The concept you are about to read may be the most important driver of future success you will find this year. The term eCommunity has been misconstrued to describe Facebook or MySpace type networks. If that is true for you, please read on…
Let’s start by redefining what the term eCommunity really should mean. Each of us now has the tools to create a network (or community) of contacts and connections that is aided – even driven by – technology. In other words, your eCommunity is really what used to be defined as your rolodex, and the personal relationships you could call on by phone or in person. The Internet has now provided a way for us to completely redefine what our “business/personal community” is, and more importantly, how we nurture and grow it. By making a conscious effort to leverage the new tools available, we can drive dramatic improvements in reaching our business goals.
A simple primer on how to do this would include investing time in the following four steps:
- Sign up for Plaxo Pulse and use it to keep your contacts up to date
- Sign up for LinkedIn and use it to formalize your network contacts and connect to their contacts
- Build a Facebook profile and use it to communicate in a deeper way with contacts that you work with regularly. In addition, this is a great way to introduce yourself to new contacts
- Join an industry eCommunity that puts you in the stream of conversations about the market you are in at the moment
By doing at least these four steps, you will be able to use the features built into each that allow you to tap into the automation provided in building and managing you community. For example, LinkedIn will allow you to make contact with prospects that you may not know with a warm invite, instead of a cold call. Plaxo Pulse will automatically keep your contacts updated so you never lose someone, and will always be notified of useful data like their birthday. Facebook applications allow you to update what you are doing at any minute so that your “friends” get to keep track of you. This is very useful when your “friends” are all business contacts that you want to stay in front of.
Business people that are making this investment are seeing a wonderful return on investment for the time spent putting together their own eCommunity. Don’t be left on the sidelines with only your Outlook contact list as your step up from the Rolodex…
Scott