Now that we’ve compared Networlding to Networking, the next step is creating a values rich foundation so you can summon your Networlding Powerhouse to begin.

Think of your values-rich foundation like a house. There are some key steps to building a house right? This powerhouse is run by connections, values, strengths and goals but before you have all sets of keys, let’s examine your values – exactly what does drive you and satisfy you in your work?

When you become aware of your values, you will begin to see them in those that might make great Networlding partners for you. Values clarification is also an imperative step in the transition from doing the things you are skilled at to doing the things you are passionate about.  You can be competent without being passionate about a job, project or task.  When you identify an overlap between what motivates you and where you excel, you’ve found a passion!

If you may, ponder about your top 4 values.  The chart below gives you some examples.  Pick what drives you to succeed, for example dont feel compelled to pick family.  It doesn’t mean you don’t value them.

Let me know:

• Did your values align with your current work?  What needs to change?
• Think about your work for the past few years.  What were you doing when your values were honored?  When did your work conflict with your values?

He gives the example of Amazon who has six options listed for those people who bought one book there are six other book options available. He also talks about Chicago’s 37 Signals who offers 4 – 5 options from each of its services.

The important thing to remember here is that people want to choose and they want you to make it easy for them to buy. I can’t tell you the number of times I have spoken to prospects and clients who have dozens of ideas they want to offer their marketplace. This is a big red flag. Take the time to cull your offers down to a few really great offers. Then think about what makes those few offers really unique. It will be all about those personal touches, going the extra mile, the unique differentiators that will draw people to you.

And most of all, realize that we all need help. Ask your colleagues, your advisors, your friends to help you figure out those first three really good offers you can start with if you are in the place of having too much you are currently offering. Do MORE with LESS . . . NOW.

The best networkers never sit on their contacts like misers hoarding gold. Instead, they are constantly evaluating who they know who would benefit by being connected to others in their network.

Your network can now net many more opportunities because of online networks like LinkedIn and others. Therefore, take time to build more effective processes into your networking for introducing and getting introduced.

Here, we’ll focus on getting introduced. Don’t be afraid that you don’t have anything to offer today. You don’t need to:

• have an in-depth knowledge of another’s industry.
• have any current leads or referrals to give.
• feel as though you’re pushy.

Today, the introduction is the new referral. You do not have to be referred to carry additional influence or klout with a solid introduction. A simple process I suggest is to create an “introduction script” to have someone introduce you to one or two good connections they know and then you do the same for them.

For example, if I ask someone to introduce me, I send them the following script. I would like you to meet Melissa. Melissa is the author of thirteen books, four that have been on best-seller lists. Her greatest strength is helping thought leaders grow themselves and their organizations through publishing and follow-up social media marketing, pr and speaking. She and her firm, Networlding, have helped more than 100 top thought leaders grow their platforms through book publishing.

Now I would do the same for you. I would offer you to share a script I can send others about you to get them interested in connecting with you. Send that script to your networking partners and ask them to send one of their own to do the same for them.

Again, create a pre-written introduction of you, by you, as if someone else wrote it about you. This way your networking partners and you can “cut and paste” your respective introductions into your emails and send them to  a couple of excellent connections without a lot of effort. Think simple and powerful when it comes to creating better ways to get more and better leads faster.

1. Network more effectively. One of the most frequent questions people ask me when I tell them all the things I am doing in my business is, “When do you sleep?” My secret is that I have taken the time to build my support network better with people who “get” me and help (and I help them of course) achieve my goals faster. Take the time to find the right people for your inner or “Primary Circle” as we call it in Networlding. How do you find them? Slow down to speed up and actually do searches on LinkedIn and read their profiles. Or go to my Twitter account and see the lists I follow. Look at those people. Follow them. See if they are on LinkedIn and/or Facebook. See how you can connect to them.
2. Connect more smartly. I can count on just two hands the number of people the entire year who have done more on LinkedIn than sent the template request to join. I know a lot of people don’t even realize that they can send a more personal request or, at least, once someone has joined your network, take a moment and send a thank you. Say something like, “Thanks for accepting my invitation. How can we help one another most effectively?” It’s that simple. We do know and I think most of us believe, that “you get only one chance to make a good, first impression.”

What do you think? Tomorrow, or the next time I blog which may be sooner, I will add more tips and ideas for networking more effectively next year.

As we are entering the Holiday Vortex of Giving as I call it, I would like to celebrate this time to showcase great stories of giving.

It;s an opportunity to get showcased on my blog. In exchange, you, or someone you know, can send me a submission sharing your favorite “giving story.” If your selection is one of those chosen, I will showcase it on this blog and it will reside for a long, long time . . . here, on this page.

Just keep your story, please, limited to 150-300 words at most. Please also include how you would like to be listed on the site.

So, please, spread the word. All entries are due by December 15th. Email me at melissa@networlding.com with your entries and enjoy the giving season!

I was looking at articles on the growth of social media data collection sites by Bloomberg Business and came across this company that had won a contest sifting research on why men like stubble on their face (answer: they think it looks good, but I digress). I went on the web to check out the company, Netbase, who won the contest and found an awesome site–friendly, fun and one I know I’ll be returning to regularly.

So, why talk about this site? Well besides the fact that they “get” how to research social media better and faster than most of their competitors, I see they have the elements of Networlding–they do better business faster because they show the “human side” of their business.

I couldn’t find one page on their site or blog that didn’t show me people. Real people working in this real company doing really good work . . . and have fun at the same time. The picture, above, is a picture of Net Base’s blog. Check it out.

They are definitely in my top ten list of great sites and I plan to follow them on Twitter and LinkedIn. How about you?

Fortune 500 Series: FedEx delivers success through social media …
By Jennifer Leggio

Blogger, Jennifer Leggio showcases The FedEx Citizenship blog that provides insights from their employees into FedEx global citizenship programs and the The FedEx Cares Week blog is an internal blog that chronicles the annual global philanthropy event by having team members share their stories about the community service projects. …

Hill and Knowlton’s New Blogging Code of Conduct

Hill and Knowlton publish their blogging “Code of Conduct.” This is a nice model for other organizations to use.

The Top Six Reasons Companies are Still Scared of Social Media

This article showcases the reasons why companies are afraid of social media. Whereas they are typical reasons that make sense, the article is good at aggregating the most common reasons. The hurdles for companies are getting lowered by organizations like SAS who take on the risk, trusting and encouraging their employees to blog and prove that it is still better to be “out there” than to hide behind corporate walls.

My Take

I spoke with a couple of social media experts this week and found that, once again, myopia is still alive, well and living in peoples’ minds still. By this I mean that many see social networking as their ticket to great success. They think that because there are so are confused how to make social networking work that there is a huge market out there and that they can just put a shingle out that states they are social media experts overnight. Recently someone shared they had a construction worker friend who is now teaching LinkedIn.

I’ve been teaching people social networking for more than a decade and up until last year many still didn’t understand the basics of business networking. Now there are five times the number of experts on the subject than there were even three months ago. What a strange time this is! It will be interesting to see how all this shakes out in the next couple of years. I remember when I use to hold networking events and there was an over abundance of bankers; then came the plethora of coaches. Now everyone is a social networking and new media expert. Hmmmmm.

Dear friends,

As you’ve probably noticed, we’ve run into a series of technical problems over the past 7-10 days. Because of that, we wanted to take a break from our normal newsletter to bring you a personal message from both of us. So let us start by stating it as plainly as we can: we’re sorry.

There’s no way to sugar coat it – the site’s performance as of late has been poor. We’ve failed to provide you the crowdSPRING experience you’ve learned to love and we are both disappointed and humbled as a result. Please rest assured that we’re aware of these problems, and we are doing our very best to fix them promptly. Everyone at crowdSPRING is focused on these issues and we won’t rest until we have them resolved. Period.

We’ll spare you the technical explanation of the problems we’re having but, in the end, they’re almost entirely related to the increased usage that the site is experiencing and they’ve had a cascading effect, touching everything from our database servers all the way down to our email notifications. We should have foreseen this possibility and built things with more flexibility in the event that we needed to scale more quickly than we anticipated. We were so focused on our refactoring project (which will have us roll out completely new code in the coming weeks) that we underestimated the extent of our growth. As you know, we’ve added more hardware servers, but this didn’t address all of the issues with which we are now dealing. And we’re now paying the price. This is undeniably a lesson hard learned and one we do NOT intend to repeat or ever forget. And most importantly we’re embarrassed that we’ve put our credibility on the line with you.

We’ll give you an update within the next 48 hours on where things stand and, in the mean time, we’re certain that many of you may have questions about these issues and how they affect your projects. We encourage you to talk to us – we’ll do everything we reasonably can to make sure that our failure does not impact you, so don’t hesitate to reply to this email, write us personally, or contact us through the site. We consider everyone who has supported us this first year a friend and it’s never fun to disappoint your friends. You have our personal promise, and the promise of every person who works at crowdSPRING, that we will work tirelessly to make things right and to regain your trust.

Ross and Mike
co-Founders

You’re receiving this email as a friend of crowdSPRING. Feel free to unsubscribe at any time.

1. You walk into the store and you see almost a dozen “business concierge” seated at a U-shaped bar, like The Genius Bar at Apple. Apple made a great move when they allowed the bar concept to converge with a help desk concept creating a unique hybrid experience where people can ask questions and get the specific help they need to fix or optimize their Apple products. In the case of the Networlding Innovation Center it would allow people to do the same thing.
2. The concierge walks you through an overview of the center, sharing with you the idea that the center is there to provide a hub of “direction and connection,” The direction is all about helping you get a profile on LinkedIn or a Twitter or Facebook account set up . . . or all three. The connection is all about connecting you to ongoing networking groups where like-focused people are ready, willing and able to help you with connecting around new product and service creations. Additionally, there are many coaching services you can choose from to help you either move through a career transition or create a new company.
3. You fill out a profile for the center with answers to a series of questions around the current needs you have for innovating the way you do business or how your are developing your career–business development, career management, networking, coaching support, resource provider selection–these are all services offered by the center.
4. You pick the combination of services you need currenty and also check off those offerings you might consider for the future based on your budget.
5. You also are given a directory of upcoming events in the center that will enable you to meet other potential partners with whom you can collaborate with for business or career growth.

This is just the first experience you will have in the center. You will find it will be a place you will come back to again and again. You will find that you now have a choice for a place to go that is not as loud as a Starbucks and offers facilitated connection and though leadership to help you with your business or career.

Stay tuned for more adventures in The Networlding Center for Innovation and Collaboration.

To this end his focus is on such things as "developing cheaper renewable energy, commercializing plug-in vehicles, increasing capital to small business in the developing world and predicting and preventing emerging threats such as environmental conditions and climate change" as Brilliant offered in Carter’s article. This is a wonderful set of goals.

However, the question I have is how can we achieve these goals faster with better results? I offer the concept of Networlding as an approach. First, let me preface my thoughts by saying that the Networlding methodology which we sell to the for-profit world is free to the non-profit world. Any non-profit professional wants to have our e-guidebook and e-booklet can email us (www.networlding.com) to get a copy. We also have consultants who are willing to help with initiatives that want to use the methodology.

To this end some of the key pieces would look like this:

• the creation of an action plan that is grounded in values; we recommend the four values that have been used with great success by my friend and colleague, Susan Davis which are: "making a difference, integrity, collaboration and innovation." We have found these values accelerate the success of any group initiative.
• the development of a leadership team that mentors in small, manageable groups other small groups of "leaders-in-waiting."
• constant, incremental support and facilitation of small groups working together for a common goal while also getting support from one another to achieve individual goals.
• sharing the best practices back to all the participants.
• and finally, "doing well by doing good." As Carter commented, "Many corporations have learned that investing in philanthropy attracts concerned investors and talented employees, builds brand loyalty, burnishes reputations and helps create a healthier and more prosperous economy for all of us." Why is it so simple for some to get and others its a foreign language?

Of course there is much more detail in the methodology and non-profits such as Brilliant is running would benefit from the many learnings we have had throughout the last couple of decades by the growing members of The Networlding Partner Alliance. So, if I only could work with Larry Brilliant . . . .