Personally, I’m thinking the answer is yes, even at this early stage of development. Well, okay, perhaps with the exception of LinkedIn. First, this is truly a beta release and is also being released in viral fashion. Presently, one can only join G+ (shorthand for Google Plus or Google+) by invitation. For awhile, the invitations were shut off due to the flood of people wanting to join. Having said all that, here are some more thoughts on why this might be the next big thing for a useful Social Network site.

1. Google seems to have learned from Facebook missteps. You have simple, easy to understand control over who sees what. You get honest “warnings” when you change sharing on a post. They allow you to export all your data – it is after all, your data. Use the “data liberation” link to download your data.

2. Circles. Thank Googleness for circles. Finally, this asymmetric approach to the site makes me really appreciate the “do no evil” approach. Unlike other sites, you are able to limit who sees your posts if you want to do so. You create circles of people just like you do in your “real life.” There is your circle of friends at work, or those at your place of worship, or your professional SIG, or your neighborhood. You get to choose who goes into what circle and they only know they’ve been added to a circle (not which one or what you call it). You can put a person in more than one circle, and you can post to more than one circle, to individuals or to “public” where all the millions of people on G+ can see what you’ve posted if they want to do so.

Your posts can be short (like a tweet), long like your blog and can contain photo, video or links. I hope that Google continues to improve the “blog” capabilities of G+ and if they do, I may well simply close down my existing blog in favor of having everything in one place.

3. Filtering. Circles can be used to filter the stream of posts you see on the home page of your G+ account. So if you’re in a hurry and want to see what your circle called “Colleagues” or “Mates” has to say, you can simply “click on that circle” and that will filter the stream to only posts from folks in that circle.

4. Hangouts. This is really cool and I can see myriad uses in business and family life. Simply put, this is a video conferencing application that allows up to ten folks to be “in one hangout.” Several colleagues have already started collaboration hangouts with their co-workers “upstairs,” in the “next building” and “up North.” Amazing. And I can see how we might use this to plan our next vacation plans that require coordination with my sister in TN and my brother in FL. Awesome!

5. Sparks. This is very interesting. I use Google Reader to aggregate my blogs and Google News to filter my news. Sparks may be an interesting filter for articles on specific topics that “feed my insatiable curiosity” and “spark ideas” for blogs and other articles I write. I’ll have to work with this some more to see how the algorithm works before I pass on the usefulness for my work. But it sure looks interesting at the moment.

6. Photos. I was surprised and pleased when I installed the G+ application on my Droid X. I stopped during a run (yes, I use my Droid as my mp3 player too, and I carry it running for that as well as emergencies) to take a compelling picture and when I went to G+ for other reasons saw a notification that new photos had been uploaded to my “private” folder. I had done nothing except take the picture! From my private folder, I could chose a whole bunch of options including sharing the photo. Such fun! No fuss, no muss, it just works.

7. Chat. Nothing much “new” here except the integration of chat with the hangout. It makes things easy for direct messaging even in the hangout.

So what needs to happen? G+ is in beta and still limited. Once it’s established and Google is satisfied that it has “shaken out” they will open it up to the public – speculation is “soon,” whatever that means.

1. Establish a culture or etiquette for the G+ world. That will evolve and it looks as though it will be more “serious” than other Social Media

2. Make room for businesses to participate in a serious, non-selling fashion.

3. Put more “Blog” functionality in the posting capabilities (things like “save as draft,” additional links, photos and “schedule post”, etc.)

All in all, I’m very impressed with this last attempt by Google to get into the fray on Social Media platforms. I find G+ WAY more “sticky” for me than either Facebook or Twitter (which I hardly ever read, I only schedule posts that are helpful to others). And to be fair, I only usually read Facebook and Twitter stuff on Hootsuite.

For now, G+ is not going to ease any of my Social Media work. In fact, it will likely cause more work for me since I now want to spend time there! However, as things progress, and if they go the way I believe they will, I will likely drop Twitter and Facebook for business, pare Facebook down to only family and a few friends and extended family.

I’ve read on several posts that “pundits” are claiming that businesses can safely ignore Google + for a year or so. I do not agree. As soon as businesses are allowed to participate, you had better be paying attention and evaluating what’s going on. Businesses were very late to the Facebook and Twitter game and have been “poorer” for their hesitation and skepticism. Don’t repeat that mistake. Get involved much sooner rather than later.

Some small private companies are “life-style companies” that the owner has no intention of growing. She has no vision of passing it along to anyone else. Yet, if the business is to remain viable, even for her, it will need to grow because if it isn’t growing, it is, by definition dying. Competitors will force us to grow our businesses, we can’t “stand still.” The complaint I hear at this point is that I no longer own a business, it owns me! How do I get out of this mess? Well, you can shut down the business and go back to being an employee. Or, you can grow the business, hire trusted employees and then relinquish some of the work so that you can enjoy what you’ve built. That in itself will require that you initially put in more time and comes with all the frustrations of employees and growing a business. Hold that thought for a minute.

What if you are the CEO of a public company and have a board of directors? Who do you turn to for advice and clarity around an opportunity or challenge? The Board is your employer. Where do you go to get your answers questioned without causing concern – you can only admit to “not knowing the answer” so many times before boards and employees begin to lose confidence. Yet we all know that we either don’t have the answer or we know that someone should at least question our approach; perhaps pointing out a new view that opens creative solutions not previously explored. Do you have your own private advisory board to run things by before going in front of the Directors?

In both of these cases, a mastermind group, or a peer advisory board can be of immense help in challenging you to think outside the box or admit to what part of the problem you own or to provide some unique insights for your situation. This is definitely not a new idea. I first came across this concept in the business world when reading Napoleon Hill’s book “Think and Grow Rich.” Then again as a consultant to several small businesses, and the ones doing well had this in common – they set up a peer advisory board. I found that some were formal and some were informal. Some were paid boards and some were purely voluntary. This is not the same as the usual not-for-profit boards where a person pays to be on the board and it is generally focused on fund raising. I’m talking about a group of peers who have your best interest at heart and you either pay them for their time or perhaps it is a group that all pitch in for the cost of meetings and agree to help each other. The most effective boards are diverse. Of course there can be no competitors and no other strong business ties (vendor, interlocking board memberships, etc.). Making sure you have advisors who are sharp business people with experience, but not in your industry, will give the best results.

So regardless of your intentions for your business or career, establishing a trusted peer advisory board will help you achieve your goals, make life a bit more relaxing, alleviate some of the isolation, provide fresh thinking and help you avoid pitfalls. Who doesn’t need that kind of help today? Business has changed and will not be going back to what it was three years ago. Why try and grow it alone? Why not build a team that has your best interest at heart?

Here’s what I think has happened and it turns out that Scott Fox (e-Riches 2.0) seems to agree. First, the internet has gotten very crowded with web sites and blogs. Second, we have an exponential increase in users who are searching. Third, the “big boys” have staked out their claim to the first page of organic results and will spend lots of money to stay there. Together, this means it is getting incredibly difficult to optimize sites and pages for common search words and/or phrases. Therefore, it is more expensive and more time consuming to try and optimize for organic search position. If you want marketing on the web to be free or cheap, you will be disappointed. It will at the very least, take significant time (which is money, of course) and done well, will likely have a direct financial cost as well. If you want real SEO, you will need to step up to the cost. You will also need to consider pay per view and pay per click options if you have a robust e-commerce site.

To make matter worse on the SEO front, today’s internet user is very impatient and will not likely look beyond page two of the search results. So to pay for SEO and not make at least the second page of the organic returns will be a waste of money. Lucky for us, we no longer have such an overriding need to have customers find us through search. Instead, we can build relationships with the customers through social media. That’s not to say we don’t need to pay attention to the basics of SEO and make sure our sites are configured properly for landing pages, key words and strong links back to the site. It’s just that for many small businesses, time and budget may well be better spent on establishing a brand presence on the social media sites, gathering e-mail addresses for e-mail newsletters and focusing on e-marketing campaigns. In other words, we will go to the customers instead of trying to drive the customers to our sites.

According to Mr. Fox, “the future of marketing is more about e-mail than it is about SEO.” He goes on to say that “In fact, now is the time to be focusing on developing your publishing skills because SEO may be out of your reach.” When I did a quick study of what it takes for initial and ongoing optimization, the cost is already well beyond my own marketing budget. So I have determined to keep the basics of SEO up (meta tags, fresh content – read that blogs, strong links back to the site, careful key word selection for landing pages, etc.) while focusing most of my time on building a robust social media marketing brand. So far, it seems to be working.

This is good news for those who have started new businesses or perhaps had to cut back on the existing marketing budget. We can get in on the very effective growth of niche customer marketing through social media and let the “big guys” blow wads of money on SEO. This is not going to be free though. It will require someone to spend a significant amount of time on blogging, keeping Facebook current, commenting on other blogs that are “on topic” for you and watching the internet for how others are speaking about you and/or your company.

Here are the questions: are you finding that SEO is “out of reach” budget wise? How are you incorporating social media into your branding effort? Are you employing e-mail marketing for your products or services? How good is your website at gathering e-mail addresses from those who find your site and visit you?

I’m not one of those who believes that the customer is “ALWAYS RIGHT,” meaning that the customer knows what’s best for YOUR business. I do believe that the customer is always right when it comes to what they want and you had better be listening. You also need to know what’s going on with how they perceive you as a vendor. A valuable vendor communicates with the customer, provides information about innovative solutions to challenges, stands behind their products and services, does what they can to help conserve their customer’s cash and isn’t always looking to make the maximum profit at the expense of the customer.

Before you get the impression that this post is going to be a “business bashing” tirade, I hasten to add that I feel the same way about employees and especially labor unions. Look at the recent discussion created by states cutting back on education expenses and using tenure or FIFO to layoff teachers. Parents and Administrators are now raising significant objections to losing promising young teachers simply because they were last into the workforce. We all know the concern about how to measure effectiveness of our educators, they are tired arguments and I believe them to be mostly discredited. Get over it. There is no compelling reason to keep a person in a particular paid position just because they’ve been there a long time (nor should they be let go because of that reason either). Labor unions would do well to listen to the paying public and figure out how to help the excellent teachers thrive, regardless of age or longevity in the workplace. That would make unions worthwhile.

For the individual employee, learn to find out how you are doing and be ruthless about it. Embrace 360 reviews and if you’re company isn’t doing them, find another way to determine how you’re viewed by supervisors, colleagues, subordinates and customers. Don’t kid yourself on this. Your career depends on it. Are you flexible in assignments (not your values and ethics, but simply learning new things and taking on new assignments)?

The same is true, perhaps even more important, for those of us who are consultants, mentors and/or self-employed service providers. We had better genuinely have our client’s best interest at heart and demonstrate that so there is no doubt. Find a way to help your customer reach their goals, and one will undoubtedly be saving cash (and it always has been a goal, just exaggerated in this economy). I recently heard on a WSJ podcast that one enterprising HR consultant is teaching her clients how to do what she does so that they can carry the ball in the future. She said, “Why fight the market? The market is to help my clients save money. So I help them learn how to do these things for themselves in the future.” Ecology of information – the hallmark of a good consultant.

The way I see it, we are all in this together. Whether we are small business owners, leaders in large organizations, individual contributors, government employees, union members, in transition, or service providers we had better stop focusing on ourselves and start looking to add value. That isn’t to say we should not be willing to consider our own interests, it just that our interests can’t come first or be foremost.

If the folks at Enron, WorldCom, AIG, Citi Group and all the other dysfunctional organizations had paid attention to their reputation and had goals other than their own enrichment in mind, they would not have become dysfunctional. If we as investors insisted on long term value instead of quarterly stock gains, we would not have pushed the companies into being so short sighted. If the folks in Congress really had the best interests of their constituents at heart instead of their own selfish gains and focus on keeping their jobs, then perhaps their ratings and esteem with the public wouldn’t be lower than whale dung on the ocean floor.

I know, and “if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t keep bumping his butt on the ground.” It seems as though this is all unachievable. Yet, I don’t know of any other way to fix the mess we’re in. I’m convinced that even though it’s a big simplification, “taking care of number 1,” and “wining at all costs” is what got us into this mess. Collectively changing that focus would seem the only way to get out of it. It starts with “the man in the mirror.” Are you willing to change your focus? What is your company doing to “get back to basics” and focus on the customer? Are you looking for ways to change your business model, like the HR Consultant mentioned above?

To start with, I made sure that the RSS feed for my blog feeds LinkedIn, and there’s a navigation button from my website to the blog. I use a program called Hootesuite to help manage and read twitter posts. Hootsuite allows me to schedule a tweet as well as to read my direct messages from followers. It acts like a “dashboard” for my Twitter account. Perhaps more importantly these days, I can link Hootsuite to another program called ping.fm.

Ping.fm is a site that allows you to enter one “post” that will be sent to a wide variety of your Social Networking sites. For me, that means that ping.fm is set up to post to Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Fan Page and LinkedIn. This allows me to enter a post that will meet Twitter requirements  (lowest common denominator in terms of character count) one time and then it will post to my other “registered” accounts. So if you followed the logic, I can enter a post in HootSuite and schedule it to post to ping.fm on the following day at 9 am. Ping.fm will in turn post to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn once it receives the post from HootSuite. I try and make sure that the particular post is really relevant to each of those sites. If the post is really specific to my LinkedIn connections and not so relevant to others, then I post individually as appropriate. However, usually, the post is appropriate for all sites since I pretty much stick to business and not personal or unique relationships on these sites. The exception, a small one, is that I do “allow” a more personal tone on Facebook from time-to-time. I keep in mind that the internet is “forever.”

Twitter has become a great resource for sharing information, not just the mundane. You can find a way to share with your followers in a way which is comfortable for you. I frequently find articles about business, leadership or science to share with others. To do this, and keep within the 140 characters, you will need to shorten the long urls normally used go locate articles. There are many such services available and the one I chose is bit.ly. It is helpful to use a service that also allows you statistics on how many times the link you create is used.

In order to help me gather and annotate the articles I think others might find useful, I use diigo to save the urls. It even allows me to capture the page and/or highlight the sections of interest to me. I find these articles by setting up a Google News page that is customized for my searches. And for an easy aggregation of the various blogs I like to read and to which I sometimes respond, I use the Google Reader.

This information is just scratching the surface of what’s available in the way of useful tools for helping you manage the time you spend and when you spend it to manage your on-line brand. And I’m sure you will find your own way to manage not getting “sucked into” that Social Media black-hole. For those of us providing the strategy, the effort and the follow up, it is important to keep things in perspective and set the expectations correctly. For me, that meant finding ways to shift the time spent on this branding effort to non-payment hours, finding ways to quickly and easily schedule “publishing” to work hours for my followers and organizing to provide useful information. It works for me. What will you do to manage the Social Media Marketing for your business? Outsource? Delegate to someone in your organization? Do it yourself?

I’m going to switch gears here a little bit. In Part 1 of this post, we were focused mostly on who’s on social media and spoke a bit about how employees and customers are using social media. The implication was a “larger” organization where there are a fair number of employees about which we might have some concern over the aggregate time spent on the internet and social media. In that kind of organization, there may well be a person or small team of people who are assigned the task to develop your social media presence and who can manage the content for you. The switch here is that I now want to address the smaller firms, like my own, where I will have to either do the work our outsource it to another company. In my case, I choose to outsource some of the design work, and then to do most of the ongoing work myself, partly to reduce the expenditures, but mostly because I like doing the work. For me it’s a challenge and it’s fun!

As I listen to all the “experts” (have you noticed there are Social Media experts everywhere now?), the start to all this is no different than any other marketing or advertising campaign – you begin by defining your goals and strategies. For me that meant deciding what I wanted for a look and feel (brand) for what I put in public. Then start with a website. Get some help if you’re not good at design and communication. Remember this – it’s not about you on a business site, it’s about the customer. So if you don’t like a particular layout or way of doing something, and the professional designer has discovered that your target market does like that kind of layout – guess who wins! If, like me, you’re doing this on your own, then you will have to learn as you go. Now if you need or want a robust e-commerce site, you will want to have it designed by a professional in a separate package like Dreamweaver, Joomla, Net Objects Fusion, Expression Web or some other highly flexible package. If this is a simple site and you are doing it on your own, you may want to consider one of the packages above to author the site or you may even want to consider using a Blogging software such as WordPress. Most Blogging software will allow you to put up “pages” that are static and simple – home, about, etc. So a simple site can take advantage of that and the Blog itself becomes your website. Either way, think through your goals and strategies and get your website up and to your liking.

The next step is to get a Blog up and running. Here is where the fun, and danger, begin. I have not done extensive work reviewing all the various blog software packages. I use WordPress and like it very much. I’m told that it is by far the most popular of the packages out there and I can see why. Whatever package you choose and use, the fun of blogging is that you get to write about things that interest you and about which (hopefully) you’re passionate. That’s also the danger. You can find yourself spending lots of time if you’re not aware and watching. For some folks, this is just like a gaming or gambling is for other folks. That could definitely be the problem for me. That’s why the “black hole analogy.”

I won’t go into an elaborate discussion about what you should blog about. In a business context, I believe the blog should have useful content. Something that people will find interesting and useful in their own business. In my case, I try to share what I’ve learned about business leadership, management, personal growth, etc. Your business may be based on products and so you can share about the industry around that product, perhaps some unique ways the products are being used. Remember though, this is useful information not an advertisement. Stay away from tauting your own features and benefits. The best way to get a feel for this is to read a bunch of blogs hosted by your competitors or folks in similar industries that are already up there on the internet.

If you have the bandwidth, consider doing a simple, useful monthly e-mail newsletter. Again, there are many ways to do this. Constant Contact seems to be very popular. I use a free package that requires some technical savvy to install, but once installed I can send e-mail newsletters without the monthly fees. I don’t recommend my way of doing things to most people though. Instead, choose a package that is simple to use and doesn’t require too much technical expertise. What goes in the newsletter? I find I can expand on topics from the blog or invite colleagues to guest write an article. I read a great deal, so I do book reviews on business and leadership topics. It’s fun, creative and I hope at least somewhat useful to those who bother to read it.

Okay, so now you have your web site designed, perhaps a newsletter and a blog hosted on the internet. An aside: a true business entity (in my opinion) has it’s own domain. An AOL e-mail address, or ISP address (like @cox.net, or @sbcglobal.net) do not cut it. You must have your own domain – me@mycompany.com. In WordPress, I can work on a post, get it the way I want it and then schedule it to post sometime in the future. I have chosen, for entirely arbitrary reasons, to post twice a week – Tuesday and Thursday. So as mentioned, I try not to take time out of the productive work day to do this. Instead I work on weekends or other “off hours” at my convenience. Yes, it’s still my time regardless of when. And yes, it’s still costing me because of that. However, like most small businesses, employees (including the owner!) wear multiple hats. I choose to look at my time as investment in branding/marketing, and I choose to do it myself rather than outsource it. You can choose to outsource it if you like, but you (or an employee) will still need to invest the time to provide content, edit, etc.

What’s next? Your site is up and your blog is up. Most professionals will need to be on LinkedIn. Think about the public image you want to present. Most social media sites request/require a profile. So far, everyone I speak to who has some sense of what’s going on in this space suggest that you have a common, consistent profile on all the sites. Especially for those persons in transition, you don’t want to have a different image presented from Facebook to LinkedIn. As mentioned, many if not most of the professional recruiters and retained search firms will look up candidates on LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites to see what they can find out about them beyond the resume submitted. You will want to be there and be found. As a business, you will want to be there and be found. And remember that the internet never forgets. So be thoughtful about the image you create for yourself on this very public medium.

Twitter. What the heck is that? Well, many folks describe it as a “mini-blog.” A person is limited to entering 140 characters, so you can’t say much. People choose to follow you and you follow others. You will want to pick a “serious group of people to follow” if you’re doing this for business. That will in turn generate “serious followers.” What do I tweet? How often? The answers to those questions will be up to you. For me, I stick to sharing links to useful information I find when I’m reading news on the internet (I no longer read printed news on a regular basis). I try not to point people only to my own material – this is not selling! You will find what suits you, but you will have to spend some time reading and “lurking” on the various sites to get a feel for what you might want to contribute.

Personally, I have limited myself to web site, blog, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and a once per month e-mail newsletter. I have tried to be as consistent as possible with the profiles. You can choose more sites if you have the interest and bandwidth. For “branding purposes,” I was also able to match the look (background) of WordPress, e-mail newsletter and Twitter to that of my website. Unfortunately, it seems to not be possible to alter the look of Facebook and LinkedIn.

Whew. Enough for now. Next post will be about some tools I’ve found to help me minimize the time and work keeping all these things current with new content.

Where to start and what can business leaders learn? I will speak only for myself. I too have come to be disgusted with politicians who glibly declare what it is that the “American taxpayer wants.” Really? Each side knows? And it’s different? There’s only one citizen consensus? And I have become equally disenchanted with public company boards who have approved huge bonuses and executives who have demanded them. Having said all that, I’m left with the mystery of what has gotten us in this pickle – certainly these guys aren’t stupid. And in the information age, you, they and I are certainly not without access to the information to make better informed choices.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book What the Dog Saw, points out one of the ironies in this information age. We have too much information and people hide things right in front of us. It will get worse, not better. For example, Gladwell points out that all the information about how shaky Enron was before its collapse, was available to the public. In fact, students at Cornell University studied Enron as a business school exercise. They analyzed the public financial information: “The student’s recommendation was on the first page, in boldfaced type: Sell.” Keep in mind that this report was published (and is still available) in May of 1998 long before the disaster hit. Here is one tidbit from the students’ recommendation:

In addition, our analysis has found that Enron takes more marginal risk than its competitors, in part to set up a high fixed cost platform for anticipated new markets internationally and in electricity, without a corresponding return to balance the risk. This is risky. Time will tell if it’s prudent.

Emphasis is mine. What’s the point? Well, the information the students gathered was in the public domain. They did not “Watergate” the Enron offices. What about the rest of us? In hind sight, it is almost as if the executives at Enron simply said, hey, let’s do what we’re supposed to do and report our special entities, make all the appropriate disclosures in foot notes and see if anybody notices. Few did. Disaster struck.

As a member of the board of a public company, or advisory board member to a private company or an employee, or a citizen voter we need to do a better job at educating ourselves about the issues at hand. Certainly we can’t do the same difficult, tedious and time consuming job the Cornell students did for every company issue or referendum, but we can help ourselves by learning more about how our modified capitalistic system works in general, keep up with scientific advance affecting our lives, and bother to see another’s point of view.

It has become obvious that we cannot trust the politicians to do the right things (no matter which party). It should be said they do the same thing many of us are doing; voting for things they don’t really understand and/or extorting advantages for themselves and constituents at the expense of the larger good, and/or purposefully creating huge obfuscating bills. “Let’s just put it all out there,” they say, “nobody will bother to read it or understand it beyond the paragraph that gives them what they want.”

So the bottom line is that the average American citizen, frightened about his/her prospects since more than 10% of their fellow employees are out of work, believes they can trust almost no-one. Not their religious leaders, not their political leaders, not their business leaders and not even those involved in educating the next generations. It seems as if everyone is out for themselves regardless of the effect their actions might have on the rest of society or their companies.

It’s time for us to take the blinders off. First we must live our own lives with integrity. Then we must not assume that it’s only the other executive or senator or representative that is corrupt – it could be our own executive, senator or representative that is corrupt. We have to hold ourselves and others accountable if we are to get back to doing business based on trust. As I’ve said before, trust is knowing that you have my best interest at heart, not just your own. We have to do this hard work to make our democracy thrive. We have to educate ourselves on the issues and not fall for the glib, sound bites that bombard us every day. The information is there. We need to get it and think for ourselves rather than simply listen to our usual news source or special interest group. We have to go out of our way to understand opposing points of view.

So, what will you do to make sure that we create an environment of trust and integrity? You are no doubt adding to the information we all see, so will you pass along to others; only one point of view without checking validity? Will you not even try to understand an opposing idea or different point of view? Or will you go out of your way to be hear and consider another person’s position? If your view doesn’t “carry the day,” will you sulk or be passive aggressive or will you accept the majority rule (or executive team decisions) and move things forward? In the end, we get the corporate culture and the democracy we deserve. It’s up to us.

I think there are many reasons why we’re moving away from the old “product/feature” or “needs/benefits” selling for all except the most commodity types of products. The internet is replacing salespeople and telemarketers in many of these cases. I believe we are and will be spending most of our time in “consultative/relationship” selling and migrating even more to “trust based” selling for our key customers and clients. A few of the reasons for this reframing of the sales process seems to be (a) less consumerism (for common commodities) thus a more sophisticated level of sales is left, (b) on-line purchasing is minimizing interaction with salespeople for commodity purchases and research, ( c) the economy is limiting what people and companies are spending so each purchase made is scrutinized and (d) social networking is training us to give value in our relationships – without expectation of quid-pro-quo.

This last reason is what I’m thinking most about these days. In face-to-face networking, whether you’re in transition or in search of business clients, you are likely finding that you MUST first provide value to those you meet rather than “ask for the order.” This concept, not an new one, hit the Wall Street Journal This Morning podcast recently, and it is sure good to have some validation in what I’ve been proposing to those I mentor and coach in the business community. The point is that from Social Networking sites where the protocol is to deliver value and NOT sell or self-promote, to the WSJ advocating the same generous approach to networking for your career we are being taught that unless someone has our best interest at heart, we should avoid “doing business” with them. How do we know if someone “has our best interest at heart?” Clearly, it is that they are focused on us and how they can help us rather than being focused on themselves and asking us to help them or buy from them. Think about this for a minute. If I am focused on telling you about wonderful me or focused on getting you to place the order with me, then how can I possibly have your best interest at heart? This concept is put succinctly in the saying “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

I am beginning to think that one of the more powerful catalysts for changing how we interact with each other (in person or remotely through the media) is being shaped by the etiquette we are taught in our Social Networking interactions. In their excellent book on Social Media Marketing, Friends with Benefits, Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo make it clear that marketers and those blogging or posting on others’ blogs or interacting with bloggers have to add value before they have the right to request assistance with their marketing program. What comes through clear (at least in my mind) is that “selling” is taboo in almost all cases.

So what are you seeing as the major reason for the move to trust based selling? Do you agree there is a general and pronounced aversion to the “old” selling models? How do you feel when someone posts a “solicitation” in a comment on your blog? How do you feel when you are constantly “sold” on a blog? Does this translate to how you interact with colleagues and professionals in your business life?