more time and effort such as driving to the bank and doing business, during the banks business hours.

The same is with social networking, you can still grow a business. It will however take more time and effort.

Starting and blending all the elements of social networking together is the leap we all must make if we want to grow a strong business that will fit into the new Information Age. In order to participate and prosper we must make a decision to learn it and do it.

What I learned yesterday is "at this time eight elements" to the social networking strategy.

#1 Facebook
#2 LinkedIn
#3 Twitter
#4 Articles
#5 Ezine or ENewsletter
#6 Video media such as Youtube
#7 Blog and it was suggested it be a domain you own. (If you don't know what a domain is just ask me I can help you)
#8 SEO or Search Engine Optimization

These eight elements can be worked together to create your social presence on the world wide web. My prediction is in the future there will be tools and programs developed to manage these elements from a single source. For now you have to do each independently and it is time consuming.

Speaking of time, what if we were to breakdown traditional network marketing time consumption and social networking time consumption.

With traditional networking you have to drive, attend meetings, have 1 on 1's. There is alot of time devoted to planting one seed. With Social networking you have to write, and write and write and there is alot of time devoted but you are planting many seeds.

Between the two they do take alot of time but the market penetration with social networking is far more effective than with traditional networking.

Social networking is about using all the necessary elements and bringing each of these together to create your presence on the world wide web.

If you want to start a campaign then the first thing you must do is find a niche. Determine a niche that you can have plenty of material to write on and you must be a teacher. Make yourself the expert of your niche.

Also find places to answer questions and then drive traffic to your blog or to your articles. Alot of people know I write articles and alot of my articles are about all kinds of elements that may or may not have anything to do with networking or electricity. In fact not long ago I wrote an article about Making Hard Candy. If you want to check it out here is the link: Making Old Time Hard Candy.

My goal is to build on my name and for me most of my topics are about networking, electricity, technical issues, and other stuff. You may want to stay more to your profession and or niche when writing articles and if your goal is to drive traffic to your web site then the Helium site I used is not for traffic. I mostly use it just to publish articles and get my name known.

To drive traffic you want to article websites such as ezinearticles.com, ask yahoo, even LinkedIn can be used for driving traffic to your blog.

At this point this post is beginning to get into how to drive traffic and that needs to be in a future post.

Till then.
See ya
Netwink
Something I have noticed over the summer is the influx of new business owners?

When talking to these new business owners most of them are volunteering that they recently became unemployed.

We all know have a fairly good idea about what is going on in the job market. As small business owners we control the market by shear numbers and hold the keys to moving the economy and our business forward. The question is can we use the current economy to help not only our business but the people that have had their lives changed in the past few months.

Employers in the U.S. cut 467,000 jobs in June and unemployment rate rose from 9.4% to 9.5%, the highest since August 1983. The payroll decline surpassed its forecast and followed a 322,000 drop in May, according to Labor Department figures released recently in Washington.

Payrolls were forecast to drop 365,000 after the 345,000 decrease initially reported for May, according to the median of 79 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News last month. Estimates ranged from declines of 150,000 to 500,000. Job losses peaked at 741,000 in January. The jobless rate was projected to climb from 9.4% to 9.6%. And, by the end of the year,
unemployment is predicted to reach 10%, according to the survey.

With all this doom and gloom there is gain to be had by all. I recently attended a network meeting (this was a very new group), of the 8 people that attended 4 of them had either their spouse laid off or themselves laid off in the past 3 months. These individuals made a decision that they were not going to be idle and wait for a job. They were going to create a job.

These are the people we want to align ourselves with no matter what kind of business you own. We want to help these people become profitable because not only are we helping another human being, we are putting money in their pocket that they will spend or invest in each others business.

And it doen't stop there. They know people they worked with and they likely talk to them. If someone has a great experience in the private sector, they share it. They will talk about you.

The point is, this is all about attitude and making lemons into lemonaide. Helping each in the marketplace is all part of the business network mentality.

The current economy is creating an amazing opportunity for all. Look for ways you can spend time, spend a little money, invest in each other, and reap rewards for possibly years to come.
Netwink
In my post How to Conduct A One-On-One When Business Networking, I provided three points to keep in mind when conducting a one-on-one. The three points were:

#1 Do you feel the person you are speaking to has integrity and character? Do you trust them?
#2 Make a point that each party learns about the others business.
#3 Keep in mind that you are not selling to the person sitting across the table. You are however selling to every person they know and you are starting a relationship and creating a camaraderie building “sales ambassadors” for your business.

The purpose of this post is to get you thinking about #1 and your definition of trust and how you can measure trust.

Many of us run on our feelings when measuring trust of one another. Feelings are great but sometimes our feelings are not enough so hopefully this post will help you to create your personal definition of trust.

In this case the definition of Trust is: the trait of believing in the honesty and reliability of others.
I personally define trust as the trait of believing in the integrity and character of others.

Lets start with the definition of each word.

Honesty: fairness and straightforwardness of conduct b : adherence to the facts : SINCERITY
synonyms HONESTY, HONOR, INTEGRITY, PROBITY mean uprightness of character or action. HONESTY implies a refusal to lie, steal, or deceive in any way. HONOR suggests an active or anxious regard for the standards of one's profession, calling, or position. INTEGRITY implies trustworthiness and incorruptibility to a degree that one is incapable of being false to a trust, responsibility, or pledge. PROBITY implies tried and proven honesty or integrity.

Reliability: 1 : the quality or state of being reliable. suitable or fit to be relied on : DEPENDABLE 2 : the extent to which an experiment, test, or measuring procedure yields the same results on repeated trials

Integrity: 1 : firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : INCORRUPTIBILITY. 2 : an unimpaired condition : SOUNDNESS
3 : the quality or state of being complete or undivided : COMPLETENESS. synonyms see HONESTY

Character: moral excellence and firmness

With these definitions we can start to form our personal definition of trust.

About a year ago I attended a weekend training and participated in an exercise where there were 7 people in a group, myself included and you had one minute to tell about yourself and create trust on a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 being the least trust and 5 being the greatest trust. The exercise was interesting and eye opening.

One point of interest was, women seemed to gain trust easier than men. Another interesting tidbit was more trust was gained in the one minute when the person shared a personal story than when people gave reasons to trust them.

If you think about these two points it makes sense. Women are traditional caregivers and trust becomes a natural occurrence. Additionally, when we hear a personal story from someone, we relate, we measure and conclude this person has felt the exhilaration of doing the right thing or the regret of it, and therefore have learned the moral lesson. This builds on our trust faster than just providing reasons to trust.

Like I said before, my personal definition of trust is a combination of integrity (honesty) and character (moral excellence). I believe most people give general trust easily but if ever violated trust will be gone and regaining it may never be achievable or will be difficult to gain back.

I once attended a seminar and during the seminar the topic of trust was discussed by the speaker and his definition incorporated integrity and character. He explained his belief by means of a story that I have never forgot. To this day I use this story to aide in my personal measure of trust for the person I am speaking. I would like to share this story with you.

Little Johnny came home from school and shared with his mother an experience from his day.

Johnny said, “Mommy, while at school today there was a new girl that came to our class. A lot of the kids made fun of her because she was fat but I didn’t make fun of her.”

Johnny’s Mommy said, “That’s very good by not making fun of her you showed integrity. But Johnny did tell the other kids not to make fun of her. That would have shown your character.”

This small story was a great example of doing the “right thing”, (integrity) and character (having moral excellence). Do you do the “right thing” even though other people are not and do you stand by your moral beliefs?

My little definition does not take into account reliability but I have found that reliability cannot be determined in a one hour meeting. I have found that someone can be reliable and not have integrity and character. So reliability to me is secondary to integrity and character.

Now you have an idea of my personal definition of trust. Have you begun to define yours? Can you have a one hour conversation with someone and define on a scale from 1 to 5 your level of trust?

No matter what your business, the goal is to develop relationships with the people you encounter each and every day and build trust. Because people do business with those they know, like, and trust.

Do the people you encounter everyday know, like, and trust you? Most business owners think that 80% or more trust them when in fact the number is usually closer to 50% or less. So how can you establish trust with the people around you?

Here are a few things to keep in mind:
• Be consistent in your actions and with how you treat other people. Use the golden rule, treat others as you would want to be treated yourself.
• When having your one-on-one provide stories about your experiences to help the other person feel you share like experiences that demonstrate your integrity and character.
• When you promise a one-on-one know that you will only be able to reschedule it once or twice. More than that you will be compromising your reliability and therefore compromising the level of trust other people have in you.

I personally have had people who would promise a one-on-one with me and then cancel it several times. When this happens more than twice I stop trying to have a one-on-one with them and I throw away their business card because I feel the message they are telling me is I do not matter to them. I will never give them a referral because of the way they treated me. We have all had similar experiences so make sure you are consistent with each person you deal with and treat them as well as you would want to be treated.

I hope this has given you food for thought. There are so many people we deal with everyday and making decisions on who and when you are willing to provide a referral and basically allow someone to borrow your name and reputation is important.

Next time I hope to provide you with something to think about with #2 Make a point that each party learns about the others business.