David Teten and I just debuted our first monthly column for Fast Company, entitled Crossing the Social Networking Chasm, about how this technology is moving into the mainstream. In it, we look at some of the objections people are raising about social networking sites and re-assess “realistic” expectations of them:

Business networking sites are not living up to the expectations of many people. They don’t effectively represent electronically the complexities of interpersonal relationships. They create awkward social situations that don’t exist face to face — such as how to deal with an explicit request to be someone’s friend, something most of us haven’t had to deal with since third grade. And they don’t prevent spam.

But the fact that they’re not yet living up to their potential shouldn’t blind us from the real immediate benefits to be gained.

We then look at five key benefits of online social networks that you can realize immediately:

1. Searchable directory
2. High visibility at low cost
3. Receptive audience
4. Easy group-forming
5. Get visibility into the networks of your connections

Read the full article at Fast Company, and we look forward to your comments.

Sharon Drew Morgen is the New York Times bestselling author of Selling With Integrity: Reinventing Sales Through Collaboration, Respect, and Serving. She’s also become a very good friend of mine over the past couple of months, and was an invaluable resource for our book, contributing both her expertise and her own practices regarding dealing with large volumes of email.

I just can’t say enough good things about this absolutely brilliant lady. Even after my many years in various sales and marketing-related positions, many books read, and several training courses taken, she took everything I thought I knew about sales and turned it on its head.

She’s giving a FREE web seminar next Wednesday, October 6. This is her first one ever, and I urge you to take advantage of this rare opportunity, as she’s a very dynamic and engaging speaker, as well.

Here’s the info:

The Elements of a Buying Decision: How Buyers Buy

Date: Wednesday, October 6, 2004
Time: 11am PST | 2pm EDT
Pre-register online

Join Sharon Drew Morgen LIVE as she introduces The Morgen Buying Facilitation Method® - the new sales paradigm that teaches buyers how to recognize all of the internal, unique systems elements that need to be managed before they can address or resolve problems.

• Learn why information doesn’t help buyers make buying decisions.
  
• Learn the first stage of sales – supporting buyers while they recognize, align, and manage their internal decision variables.
  
• See why knowing the client’s problem is not enough to close a sale.
  
• Learn why it takes buyers so long to decide and how to make it more efficient for them.
  
• Understand the full range of decisions buyers must manage before they will buy.
  
• Learn why price objections, closing problems, objections, and competition issues are all created by the sales process itself.
  
• Learn why solutions must include all internal elements that will be affected by your solution – and how you can help the buyer bring them all into the solution with you.
  
• Learn how to become a true consultant to your client by being a neutral navigator and servant leader.
  
• Our economy today makes it possible for buyers to get much of the information they need from the internet, but information does not teach people how to make a new decision. The job of sales must change, and Buying Facilitation teaches sellers the new skills necessary to sell effectively and efficiently in today’s environment.
  

Buying Facilitation is indeed a new model. It’s not just for sales, but for any influencing, collaborative conversation in which one person wishes to support another in making their very best decision.
Pre-register online

I don’t know if it’s just the business networking sites don’t spend enough on advertising with Ziff-Davis or if it’s just that cynicism seems to sell magazines, but following in the footsteps of Brad Howarth’s article, John Dvorak has decided to take a ride on the cynicism train and asks, “Business Networking Systems, Dead Already?”

Not hardly. Here’s my rebuttal:

Let me ask you one simple question, John:  what would it take to convince you otherwise?

I ask because my personal experience has been otherwise.  And so has the experience of the 1,000+ people on my Ryze network, and the several hundred people I communicate with regularly on Ecademy.  And countless contacts on LinkedIn.

The reality is that these sites are working for people — not for everyone, but definitely for those who take the time to learn how to use them correctly.  In the process of researching our upcoming book, we have collected hundreds of online networking success stories, big and small, and across a variety of industries.

There’s the copy editor who now gets 80% of her business from Ryze; the VC who got a Director position across four degrees (and the Atlantic) on LinkedIn; the New York Times bestselling author who’s currently lining up European training partners via Ecademy; the marketing expert who generated over $20,000 in revenues - product sales, teleclasses, etc. - directly attributable to his Ryze contacts (actually, there are half a dozen of these); the serial entrepreneur selling product management software and services who did four deals in six months via Ecademy - the fastest he’s ever started generating cash flow out of his five successful startups.

This isn’t media hype or doctored testimonials — these are real people doing real business on these sites.  I know them.  I’ve talked to them.  I’ve advised some of them.

Instead of saying that they don’t work because they didn’t work for you and a few colleagues and readers, how about exploring the actual facts?  I’d be more than happy to send you a copy of our manuscript, John, and you can see for yourself just how these social networking sites are working.

Fritz made a good point:

We are social beings that have been sold a bill of goods about how more is better.  It is better to have just a few good friends, maybe none (for a short while), rather than many as was assumed by these sites.  If you cannot get a “friend” to pick you up at the airport, then they are too busy to have friends.

However, it’s not the social networking sites themselves that have created the “more is better” illusion — it’s the users, for the most part.  If you look, for example, at LinkedIn’s guidelines, and all of their marketing, they don’t push a “more is better” approach.  In fact, they encourage people to connect only with people with whom they’ve actually worked.  The “more is better” thinking is a creation of the users.

But it’s also not as simple as saying, “it’s better to have just a few good friends,” at least not from a business standpoint.  Weak ties are usually where you find jobs, clients, etc.  You need to balance the strength of your relationships and the number of them you maintain.

And, each person’s needs are different.  A person selling a $20 e-book and $25 teleclasses has entirely different needs than a person selling 6-figure enterprise software deals.

I’ll also echo what Roger said about discussion forums.  I agree that there’s every bit as much opportunity in discussion forums as in social networking sites.  I don’t think there’s anything “magical” about social networking sites — the social networking is a nice added feature to online community.  Ultimately, though, it’s still the simple conversation between people that creates friendships and business opportunities.  Let’s set some realistic expectations — all social networking sites do is provide a platform for connecting and communicating.  If that’s not producing “successful results”, however you define them, then where does the fault lie?  You might as well blame the telephone.

So forget the media hype, forget the marketing from the vendors — if you want to see how social networking sites really are working for people, stop by my web site or drop me a line.  Or, you can continue to assume that your personal experience is representative of everyone else and remain a cynic.

The growth in cellphone cameras allows for more illegal video voyeurism.

This is the law of unintended consequences in action…

In this article on Networking Is Added To B-School Curriculum , you can see business schools acknowledging how people really get jobs.

My friend Stephanie West Allen recently posted the following sales letter to a list we’re both on as an example of how NOT to write a sales letter. I actually laughed, this is so bad. I’ve changed the name of the sender to protect the not-so-innocent, but have left the company names in, because without them it doesn’t make much sense. To the author of this letter, if you’re reading this, get out a pen and take notes!

Wow. If this were just pure spam, that’d be one thing, but this was a message from a real account executive at a legitimate company. I’m sure this was a mail blast, not a personalized email, but that calls attention to why you need good segmentation in your database, because this message is nonsensical jargon to anyone not intimately familiar with the telecommunications industry. Even a small business owner who’s the decision-maker on this is going to be lost after the second paragraph.

This is why you need networking, and online networking at that. A far more effective (and less offensive) approach would be search for CIOs of small companies on, say, LinkedIn, Spoke, Ecademy, etc., get a trusted introduction if one is available, and approach with a short simple message like this:

Stephanie:

Our mutual friend R. E. Furr suggested I talk to you. I see from your profile that you’re CIO at the Notso Small Company and that you all have multiple locations around the country. I also see that we share common interests in skiing and jazz.

I am a Senior Account Executive with XO Communications / Allegiance Telecom. Our recent merger allows us to provide a single-vendor telecommunications solution, competitive rates, and top-notch 24×7x365 service nationwide. Would you be willing to spend just 10-15 minutes for a phone call in which I can learn more about what you do, you can learn more about what I do, and we can see how we may be able to help each other out, either directly or possibly with referrals?

Thanks in advance,

Ivana

Based on the existing research and my own experience, I think you’re going to get about a 25-50% "yes" response on this — orders of magnitude higher than on the other. And every person you talk to has the potential to refer you to other people, if you develop a good rapport and communicate your benefits clearly. But don’t think of that first call as a "sales call". It’s not — it’s a networking call. If it’s even remotely a fit for them, they’ll let you know, and then you can start facilitating their buying process.

Remember, the relationship is more important than the transaction.

(my notes from this morning’s program on:)

THE BUSINESS OF BLOGGING
Companies Talk About the Profits in the Blogging Boom

iBreakfast.
Wed. Sep 22nd 100 Park Ave. 7:30-10am
HENRY COPELAND, CEO, BLOGADS.COM
STOWE BOYD, CEO, CORANTE
BOB WEYMAN, CTO, PUBSUB.COM
DAVID TETEN, CEO, NITRON ADVISORS
ISHWARI SINGH, CEO, A1technologies.com

Moderated by Alan Brody

Blogging has taken off - and the presidential campaign has added fuel to the fire. But what about the profits? These industry leaders say they are there: the user profile is older and more affluent than most people realize. Viewers give serious attention to the blogging leaders and the companies that support them. Just how much attention and how much that is worth - and where this is going - is the subject of this season’s opening event. Once again, we explore the opportunities for entrepreneurs, investors and marketers in the evolving digital marketplace.

Notes:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Henry Copeland, Founder, Blogads.com. By connecting bloggers with advertisers, Blogads.com has taken what many considered trivial or idiotic, making a market out of obscure, souped-up personal diaries. Today blogs are recognized as king-makers and breakers, and Blogads.com connects hundreds of blogs with a spectrum of advertisers including Time Warner, JohnKerry.com, The Republican National Committee, The New Republic, Rhino Records, O’Reilly Media, Bagnews and Paramount Pictures. Ad orders range from $10 to $25,000. A former bond salesman in London and New York, and a journalist in Budapest, Henry Copeland founded Pressflex.com, the parent company to Blogads.com. Beyond serving bloggers, Pressflex today serves as webmaster for nearly 100 newspapers and magazines across Europe.

Notes:
Dan Rather knows blogs are not just teenagers. Blogs are mavens.
Blogs are highly networked, unlike traditional news organizations, which are very possessive about readers & ideas. They are fast, because they are individual. They swap readers because readers get recycled thru the system. Bloggers are 10x more productive than journalists in terms of page impressions. Instapundit gets 1/100 of NYTimes entire traffic (which is ~400m page impressions/month).
Blogads in 2002 decided there was room in the market for someone to focus on placing ads on blogs. Very exciting audiences , influential readers. And very cheap to get ads on them. Now, 50m page impressions/month.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Stowe Boyd, President and COO of Corante, is an internationally recognized authority on business strategy and information technology, particularly with regard to real-time, collaborative and social technologies. His personal blog is A Working Model.

Notes:
Blogging is a dialogue. All of the most successful blogs are very interactive. Community members are communicating independently of the blogger himself/herself. Joi Ito is the best example. He has created an infinite # of channels of communication. Bloggers heckle, argue with you. They’re writing as they read.
Blogging is very democratic; the good stuff gets picked up thru wisdom of the crowd
Blogging is unmediated. Corante has 20something blogs, and there is no editorial step where things are reviewed before they are posted.
Generally written in the first person.
Blogging works bottom up
The world is made up of millions of small markets. We used big media / broadcast because that was the only option.
Blogging is driven by personal brand. Cant be manufactured, and cant be imparted by newbies just by putting them under a NY Times masthead.
Media business should reformulate around the new paradigm.
Burn your brochureware. Openly discuss your plans and goals.
Stowe worked with a company that leveraged a team of volunteer experts to provide customer support.
Your markets are smarter than you are.
Brand is not a promise, it’s an invitation.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bob Wyman, CTO and co-founder of PubSub.com, has been developing innovative, industry leading products for almost 25 years. Bob was the first product manager for the industry’s first customizable and integrated office automation suite at DEC and obtained some of the earliest in the field of DRM (Digital Rights Management.)

Notes:
Deja vu of dot com.
We’re going thru a change in how businesses do business. Not blogging per se, but growing out of blogging. It’s a change in how we relate to information.
Old paradigm is backward search: go somewhere and look for something, i.e., “polling”. New paradigm: technology brings the info to you.
Blogging technology (e.g., pubsub) will make bank compliance management easier, because it makes it easier to monitor transactions.
Blogging etc. stress the network because news readers polls. In response, we’re developing more efficient ways to use the network, allowing people to communicate via narrowband.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
David Teten is coauthor of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals with Online Social Networks, the first mass market book about how businesspeople can leverage social network technologies. He is CEO of Nitron Advisors, an independent research firm that provides institutional investors with access to frontline industry experts. He is also Chairman of Teten Recruiting. He was formerly CEO of an investment bank specializing in internet domain names. David has worked with the Bear Stearns Technology Investment Banking group and Mars & Co. strategy consulting, and run a computer-consulting group. He holds a Harvard MBA and a Yale BA. He runs two blogs: TheVirtualHandshake and BrainFood.

See Twelve ways to make money from blogging technologyfor my presentation

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
ISHWARI SINGH, CEO, A1technologies.com

Blogs get great search engine placement.
Every one of his developers writes his own blog, his personal status report.
Blogs do need to add value to get picked up; they cant be just self-promotion.

Q&A

Mike Levin—What is a blog?
Copeland: it’s personality. A prosthetic device for your entire being.
June Harvard Business Review: article on ‘feed time’: virtually every data generating event in a business should be published in a syndication feed.
Blogging is much more than people talking.
Stowe: Blogs are part technology, but mostly aesthetic
Looking at a FAQ is soulless; blogs have personality.

Instead of finding stuff on the web because of WHERE it is (e.g., on cnn.com) , we’re getting to it because of WHAT it is.

Q: How does Blogads compete with Google?
Blogads now has revenues of a decent pizzeria.
Bloggers in Blogads system have a lot of flexibility in their pricing. Blogads is excited about letting journalists make a living without working for big publishing operation.

Koreans, Italians, Poles, Brazilians, Dutch, are really into blogging.

Q: relationship between blog phenomena and usenets.
Bob Nyman: these technologies generate different styles of discussions.
Teten: Usenets are serial discussion. Blogs generate a broader, parallel, set of answers which are more thoughtful.
Blogs have advantage of bottomup, not top down, taxonomy
Importance of ease of use, make blogging popular.

Blogs allow digital reputation/whuffie/swarmth.

Brody: People will vote with their links.

Twelve Ways to Make Money from Blog Technologies

Notes from my presentation this morning at iBreakfast: The Business of Blogging

Table of Contents

I. Traditional Non-Media Businesses
Leveraging Blogs
II. Traditional Media Businesses
Using Blogs
III. Selling Blog Technology
IV. Monetizing Your Blog

I. Traditional Businesses Leveraging Blogs
1. Individual virtual presence : Benefits: Marketing, Job search,
Biz dev
a. Clay Shirky (Shirky.com)
b. Danah Boyd (Zephoria.org)
c. Zeldman.com

2. Corporate virtual presence
Benefits: Humanizes the firm, Get free feedback, One-to-one marketing
a. Microsoft’s ~1,000 blogs, most prominently Scoble
b. SchwimmerLegal.com/blog
c. TheVirtualHandshake.com/blog
d. Teten.com/brain-food

3. Using blogs to improve existing processes
a. Macromedia
b. Nitron Advisors
c. Teten Recruiting

4. Consulting
a. Stowe Boyd (Corante.com)
b. BigBlogCompany
c. Scott Allen (TheVirtualHandshake.com)

II. Traditional Media Businesses Using Blogs

1. Blog communities
a. 20six
b. Blogger
c. LiveJournal
d. Xanga

2. Data about blogosphere
a. News readers
b. Technorati
c. BlogShares.com
d. http://Blo.gs/
e. BlogCensus.net
f. Blogdex.net

3. Enabling advertising to blog audience
a. News readers
b. BlogAds
c. Pubsub

III. Selling Blog Technology

1. Technology sales focused on individuals

a. Blog software
a) Six Apart
b) LiveJournal

b. News readers
a) Bloglines
b) NewsGator
c) AmphetaDesk
d) Radio Userland

2. Technology sales to the enterprise
a. Socialtext
b. 21publish.com
c. SilkBlogs

IV. Monetizing Your Blog

1. Advertising on a blog/Universe of blogs
a. DrudgeReport
b. Creative-weblogging.com
c. WeblogsInc.com
d. Gawker Media (Gawker.com, etc.)

2. Charitable donations
a. AndrewSullivan.com

3. Subscription/ premium content
a. Justin Hitt, Iunctura.com
b. Graphic Communications World (Quoinpublishing.com)
c. daringfireball.net

How to turn a lunch into a sale

The Experts’ Guide To 100 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do

Be Your Best

Samantha Ettus has recently released an interesting new book with a good concept. For The Experts’ Guide To 100 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do, she convinced the world’s leading experts to offer their insights on how to perform everyday tasks - from improving your vocabulary and telling a joke to smiling for the camera and sleeping well.

Two excerpts:

Make an Educated Guess
By Stanley H. Kaplan, founder of Kaplan, Inc, a leading test-preparation company

Think about how many educated—or not so educated—guesses you’ve made in real life. We constantly find ourselves making decisions based on limited information. The techniques I’ve developed for standardized tests are just as applicable to making educated guesses in real life. Following are some simple rules for making sound guesses.

Rule Out Obvious Distractions. Part of making a good guess is ruling out obviously bad choices. Let’s say you’re trying to decide what to get your in-laws for their fortieth wedding anniversary. Without knowing much about their personal tastes and preferences, you can eliminate many choices. Rap concert tickets or a toaster are probably both bad ideas. If they’re old enough to be celebrating their fortieth anniversary, they probably don’t like popular music, and are likely to have already accumulated several toasters over the years that are now in storage. Eliminating the wrong choice is the first step on the way to deducing the right one.

Observe Carefully. You are at the airport and you run into an acquaintance, but you can’t remember this name. Before you take a wild guess, look for clues. For example, a luggage tag on his bag may reveal his name, or at least his initials. Pay attention to the details, or you risk missing the tip-off.

Look For Patterns. The way things have gone in the past is often your best indication of how they will go in the future. If last Saturday night your favorite restaurant was packed because the movie theater crowd next door had just poured out, chances are this Saturday will be no different. Notice past patterns, and you’re on your way to a smarter guess today.

Use Occam’s Razor: The Simplest Explanation For A Phenomenon Is Usually The Right One. It’s late April and your business hears from the IRS that your tax forms and payment have not been received, yet you are certain that you sent them in. While you could entertain a scenario in which your business competitor intercepts your mail as a means of getting you in trouble for failing to pay your taxes on time, it’s a lot more likely that the post office of the IRS lost or misplaces your mail. When in doubt, don’t fall for the fancy, convoluted answer. Simpler is usually right.

Use What You Know. You usually know more than you think. Even the most basic facts will take you far. If it is April and you’re in a college town seeking a quiet place to meet a friend for a drink, it’s clear you’re better off trying a bar far from campus than the one across the street from the main gates. Remembering that universities empty out over the summer will help you know that when June hits, your best bet is now a place close to campus. “Common knowledge” can take you uncommonly far.

Complete certainty is a rare luxury in life. We are usually guessing, and an educated guess is the best we can do.

Speed-Read
By Howard Stephen Berg, the world’s fastest reader and principal of associatedlearning.com

The average individual reads only about 200 words per minute. Yet you read the road in a car at speeds nearing 70 mph while simultaneously monitoring dashboard instruments, listening to the car radio, making cell calls, or carrying on conversations with passengers. All this is done effortlessly. So why do we read text so slowly when we read the road so quickly? The answer to this question holds the solution to higher reading speeds.

When reading the road, your eyes take in all the information as a movie. When you read a book, your brain converts the word-pictures into sound bites as a “little man” in the back of your head pronounces each word aloud. Reading is the only activity in which you use your eyes to hear, rather than see, information. We need a technique to make reading a more visual experience.

Using hand motions can quickly increase your reading speed by making your eyes view text more visually. Hand motions also help overcome several habits that can slow down reading speed—habits like visual regression or repeating interesting information. Visual regression occurs when the eyes continually go back to read words or phrases that have already been completed. It might sound like this in your brain when visual regression is acting out: The…The dog…The dog ate…The dog at a bone. Interesting information is pleasurable, and your brain desires pleasure. If something you read was funny, or interesting, it is tempting to read it again to reexperience the pleasure. Unfortunately, this is done at the expense of your reading speed.

Visual regression—and the temptation of repeatedly reading the same information—can quickly be overcome by the proper use of the hands during reading. In an orchestra, the conductor uses his baton to coordinate the musicians. While speed-reading, your hands perform the role of the conductor’s baton. They move your eyes rapidly across the page. Here are two simple steps to begin increasing your reading speed by using hand motions:
1. Place your fingers at the start of a line, and quickly move them toward the right margin.
2. Make certain that your hand moves completely across the page from margin to margin.

There are three possible ways to coordinate your eye-hand motion:
1. Your hand can lead your eyes across the line of text by moving in front of your focus.
2. Your hand can push your eyes across the line of text by staying behind your focal point.
3. Your hand can underline text with your eyes focusing directly above your hand.

Experiment to find the position that feels best for you.

Now that you can control your eye movements using your hand, you are ready to begin dramatically increasing you reading speed. Here’s a simple 4-minute exercise:
1. Set a clock to beep after each minute.
2. Read for 1 minute at your peak comprehension rate.
3. Read at double your comprehension rate for 1 minute. You will not be able to comprehend text during this minute, but you will be making your brain work harder so it can read faster during the fourth minute.
4. Read at triple your comprehension rate for 1 minute. Again, you will not be able to comprehend text during this minute.
5. Read at your peak comprehension rate. Amazingly, you will be reading faster—and with comprehension!

Excerpts reprinted with permission from The Experts’ Guide To 100 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do, published by Clarkson Potter, September 2004. Available at your favorite online or local bookseller.