Largely because of its extensive reach and low costs, social media has rapidly become an important tool for social causes and non-profit organizations. Through the use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, email marketing, and numerous other platforms, organizations are able to target and reach huge numbers of potential donors and followers.

Being able to reach such a wide audience can also be a two-edged sword. Particularly in these financially troubled times, social causes and non-profit organizations are inundating a target audience who is increasingly becoming less responsive and more thick-skinned to their postings. This in turn requires that each of these organizations develop and implement an effective strategy designed to meet their specific goals (which can include increasing awareness, fund raising, attending a conference, etc.).

I recently began working with several organizations including Vassar Hospital/Dyson Center, Mid-Hudson Workshop for the Disabled and Kiwannis Club of Poughkeepsie in the following promotion which we posted as a Facebook event (scheduled for March 31^st of this year):

Leukemia is a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow which many children are dying from. You know what’s sad? A LOT of us can help them. A simple cotton swab of your mouth to collect DNA can register you as a donor and a simple procedure can extract your bone marrow to save a life. Consider the HUGE impact you will have if you are a match for someone with leukemia!

(This event is scheduled on Thursday, March 31 from 3-7 pm at Vassar Brother’s Medical Center/Dyson Center for Cancer Care)

As we plan on making this an annual event, here are some more ways that we plan on promoting it using social media:

1. We will be visiting the www.facebook.com/causes app which currently has over 21 million active users. We will also be visiting the causes exchange (exchange.causes.com). This Facebook app will allow us to interact with many people and groups while enabling us to reach out to our Facebook friends.
2. We will probably also create a simple blog on Tumblr because it’s quick and easy (and free).
3. Since there are already numerous organizations involved with Leukemia and DKMS (“where Leukemia meets its match”) – with whom we are already working, we will enhance their Facebook and Twitter efforts by enlisting support and followers. This includes the loading of pictures onto their websites. One thing we don’t want to do is be in competition with anyone while still getting out our message.
4. We also won’t be doing any videos at this point. Although they can be highly effective, if you don’t have a reasonable budget, thousands of fans or a celebrity, they may not generate many completed views or results. Besides, for our specific cause, videos already exist including one by Shaquille O’Neil. If you do decide to use videos, I strongly recommend that you create several of them while making sure that you maintain a consistent theme across every video. (A consistent thread is crucial to a successful social media campaign.)
5. Discussions are also very useful. It’s a great way of building relationships, strategies and followers – particularly if it involves good, thoughtful content. This can be done on Facebook or on a site that promotes groups such as Yahoo Groups or Ning which primarily focuses on the development of a community. The reason why we probably will not use Ning is because we can’t donate the necessary time it requires to maintain and grow a group. Nevertheless, it can be a highly effective platform.
6. We will also use an email campaign to maintain contact with people who have expressed an interest in being a donor. This may include invitations to events, discussions, etc. throughout the year.
7. One thing you should always use social media for is to request help from others. We will be asking all of our friends and contacts to forward or retweet our message to their friends and followers. Remember, it’s social media; it’s supposed to be social and this is for a good cause.

In short, I will be participating in a social cause to help people suffering from childhood leukemia. I have included several of the steps in the social media campaign we recently started as a guide for anyone who would like to work with us or any person or organization looking to promote a social cause.

Bruce Newman is the Vice President at The Productivity Institute, LLC. An expert on social media, Bruce constantly writes and gives talks on many facets of social media including branding, social media strategies and policy.  He has developed winning social media strategies for companies of all sizes along with several well-received social media courses, services and products. Bruce is also the editor of the Productivity Institute Newsletter, a free content-is-king newsletter and thought leader. Follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the Productivity Institute blog. Bruce can be reached at bnewman@prodinst.com.

This article was originally published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

Developing a social media marketing campaign has become more demanding as social media technology and popularity continues to evolve.  This seems counterintuitive at first since there are more tools and more people.  However, it also means that there are more people trying to reach and influence each other.  It therefore takes knowledgeable and effective strategizing to create an effective social media marketing campaign.  In short, it requires the 4 S’s – Social, Sharing, Sustain, and Strategize.

Social

The first rule of social media is to be social.  Your communications must be positive, knowledgeable, incisive, thoughtful, etc. It is okay to provide some negative comments provided they are appropriate.  They just must not be nasty, racist or insulting.  Think of when you go to a party and meet new people.  The appropriate behavior you display is similar to your online behavior.

When you are building and maintaining your social networks, you must be social.

Sharing

The purpose of social media is sharing; “pay it forward”.  By providing information and good, relevant content, you provide the basis building up your contact network and branding yourself as an expert of your particular specialty.  Since each social media platform has its own “personality” and followers, it is important to distribute your content across numerous platforms.  In this era of proliferating social media platforms and subscribers, it is important that you utilize social media sharing to share your information with as many people as possible.

Sharing of information that helps brand you as an expert and increases the size of your networks should be provided across multiple social media platforms.

Sustain

The rule in advertising is that people need to hear, read or see a product seven times before it makes a lasting impression.  In social media, this number is impossible to track and largely irrelevant.  What it does denote, however, is the importance of remaining in front of your target audience.  This is accomplished by providing a sustained and consistent effort.  Blogging once a month is insufficient.  One of the key components of a sustained effort includes scrutinizing various analytics to determine which strategies are effective and which are not.  (Scrutiny can almost be considered as the “5th S”.)  Optimally, a blog post created twice a week coupled with sustained effort commenting, asking and answering questions on several social media platforms is far superior.

Sustaining your presence on multiple platforms will help enhance your social media presence, the size of your network and your credentials as an industry leader.

Strategy

In the past few years, the social media realm has grown from a small number of participants to hundreds of million people, many of whom use it daily for extended periods of time.  Given the ease of setting up an initial account and the huge number of subscribers, the difficulty of achieving an effective – and sustainable – social media presence has rapidly increased.  It’s nice to fantasize that a campaign will somehow go viral.  Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasing unlikely as that percentage continues to diminish.  In place of this dream is a campaign that incorporates SEO, possibly some type of paid advertising, blogs and social media to achieve a client’s specific goals.  An effective social media strategy takes significant planning and time to implement.  It does not happen overnight.  However, if effective it will provide substantial and recurring results, usually at a far lower cost than traditional media campaigns.

Utilizing an effective social media strategy across multiple blogs and social media platforms will achieve specific goals.

By adhering to the rules of the 4 S’s - regardless of the product, service or goals you are promoting, you can help ensure the success of any social media marketing campaign.

Bruce Newman is the Vice President at The Productivity Institute, LLC, a leader in locating, evaluating and matching the specific areas of expertise of consultants to the needs of its clients. An expert on social media, Bruce constantly writes and gives talks on many facets of social media including branding, social media strategies and policy.  He has also developed several social media courses, services and products including: Social Media Policy, Social Media Starter Pack, and Maintenance and Management (available through the PI website or by clicking here). In addition, Bruce is the editor of the Productivity Institute Newsletter, a free content-is-king newsletter and thought leader. Follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the Productivity Institute blog.

(This is the first part of a two-part article.)

Social media is rapidly evolving. Even programs that we frequently use are offering new functionality. Increasingly, this functionality involves additional interactions with other social media platforms although sometimes, it still remains within the application itself.

Two recent changes in Facebook that epitomize this evolution can also greatly affect your privacy. While Facebook has a mixed record when dealing with issues of privacy, it has rapidly grown despite dictating that it believes it knows best what is good for you (and for Facebook).

Facebook’s Instant Personalization

Imagine going to a new website that you have never visited before – such as Yelp (for example), and seeing your image staring back at you. I personally, would find this creepy. That’s Facebook’s personalization. It takes your information including your birthday, descriptions and preferences and makes it available to selected sites. When you go to those sites, they already know what you like – which consists of anything you have made public. They can then automatically tailor their appeal including music, gifts and advertising to your already known preferences.

Suppose you have posted a review of a restaurant on Facebook. Facebook can then provide this information to Yelp which could then provide your endorsement in an advertisement to your Facebook friends on the restaurant (and vice versa). To me, that almost borders on theft since my content was appropriated and used for purposes well outside of my original intention.

Facebook calls this “enhanced” feature a “magical experience”. I call this a money grabbing means by which Facebook can generate potentially significant additional profits solely by providing the free content of its users to other social media platforms.

Fortunately, to counter this usage (and possibly some potential lawsuits), Facebook provides a means of turning off this “feature”. (Note that Facebook’s default is to automatically turn it on.)

Here is how to turn Instant Personalization off:

1. Go to Privacy settings (under Account - top right)
2. Click on Edit your settings (under Apps & Websites)
3. Click on Edit settings (under Instant Personalization)
4. Unclick the checkbox (Enable Instant Personalization on Partner Websites) and confirm at the prompt.

That’s all you need to do.

Bruce Newman is the Vice President at The Productivity Institute, LLC. An expert on social media, Bruce constantly writes and gives talks on many facets of social media including branding, social media strategies and policy.  He has developed winning social media strategies for companies of all sizes along with several well-received social media courses, services and products. Bruce is also the editor of the Productivity Institute Newsletter, a free content-is-king newsletter and thought leader. Follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the Productivity Institute blog. Bruce can be reached at bnewman@prodinst.com.

This article was originally published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

Coupons have been around seemingly forever. In social media, however, they have now taken on a new incarnation: groupons.  What’s a groupon?  A groupon is a coupon that requires a predetermined minimum number of people to use it before it becomes effective.

To elucidate further by use of an example, a store offers a coupon for 60% off of some item. However, since this may be a drastic reduction, it needs to make a minimum number of sales for this promotion to be cost effective.  It sets this minimum and the percentage off for the product when creating the groupon.  Using the groupon, a buyer will purchase the item at the reduced price with their credit card.  However, the charge won’t be made and the purchase won’t be completed until the specified minimum number of groupons are used by interested buyers.  For this reason, buyers are encouraged to use social media – such as Facebook, Twitter and mobile – to tell other potential buyers about the sale.  The seller wins because it gets a lot of publicity and – potentially - moves a lot of merchandise. The buyers win because they get a large group discount and Groupon wins because its user base continues to increase.  In Groupon’s first nationwide campaign which just ended, it partnered with the Gap by offering $50 worth of apparel for $25 (a 50% groupon).  This resulted in 441,000 groupons and over $11 million in sales.  Did the Gap make a profit on the sale? Probably, but more importantly, it generated a huge audience and brand awareness.

Since the software behind this popular group model is rather simple, a growing number of sites are also offering group coupons – usually with a twist or specific market emphasis.  Some of these sites include: livingsocial, adility, 8coupons and even Zagat.  The food and restaurant industry is very intrigued by this model.  Baskin & Robbins used this model (in part) to help build their fan page to over 722,000 fans.

Increasingly, the goal of many social media campaigns is to build community and enhance brand recognition.  Chris Gayton, Gap’s Senior Director reported that it uses social media to reach people and direct them to Gap’s website where 70% of them make a purchase at a Gap store.  So, while the 441,000 groupons were generated by the Gap’s promotion, the real benefit was probably the number of people who were directed to their site.

Many campaigns are starting to emphasize brand exposure and effective campaign strategy.  As a test, on April 16th of this year, McDonald’s ran a campaign on Foursquare that involved the random offering of 100 gift cards in denominations of $5 and $10 to people who checked in through Foursquare.  Although the entire campaign totaled less than $1,000, it was able to increase McDonald’s foot traffic nationwide on that day by 33%.  Success stories also abound for restaurants with only one location.

Social media is rapidly gaining in importance to most businesses.  It has greatly increased connectedness to levels that will only increase as additional social and mobile technologies are developed.  It can greatly enhance brand and company recognition while deriving significant additional business and since this technology is horizontal, it is applicable to most businesses regardless of their size.

Not all companies can sell 441,000 groupons but most would happily settle for a 33% increase in traffic in exchange for a minimal time and financial expenditure.

Bruce Newman is the Vice President at The Productivity Institute, LLC, a leader in locating, evaluating and matching the specific areas of expertise of consultants to the needs of its clients. An expert on social media, Bruce constantly writes and gives talks on many facets of social media including branding, social media strategies and policy.  He has developed several social media courses, his latest course being the Social Media Starter Pack. In addition, Bruce is the editor of the Productivity Institute Newsletter, a free content-is-king newsletter and thought leader. Follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the Productivity Institute blog. Email: bnewman@prodinst.com

   This article was originally published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

The most frequent complaints in the marketplace are something like: “We have no idea how to differentiate ourselves with so much competition” and “Everyone I talk to gets lost in all the details”.  Many people attribute this to sales and marketing problems. They are not but instead, a problem with brand positioning.  How a brand is developed and implemented both internally within a company and externally to its customers requires a spoken criteria for initial contact and a true verbal application for everyday use.  Rather than be standalone entities, sales and marketing become an important part of this brand platform.

A Verbal Branding platform is the only solution.  It combines brand positioning – one or two concepts at most that convey how you are “different and better” than the competition – with a fully defined application for all spoken interactions such as sales, networking, and presentation.

5 Seconds

It only takes five seconds worth of brand-oriented information to immediately differentiate you from your competition.  This information acts as the leading edge of your brand, regardless of what type of interaction comes after it. It’s what people remember about your brand and what you offer.  Not only is it remarkably simple and concise but it also offers an inherent competitive advantage because of its revolutionary approach. Instead of your one minute long elevator pitch, your readily remembered differentiation pitch is now 5 seconds.

Verbal criteria involves the development of the key differentiators and is reflected in positioning development.  By employing it in spoken and conversational logic, branding results will have a different and significantly more usable orientation across entire organizations and be more effective.  Suddenly, everyone across the organization now knows what to think (in terms of differentiation) and what to say in complete simplicity; a rather unique occurrence in today’s highly connected business environment.

Consider: everything that goes on in business begins with thinking precisely about who you are and what you offer. If a brand isn’t developed with conversational logic, you won’t be able to propagate it through your organization because no one will understand the brand on a plain language basis. This leads to confusion and a of lack clarity in almost every aspect of doing business, adversely affecting performance and results.

Without a Verbal Branding platform, almost any branding initiative will largely under perform, resulting in a significant waste of time, money, and effort for often, minimal positive results.

With a Verbal Branding platform, there are at least four levels of simultaneous business improvements:
• Sales
• Internal culture
• Brand density (unifying sales and marketing, which is always a huge challenge)
• Management Modeling – management’s ability to set strategy and make decisions

With Verbal Branding you can marginalize and differentiate yourself from the competition where amazingly, the more competition you have the better it is for you.

(Part 2 of this article will provide real-world examples of Verbal Branding and how any company can use it.)

Stephen Melanson is the President of Melanson Consulting, a Verbal Branding development and education company. His second book is called, Verbal Branding INSTEAD!, due out in 2011. Please ask about speaking and project availability.

Online course: verbal branding
Email: stephen@melansonconsult.com
Web: www.melansonconsult.com

   This article was originally published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

When opportunity knocks, it’s important to answer, right?

Success in business depends upon the integration of many factors.  Commitment, excellent organizational skills, courage and vision are all important.  Choosing a direction and consistently working toward it is imperative.  All this, combined with an excellent business offering, will ensure that you’re poised to act when opportunity comes knocking.  Maintaining the momentum required for growth and advancement is important; however, is every opportunity worth the leap?

Success at all costs
Many of us were taught that in a job interview we must land the job – no matter what.  Once you’ve got the job then you can decide whether or not you want it.  However, chances are this tactic will not guarantee your career satisfaction; nor will it reflect well on your reputation.  Instead, what if you assessed each opportunity’s suitability based on its potential fit?  Approach each meeting from a fact-finding perspective and remember: as a job-seeker it is important that you ‘audition’ the prospective employer, as well as the other way round.

As a business owner, you may be faced with similar situations.   When a prospective client approaches you to provide a service not within your area of expertise, there may be the temptation to take the job.  If someone wants you to repair their stucco but you’re an expert roofer, this is probably not the best opportunity for you.

Fear of refusal
As a small business owner, or when just starting out, it might seem dangerous to turn down any opportunity.  Keep in mind that if you take every job that comes your way, there may be repercussions.  Due to inexperience you may end up doing substandard work, or the learning curve may be too steep.  You may spend too much time, bite off more than you can safely chew and develop a reputation for being unprofessional.  You may have been offered the job once, but chances are you won’t receive the same opportunity twice.

When faced with any opportunity, take a good look at its viability.  Make a list of pros and cons; determine exactly how much time, paid and otherwise, the job requires – what other projects might you have to pass up to ensure you’ve got the bandwidth to continue?  What level of job satisfaction is attainable if you take the project or position?  Are you setting yourself up for success by committing to a task you can excel at?  Will you be proud to list the finished project on your resume or as part of your portfolio?

In for the long haul
Much of this decision comes down to your mindset and confidence level.  You may be afraid that passing on an opportunity might mean that you won’t get the chance again – probably this isn’t true.  Instead, if you have the foresight to honor your strengths as well as respect your limitations, you will ensure that you complete every task you accept successfully, with professionalism and verve.

A one-time opportunity is great, but true success and longevity are dependent upon repeat business.  By passing on opportunities that don’t speak to your strengths, you’ll wow prospective clients with your honesty and integrity and guarantee that they seek you out in the future.  Refer business to colleagues and you’ll develop professional relationships that are supportive and lucrative.  All of these factors will come together to create an abundance of opportunities for you.

This anonymous quote sums it all up:  “To recognize opportunity is the difference between success and failure”.  Have the courage to distinguish the great from the mediocre and when opportunity truly knocks, go for it.

Katie Mead is the co-founder of Springboard Consulting, Katie is a passionate about good communication.  From a diverse background in the fine arts, she has developed a proven track record of success working in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Her particular areas of expertise include marketing, grant writing, non-profit resource building and management, fundraising, and the design and launch of various keynote projects and events.  Katie can be reached at:  katie@springboardconsulting.ca

   This cartoon was published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

We welcome your thoughts and comments on this cartoon.

Dave Walker
Cartoon Blog: http://www.cartoonchurch.com/blog/
Church Times Blog: http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/blog
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davewalker

   This article was published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

Imagine a dinner party with 30 literary and visual arts luminaries and you are the fly on the wall or perhaps in the soup doing the backstroke listening to them jabbering away.

From mid-century 19th to mid-century 20th Rachel Cohen in her book,A Chance Meeting brings these poets and writers and photographers and artists alive on the page. After enormous research from diaries, memoirs and biographies she has found connective threads that became the tapestry of the American literary landscape.

We are treated to a stream of numinous moments such as Helen Keller remarking how she felt, in Mark Twain’s handshake, the twinkle in his eye. We tag along with W.E.B. Dubois and his professor, William James on their visit to Helen Keller.

Small gestures are carefully observed as Charlie Chaplin ducks into a Hungarian restaurant to avoid a crowd and stays for four hours studying a violinist whose body movements he will later use in a film. Joseph Cornell is arrested for loitering outside a movie theater. He was entranced by the lit booth of the ticket seller on an otherwise dark street.

We are brought along with Henry James Sr. and his eight year old son, Henry as they have their daguerreotype taken by Matthew Brady. We learn that the self-conscious look on young Henry’s face may be accounted for by a remark made a few days before by William Makepeace Thackeray concerning his nine button coat shown in the portrait.

We come to learn of the centrality certain figures played in gathering and supporting their contemporaries. William Dean Howells was such a man of letters. He edited the Atlantic Monthly and lent encouragement to Mark Twain, Henry James and Willa Cather.

Another person to whom his peers flocked was Alfred Stieglitz. His early pictures were seminal in elevating photography to an art form and his gallery in the first decade of the century was the first to show Matisse and Picasso in this country. Stieglitz could talk for eight hours at a stretch. Some visitors to the second-floor gallery would purposely come when he went to lunch just to see in quietude what hung on his walls. This juicy anecdote comes from his elevator operator who also revealed that the door was always kept open. After a Picasso exhibit in which 2 of 85 pieces were sold Stieglitz offered the Metropolitan Museum of Art the remaining 83 for $2,000. They refused.

From Whitman to the Harlem Renaissance we get an inside peek at the passing parade; the same sex loving relationships known as Boston marriages, the father-son affection between unlikely people to the grudging support, jealousies and rivalries. I come away from the banquet satiated and thank Rachel Cohen for the invitation.

Indeed there is a generative body of poets, writers and artists who together can be heard as an authentic American voice, a noisy conversation across the century, unique in its struggle to articulate the inclusive yawp of the newly-arrived, the blues of the underclass, the untamed frontier and urbane East. It’s the hum and the hum-drum, the air we breathe.

Norm Levine is a happily retired pharmacist. After reading doctor’s chicken scratch hand-writing for 53 years he has taken to prose and poetry writing himself. He has published two books of poetry along with his wife, Peggy Aylsworth and one work of his own. Some of his poems are available on http://poetsplace.blogspot.com. He claims to have found his calling in creative idleness, thinking great thoughts which he tosses off the Santa Monica pier in a bottle.  http://normsnorms.blogspot.com

   This article was originally published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

Social media is constantly evolving.  With over 400 million Facebook users alone, it has rapidly become the most common activity on the Internet.  Yet, many companies are either unaware or have decided to ignore the two-sided nature and power of social media.

People are greatly influenced by what they hear from other people.  For example, if I want to buy a new car and several people I know tell me that they have had a terrible experience with the type of car I am considering, they will influence my decision and my thought process even if I decided to go ahead and purchase that particular car.

We can readily extend this scenario into the social media realm.  Now, when I tell the world about the car I am thinking of buying, literally thousands of people can weigh-in on their experience – or purported experience and in all likelihood influence my decision.  And that’s the power of social media – for better or worse. 

People are readily influenced by what they read about in social media.  A recent survey reported that 68% of people can be influenced by what they read online.  Furthermore, if they read something negative about a product or service they are considering, 53% of the readers will look into a competitor’s offering.  A second study found that 67% of Facebook fans and 51% of Twitter followers were influenced by comments made from other users on those respective platforms.  It is therefore important for companies to quickly respond to negative – or positive - comments on social media.  It doesn’t matter if they are realistic or not, a prompt response is important.

Prior to the Internet, when a customer had a problem with a product, he or she would just complain to the company or its assigned representatives – few other people, if any, were made aware of the problem.  That is no longer the case.  If someone has a problem with a product and tweets about it, the whole world can rapidly become aware of it.

Fortunately, social media also provides the means of rapidly responding to people’s comments and complaints.  Many large companies have set up teams that constantly search blogs and social media looking for some reference to their company.  One such company, Starbucks for example, has been known to issue coupons for free drinks for people who have tweeted with a problem or complaint.  This is not to say that social media can be used to rectify a problem, only that it can provide a (hopefully) friendly interface through which companies can rapidly and more inexpensively interact with their customers.

In preparation for a recent talk, I looked up a major computer company’s fan page to see what people were discussing and how that company was handling it.  Given its positive reputation and technical savvy, I was stunned to read the comments on the page almost unanimously panning its products.  In fact, one person even wrote, “Hey, don’t you want to do something about all of these negative comments?  Do you think anyone is going to buy one of your machines after reading this?”   (The company’s surprisingly latent reaction was to merely remove the fan page.)

Customer service can greatly enhance or detract from a company’s reputation.  Fast and helpful customer service will enhance the customer experience.  Considering the extremely high cost of customer acquisition and that existing customers will spend over seven times as much as a new customer, monitoring social media and creating an effective online customer service response – even for a small company, can greatly enhance a company’s reputation and sales.

Bruce Newman is the Vice President at The Productivity Institute, LLC, a leader in locating, evaluating and matching the specific areas of expertise of consultants to the needs of its clients.  An expert on social media, Bruce constantly writes and gives talks on many facets of social media including branding, social media strategies and policy.  He has also developed several social media courses, services and products including: Social Media Policy, Social Media Starter Pack, and Maintenance and Management (available through the PI website or by clicking here). In addition, Bruce is the editor of the Productivity Institute Newsletter, a free content-is-king newsletter and thought leader.  Follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the Productivity Institute blog.

   This article was originally published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

Walking into a crowded room full of professional people you don’t know can be stressful; it can even be terrifying.  However, networking is an essential tool for the successful business person, and though phone and email exchanges are invaluable, there’s nothing like the face-to-face meeting to make a real connection. 

So, unless you’re naturally extroverted or come from a solid performance background, you might be interested in a few tips to ensure that great first impression so crucial for forging profitable, sustainable, long-term partnerships to help build your business and make sure it continues to thrive.

1. Dress the part 
It may seem insignificant, but a first impression starts here.  What is your business?  Who is your target market?  What connections are you looking to make?  If you own a funky skateboard shop your ‘business casual’ might be different than that of the partner in a successful accounting firm.  Just remember that people will probably make assumptions about you and your business practices based on the image you project – your clothes are a part of the total package.  If you look sloppy, does it mean your business habits might be sloppy also?

2. Jokes: avoid them 
Although a couple of witty off-the-cuff comments might inject some levity into an otherwise awkward situation, you’ll want to be very careful.  Humour is subjective and if you launch into your stand-up routine, however well-intended, you may risk offending your new acquaintance.  Being known as charming and funny is great, but no one wants to be branded obnoxious.  Keep away from controversial topics, keep your comments on the conservative side and pick up on body language cues – this will reduce the likeliness of a major gaffe.

3. Use the person’s name
Not only will this help with memorization, it will indicate to your listener that you consider them important enough to pay attention to what they’ve said.  This will help personalize the conversation and will show that you are engaged by what the other person is saying.  And the next time you see them, when you’re able to remember their name, this will really impress them.

4. Cultivate excellent listening skills 
This doesn’t have to be complicated: as the other person talks, let them know subtly that you are paying attention.  Compliant head nods and comments like, “I see what you mean” are good ways to do this, and if you require any clarification don’t be afraid to ask questions.  Let the other person be the centre of the conversation.  If you monopolize the conversation, you risk being perceived as a selfish person. 

Instead of talking incessantly about yourself, make sure to ask questions of the other person and really listen to what they have to say.  While being polite, you will learn much more about the other person, better situating yourself to be of service to them in a business capacity.  Be an active listener and never interrupt anyone who’s talking to you.  Not only is this rude, but it will definitely work against a good first impression.

All of this, combined with an open smile, clear speech, and a good, firm handshake will definitely help your chances of making a great first impression.  The last ingredient is experience.  These tips will help, but the best thing you can do for your business is to conquer your reluctance and just get out there. 

Each time you enter the room and each time you approach a total stranger, the exercise will get easier – take advantage of the networking opportunities available to you and hone those skills.  Presumably your business excellence will keep them coming back.  But you’ve got to meet prospective clients in the first place.    
   
Katie Mead is the co-founder of Springboard Consulting, Katie is a passionate about good communication.  From a diverse background in the fine arts, she has developed a proven track record of success working in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Her particular areas of expertise include marketing, grant writing, non-profit resource building and management, fundraising, and the design and launch of various keynote projects and events.  Katie can be reached at:  katie@springboardconsulting.ca