Dan Blank, Author at WeGrowMedia - Dan Blank

Integrate Your Offline & Online Efforts to Supercharge the Value of Each

Last week, I was chatting with Andrew Davis about the connection between online and offline behavior. He & his team shared two blog posts about the topic over at Tipping Point Labs:

Today, I want to chat about the concept of reinforcement – how businesses and individuals need to combine their offline and online efforts to supercharge the value of each and strengthen connections.

Too many businesses look at their online efforts as separate from offline – but combining the two is incredibly powerful. You can think of this in terms of research, content, marketing, products, customer service and so many other areas.

Let me share a simple example of how combining online and offline efforts strengthens and expands our professional connections. And this has nothing to do with LinkedIn. Okay, this is from the past two months of my life:

I spoke at a small conference awhile back. While there, I met some new folks, and began following them on Twitter. (offline to online)
Every so often, I’ll ReTweet something they say, we’ll @reply back and forth, and I will watch what they say, and whose Tweets they share. (online)
Over the course of weeks, we get to understand each other better, and decide to meetup for lunch. (online to offline)
A few days later, they are meeting with someone else that they know, and recommend that I meet this other person. (offline)
We are introduced via email, begin following each other on Twitter, and reading each other’s blogs. (offline to online)
We make plans to meetup and have a great conversation in person. (online to offline)
During our conversation, they mention someone else I need to meet, and introduce us via email. Me and this new person begin following each other online, learning about each other and emailing. (offline to online)
We make plans to chat on the phone to find potential ways to work together. (online to offline)

So here you have an ecosystem of relationships forming, and constantly jumping between offline and online – each reinforcing the other.

Now, imagine what this means for your business. What this means for your products, research, customer relationships and the like. If you have a ‘social media strategy’ that doesn’t connect to your offline efforts, then you aren’t properly integrating social media into your business and career.

Thanks!

-Dan

The REAL Barrier to Growing Your Business & Career Online

There are so many useful resources to teach you information, knowledge, tactics, strategies and skills. Books, websites, videos, courses, seminars, and the like, in both traditional and new media.

But often, we use these resources – read that incredible book, go to that highly regarded seminar – and then go right back into our old routine, implementing none of the useful insight that was shared.

So many approach the web to push their business and career forward, learn the best tips, and fail. Why?

Because many of the barriers to growing our business and career has nothing to do with tactics or strategies, and everything to do with the emotional & social barriers that we put in our own path. I’ll give you an example that I would often see with bloggers I’ve worked with:

The setup: I had to work with an expert or writer to launch a blog. The issues people often asked me about were searching for specific tactics that would make the process easy and understandable. It was all presented as tactics and strategy.
The real problem: But more often than not, the real barriers in their way weren’t just about content strategy, social media marketing and blog system management, but issues of identity, fear over time management, apprehension of putting yourself ‘out there,’ confusion as to the proper way to interact with other rational adults, and the many stumbling blocks thrown in our own paths that make it easy to feel that blogging wasn’t worth the effort. Even how we measure success suffers from this: focusing on page views as the only metric to judge success, instead of influence, engagement and outcomes.
The solution: Sure, I went through proper training and shared all kinds of useful tactics, strategies, and systems for managing their blogs. But the bigger part of my job was to break down the emotional & social barriers standing in people’s way.
At times, this meant chatting about how we measure success in life, how we interact with others, the mission of our roles in journalism & media, and confronting how we identify who we are in our markets, and the lines between everyone we connect with.

I feel there is about to be an explosion in online education. And admittedly, that is a direction I am moving in. But I think the key is not just to impart knowledge as traditional classrooms did, but in building a system where people can work together to also get over the emotional & social barriers standing in there way.

So much of this is more about confronting fear than it is about tactics and strategies. Again and again I see competent well adjusted adults ask questions about how to act online – on platforms such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. And while there are some interesting tactics and insights for each specific platform, the answer should always be largely the same:

Be a caring helpful human being.

Sure, we all need to understand and be comfortable with something new before we jump in. But the fear behind these questions is often about things like:

Confronting our fear of failure. Most people don’t try new things because they are afraid of failing and afraid of looking stupid while doing so. THIS is why you see media companies (and others) repackage the same old tactics in new ways – again and again. They know that it worked in the past, so it is emotionally safer to try it again and again instead of trying something new that could work… or could fail.
Confronting how we define ourselves, and how our professional roles are changing due to online media. Suddenly, people without the term ‘vice president’ in their title are gaining stature and building powerful networks. In many ways, this can threaten the most basic ways that we define our self-worth.
Confronting how others define us. There are many people with great business titles, who are concerned about losing stature if they Tweet or blog. That – someone of their stature does not go down ‘to that level.’
Confronting our own daily routines & productivity – that sure, you can fit blogging into your schedule if you are really honest about which of the tasks you have done daily for decades are REALLY worth your effort, and which are a waste of time. It’s hard for people to change their routines, and they will go to great lengths to defend them.
Confronting our fear of others – of expanding our social circles, which are often built as a protective layer of ‘friend’ or ‘stranger.’ Social media has made this so much more porous, and many people are incredibly fearful of putting themselves online, of who may contact them, and even of how to contact those they DO want to meet.
Confronting our own limited skillsets. It’s hard for people to say “I don’t know.” That is what I find so powerful about LinkedIn Answers – that professionals using their real names say publicly: “I don’t know something, how do I do this?” That isn’t easy for many folks – some people associate that with exposing their ignorance, their weakness, and are afraid people will realize that they don’t know everything.
Confronting exposing our hopes and dreams. In some business environments, it is considered weak and soft to show that you want to grow, that you have hopes and dreams. When you get involved in social media, you are exposing so much more of yourself. You aren’t out there just saying, “I’m awesome,” you are out there saying “I want to grow.” And to many, that is inherently a sign of weakness that they are wary to expose. Why? Because it means others have something they want, and exposing that can make people feel deficient.

So the training courses I am developing focus a lot on REALLY useful tactics and strategies for leveraging online media to grow your business and your career. But they also focus on getting past the emotional and social barriers that stand in our way. That – we need to work together to move into new areas, to build our skills, and build and understanding that failure is just one step on the way to success.

Thanks!

-Dan

I am Unbelievably Excited About Online Education

I want to share with you what I am most excited about, and what I am working on building. Okay, so we are at this AMAZING time in history. A-MAZ-ING. Here’s why:

The web has made it simple and free to share and access information, knowledge, wisdom and inspiration.
Social media has torn down the other barrier – how hard and lonely it is to grow, to reach our potential. With social media, we can interact with others – experts, amateurs, teachers, students, anyone who shares your passion. We can help each other.

Those two things open up the floodgates for us to realize our potential, and to grow as human beings. No matter who you are, where you are, and what you do – you can now follow your passion and expand your universe.

Whether you are a cashier in Oklahoma or doctor in Australia, you can access the knowledge of the world (for free) and interact with others who are passionate about the same things you are. It practically doesn’t matter your social or economic class, or where in the world you live.

This has been germinating in my mind for a long time, and I am working to connect the three things I am passionate about:

Creators
Education
Online media

So I am developing online courses to connect these things, helping creators such as writers learn how to leverage online media to build their brands and careers.

That’s the one I am working on first, and have a laundry list of others that I think would be compelling and helpful to so many folks.

Now, the goal here is not just to ‘impart knowledge.’ The training sessions I am building are not just comprised of sending out modules each week, but to work WITH people to understand their goals and help them get past the many emotional and social barriers in their way.

That last line is the key, and I am always shocked as to why it isn’t talked about often enough. Most of the barriers in our way are EMOTIONAL and SOCIAL. People who are pining for something new are often smart, skilled and focused. Yet… it’s hard to take risk, hard to change how the world defines you, hard to stretch your skills, hard to find the inspiration, and hard to make the time.

That’s why I’m developing some online training courses. Not just to give information, but to work with people. To create a community of helping, of sharing, of growing.

Today is unlike any other time in the history of the world. We have the access to learn, access to teach, and access to come together.

I want to know: WHAT DO YOU WANT TO LEARN? HOW DO YOU WANT TO GROW?

And most importantly: How can I help?

Thanks!

-Dan

The Virtual Handshake

Likely, there are people you would love to meet that inspire you and who could give your career a big push forward. More and more, you can access these people via social media – a simple web search will turn up their Twitter feed, LinkedIn profile, personal blog, Flickr photos, Tumblr, Facebook profile, and the like.

Before you give them a virtual handshake, consider how much of a contribution and commitment you have made to the ecosystem they value most.

Like a handshake in real life, the manner in which you are introduced to someone is often as valuable as the handshake itself. For instance:

Did you shove your way through a crowd, stalk them while the person was involved in another conversation, and at the slightest opportunity, run up to them, already halfway through your elevator speech, with one hand on the stack of business cards in your pocket?
Or, were you introduced by a common associate, someone who is familiar to them, who they trust, and who you have established trust with as well. Have you slowly built a sense of familiarity – that you are someone who is helping to create the world they value most?

I suppose sales people delineate this as cold or warm calls – how far along are you in the sales funnel, etc. Never is this more valuable than in how we interact as a culture – because so much of what we do is based on trust.

With the advent of social media, the ‘virtual hand shake’ is a way that we come to meet each other more and more often. And building trust before the handshake is not only about who we are and what we say, but in who we know, how well we play with others, and how effectively we are building a better world.

When you consider approaching someone via social media, don’t bug them. Instead, understand their world. See who they follow on Twitter, who they share links from. Find out what topics inspire them, especially the topics outside of your given market.

Understand their network. If that is the world you want to be a part of, then you need to make a commitment to the entire ecosystem, to a series of relationships, and not just rely on some pitch to get what you want.

The handshake is not the first step, it is the result of a commitment you have already made to that person, to their world, and to the common things you both care about.

Thanks!

-Dan