Employ the Power of Community

By Victoria Munro of Make-it-Fly®

 

Since its inception, a key focus of Make-it-Fly® has been to employ (and enjoy) the power of community. Working with small business owners, we see that a sense of isolation often goes along with being the boss and running a business. The phrase, “It’s lonely at the top” holds a lot of meaning. There are some things you just can’t share with employees, colleagues or friends. For those working from home, it can be lonely too—no more water cooler conversations.

 

Because we’re innately social beings, this isolation can be tough. Through advisory boards, our goal has been and is to give entrepreneurs an environment of professional camaraderie and confidentiality—a caring group of peers offering their hard-earned expertise and ideas that enable each other reach better solutions. When we gather around a boardroom table with the objective of helping and learning from one another, the magic of community takes place. We also see it at Make-it-Fly Café events—it’s about connecting and networking.

 

In the last three years, online social networking has exploded. If you’re not already involved, as a business owner, you should give it serious attention. You can reap rich rewards, but there are challenges.

 

Some Potential Rewards:

• Online social networking is free—no big financial expense.
• It can give you immediate reaction and response to ideas and issues.
• It’s a valuable way to find needed resources.
• It can increase your visibility, giving you opportunity to promote yourself and your business to the world. People are looking for information online, so give it to them.
• Your network of contacts can grow beyond geographical and cultural differences as you connect with people the other side of the globe. .

Connecting with others can be fun and profitable, but it takes time. When interviewed on social networking, author Seth Godin warned that the Internet has allowed an enormous amount of fake networking to take place. “Networking is always important when it’s real,” he stressed. “And it’s always a useless distraction when it’s fake. It’s so easy to be seduced by it because there’s a scoreboard. It’s not about your number of Twitter followers or Facebook friends. But, are there people whom I would go out of my way for and who would go out of their way for me?”

Tip: Before spending hours of your precious time connecting online, know what you want and expect to gain. Have a strategy and set specific goals. Put your plan in place, and track the results of your time investment.

Tip: Consider hiring someone or use a service to help. Large corporations now have staff dedicated solely to social networking for the company.

Tip: Be authentic and be professional—you never know who may read what you write.

 

At Make-it-Fly, we’re more passionate than ever about creating genuine win-win communities, and Sky-Place is another opportunity to do that.

I encourage you to sign up now at Sky-Place.com and connect, collaborate, create—enjoy the power of community!

© Victoria Munro.

 

About the Author: Victoria Munro is co-founder (along with husband Dave Block) of Make-it-Fly® LLC, a company dedicated to creating success for small-business owners through creatively designed programs and tools. Victoria has started and run nine different businesses. To receive FREE business success articles with tips to help you with your business, sign up for their award-winning ezine, “In-Flight Refueling,” at: www.Make-it-Fly.com, and receive a free copy of the eBook, Get More Done in Less Time: 101 Quick and Easy Time Tactics & Tips.