The Hand Song

by Don Harkey

God put a message into my heart this morning. I was listening to the "Hand Song" by Nickel Creek. The song is a story about a little boy who decides to give his mother a gift. He finds his mother's roses outside and picks them for her. Of course, he tears up his hands on the thorns as he picks the roses and then brings them to his mother. The song goes on, "and she knew it was love. It was one she could understand. He was showing his love and that's how he hurt his hands."

The next verse tells about the boy later sitting on his mother's lap reading the bible. When he sees a picture of Jesus, he yells out, "Mother, he's got scares just like me!". The chorus repeats, "and he knew it was love. It was one he could understand. He was showing his love and that's how he hurt his hands."

The last verse tells about the boy who had grown up to a young man when he was called into the service. We quickly find out that he dies in combat helping his brothers on the battlefield. Then we hear the chorus for the last time. "And he knew it was love. It was one he could understand. He was showing his love and that's how he hurt his hands."

I love the song and have heard it many times before, but today it is worthy of more of our attention. I was thinking about the role I play of Daddy to my two young kids. Last night, I was playing with my little girl on our bed and she looked at me and said, "Daddy, you are a best friend!". My son, who is a little older, sat next to me on the couch while the storms went through. It was clear that he felt safe sitting there right next to me.

When you think about that kind of love, you can begin to understand the love that Jesus had for us... and we put him on the cross to die for us. With all of the power of Earth and Heaven, he could have denied us the sacrifice. He was human. He felt pain and emotions like you and I do. He looked at the people he was trying to save as they spit at him and called for his unimaginable death and he did it anyway. He died on the cross for us, not because we deserve it, but because we don't.

I pray that every day I will remember that sacrifice. I pray that as I conduct business, plan, and worry about the future, I still keep one eye on the cross. May I honor him with my life and how I choose to live it, knowing that both life and choice are the greatest gifts ever given.

8 Tips for "Plugging In" to Online Social Networking

by Don Harkey

Are you ready to try this thing out yet? Are you already trying it out? Here are 8 seemingly random tips from my limited experiences.

1) Try it, but decide WHY you want to try it first. Maybe you want to stay in touch with current friends and find some old friends in the process. OK. Join Facebook and go to town. Maybe you want to get the "word out" on your business. Think about how you will do it (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter). If you want to use the online networking for multiple purposes, consider creating multiple accounts or using one tool for one purpose and another for another purpose.

2) Be careful what you are posting - Part I. Assume everything you put online can be read or seen by anyone, regardless of your privacy settings. My Facebook setting is private, but my mother (who is far from a computer hacker) was able to find my profile picture (fortunately, its not provocative or anything).

3) Be careful what you are posting - Part II. What used to be somewhat "underground" is now very mainstream. If I am considering hiring you, what information can I get about you online. Some NFL teams have even used fake names to become friends with potential draft picks so they can see their profile and see if they are the "party" type or if they are focused on getting ready for football. People have been fired from companies for posting stuff online. Always assume that EVERYTHING you right at your computer can be seen by EVERYONE.

4) Post frequently, but creatively. Maintaining a constant and interesting presence in social networking is probably a great strategy, regardless of how you are using it. A "post" is an update on your status, a link, a picture, or a video. Don't be the next generation equivalent of the guy who forwards every joke to his entire address book. Think about who will read it and whether they will be mildly interested in it.

5) Remember that networking is more about "listening" than "talking" (or "reading" rather than "writing"). If you are trying to connect to others, make sure you are reading what they are writing. Follow their posts. Comment on the ones you like. Offer assistance when asked for it. The best online friends are those who are resources. If you are on Twitter, recommend your favorite follows to others (generally done on "follow friday's").

6) Don't rapid fire post. It is sometimes tempting to get onto Facebook or Twitter and get your thoughts out. You'll like this link, this picture, this joke, this thought of the day, and this status update. Too many updates in a short period of time tends to wash out the feeds that people use to track other people. This is especially true in Twitter.

7) Stay high level. Don't get too personal on anything online. Don't criticize or complain about people online. Don't post even generic complaints. Don't whine.

8) Don't get sucked in to the time warp. Keep in mind what you are trying to accomplish as you dive into more advanced features. Time flies when you are online. Try to keep control over your time and stay focused on what you are trying to accomplish. Facebook can be a notorious time-sucker! If you are trying to stay in touch with your friends but spend all of your time taking "what flavor of ice cream are you?" quizzes, are you accomplishing what you set out to do? I'm mint chip by the way.

I hope these help you in exploring the new technologies available online!

Networking Gravity

by Don Harkey

Knock knock...

"Hello! My name is Don Harkey and I represent the Acme Vacuum Cleaner Company of Walla Walla, Washington. I notice that your floors are incredibly dirty and..."

SLAM!

Ouch...

Whether you sell stuff for a living or not, successful people know that you are always selling something. How do you sell your "stuff" (or YOU) without getting the door slammed in your face? Does Facebook, Twitter, and other online resources offer opportunities?

Anyone who runs a business or sells "stuff" for a living knows that this door to door salesman technique for getting clients doesn't typically work. It is a little funny that some companies think that it does. The one advantage that we all have in the field of sales and marketing is that we are all consumers. The challenge is that we often don't consciously think about why we buy the things we buy. Ever been walking in an amusement park (like Silver Dollar City) and smell all the great food cooking and just get so hungry that you HAVE to pay $5 for a hot dog. Have you ever considered that the whole place is designed that way?

How many of you own an iPod, iTouch, or an iPhone? How many of the rest of you want one? Do you know why you want one so bad? If you talk to an iPhone owner, they really love the applications that are available. Many of the best applications are free. Are Apple and its developers giving away free software or do is this a way to get you to buy more of their stuff?

Think about yourself as a consumer. My sister-in-law recently told me about her experience buying a car. She went to one dealer who pretty much had her sold. She told him that she was visiting the local Ford dealer before making a decision. "Oh, you don't want to buy a Ford!", he said. She bought the Ford before setting foot in the Ford dealership.

Consumers don't like to feel like they are being sold. 50 years ago, that door to door salesman might be your sole source of information on vacuum cleaners. You would have had to make a decision based on how credible the information presented sounded. Where else would you go?

Today, information is not something that is difficult to come by. If you type "vacuum cleaners" into Google (I don't remember paying Google for their search engine... hmmm....), you will get 7.4 million matches. In the top page, you will see websites of vacuum manufacturers with all of the information of their products. You will also see consumer sights giving ratings. You can even find vacuum cleaner forums where consumers share stories of their experiences. You could probably build your own vacuum cleaner with some more searching if you wanted.

The consumer has been greatly empowered, and this is a good thing for all of us as consumers. As a seller, you have to realize the impact of this empowerment. Where is the consumer going to purchase their product? What are they looking for? The answer is that they are looking for information that is readily available and useful and they will be much more likely to purchase from the person providing that information (or from the person recommended within the information). This is "passive" selling. You aren't selling vacuum cleaners, you are providing the consumers information so THEY can make the decision.

Alan Weiss, author of several great books on consulting, calls this concept a "marketing gravity". This is a powerful concept whether you are selling a product or marketing yourself to potential clients or even within your own organization or to a potential employer. Nobody likes "look how great I am!" or "you need to buy MY stuff!". Much more effective is "let me help you" or "here are the factors you need to consider".

A challenge is how to get in front of people in a "passive" way. Traditionally, the best way is through commercials on TV or in newspapers. However, this is often more of a shotgun approach that targets a large market with the hopes of hitting a few people within the market. Mass mailings used to be considered "passive", but the shear volume of them has changed that. The same is becoming true for mass (unsolicited) emails. What are some "passive" options?

The oldest form of "passive" marketing is simple networking. You get yourself out there and meet people. Most people who do this at the beginning jump to the end of the process and immediately try selling themselves. Imagine going into an interview and trying to immediately tell the interviewer how great you are. It doesn't work. Successful networking is about trying to help others and making high quality relationships. It's a little like dating (I think... it's been so long and I was never really good at that). If you are talking about having kids together on the first date, you might scare her away! Really, the best thing is to listen and then provide resources to the other person you meet.

Online applications give us an opportunity to provide "passive" marketing in the same way. Take a recent example from Twitter. I like to post "thoughts of the day" from time to time. I posted, "Strengthsfinder is a great book that helps you find your top strengths. Send me your Top 5 strengths!". I received a response from a teacher in California who send me her strengths and a short description of how she is using it for her classroom. I returned a quick link to an article on this blog about using strengths to motivate students in the classroom.

I didn't "sell" anything. All I did was helped out this teacher in California. In the meantime, several others on Twitter saw this conversation. I began to establish myself as an expert in this field and a potential resource. If I were to repeat that in their eyes, they would start to think of me when problems arose and it might just turn into work. I am creating a "gravity" slowly pulling potential clients in. In the meantime, it is very satisfying to help people out on a regular basis with miscellaneous issues that arise! (This is called a "Win-Win"!)

This is a longer article than normal, but it is the crux of beginning to understand the potential of these online social networks. Business is all about relationships. Maybe... just maybe... Facebook or Twitter has more potential than telling the world that you are about to water your lawn!

Try it out! Take a moment to set up a free account on Twitter (www.twitter.com) and follow me and see if I provide anything useful for you (twitter.com/donharkey).

Surfing to Productivity

by Don Harkey

I want to thank "Church" for the comment and link on yesterday's article (she's always a valued contributor!). The linked article references a study that found that people who were allowed to "surf the internet" up to 20% (up to 1.6 hours of an 8 hour day) of their time at work were 9% more productive. What's going on here?

This makes sense within a framework. Remember the 3 factors that lead to motivation? Competence, Autonomy, and Relatedness. A bit part of relatedness is feeling like you are part of something bigger than yourself. Handling emails, chatting with a friend, reading blogs, watching videos of others, scanning through Facebook status updates, Tweeting... these are all ways to build relatedness in people. The issue I see is "what are you becoming related to?".

I have had friends with addictions to the internet. One in particular that I know used to spent 10 hours or more every day playing an online role playing game. He certainly felt competent, autonomous and related to playing the game. The online interaction gives us something that computers used to lack... the ability to relate to others while sitting alone.

A good question for businesses and organizations is how to do use this tool to build relatedness to the tasks at hand (ex: doing your job). The answer is challenging because of the sea of information available. Looking up information online is often very helpful, but more recent applications give us the opportunity to do more than that.

Imagine that I am given a new task at my job. I'm told to organize a fundraising event for a local charity. I've never done that before. I am feeling less than competent and, if there is no one else in the organization who has organized a fundraiser, I am also feeling a lack of relatedness. So I go to the internet.

Let's say I Google "fundraising". I quickly find links to companies who sell fundraising supplies as well as links to sites that give fundraising ideas galore. The information is overwhelming, but potentially valuable. I spend several hours reading articles, building up my competence.

The next step is I go to my Twitter account and post (a post in Twitter is called a "Tweet", discouraging thousands of serious business people from using this powerful tool) a simple message, "I need to plan a fundraising event and I don't know what I'm doing. Help!". Within a few hours, local resources for fundraising have contacted me with advice and words of encouragement. Even a few friends offer their 2 cents. I just discovered that I am not alone and am interacting with others who have done the same thing I am about to do. I am starting to feel able to relate to the task!

To sum up, social online networking is more than interacting with information, its about interacting with people. With some focus on tasks at hand, it can be powerful and motivating tool for your people!

Social Networking... What?

by Don Harkey

I'm not that old, but the age of online social networking is counted in dog years. In other words, online applications developed only 3 years ago are really 24 years old in networking age. I am defining an "online social network" as an internet tool designed to bring people together. Let's review a brief history...

When I was college in the mid 1990's, access to the internet was not yet universal, but it was possible. I had access through my work (relatively fast access for the time). The social network of choice at that time was the "chat room". There were countless chat rooms around all sorts of topics. Anyone could post anything either anonymously or not. The problem with it is finding people who know what they are talking about (this is an ongoing problem). Also, there were LOTS and LOTS of rooms and getting to relevant information was very challenging. Early chat room sites included Geocities (1994) and Tripod (1995).

An early paradigm shift occurred with the launch of Classmates.com (1995). Classmates focused on connecting "real" people with past classmates. You can register (for free) with Classmates.com and connect with others from your high school. Basically, you end up with a longer Christmas card list and maybe an interesting email or two.

In 2003, MySpace was launched borrowing heavily from features of other social networking sites. MySpace allowed users to create their own "profile" pages detailing all kinds of personal information and sharing them with friends. MySpace was popular mostly in U.S. amongst college students.

In the same year, LinkedIn was launched targeting business clients. With a more "professional" flavor to it, it allows users to recommend and "introduce" connections with each other. Several other business networking sites have followed Linked including Xing and others.

In 2006, Facebook was launched with to larger target market (the world) and with the option of using some applications (typically games or quizzes) developed by people not associated directly with Facebook. It quickly became the largest site in the world.

Perhaps the fastest growing application is Twitter (2006). Twitter has a few simple and unique features. First, it is much simpler than Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. Users enter what could be considered a "micro-blog" (called "tweets") which are 140 characters or less (ex: "Got up this morning and my coffee maker was broken" or "Just gave a seminar on leadership and continuous improvement"). The real innovation from Twitter is that it is public and its information is readily accessible from other applications. This means it is searchable. For example, I might be visiting Branson, Missouri and post "I'm in Branson looking for golf partners". Others searching "Branson" and "golf" might see your post and respond to you setting up a group to play.

Of course, I haven't even talked about Blogging as a form of social networking. A Blog is basically a website that is updated frequently with articles. The articles might be random or centered on a specific topic. There are all types of blogs (including this one!). By the way, for Springfield, Missouri blogs, you can visit www.SGFblogs.com.

OK... that is a general history (and I left a LOT out). Here is the question of this week for organization leaders. What is the implications of all of these online applications? Can these be used by businesses and business leaders or are they just "time suckers"? Which applications have great business potential and which ones are wastes of time?

If you fall in the "waste of time" category, you should consider a few things. Facebook, the largest networking site, currently has 175 million users, many of whom check their accounts daily. It is widely known that newspapers are struggling worldwide as many people get their "news" from blogs and other online resources. The fact is that people go to the internet for their information which gives companies an opportunity to position themselves as an "expert". Applications like Twitter allow for focused searches allowing people to target a local market (my iPhone can show Twitter users with a radius of my current location).

Another key thing to consider... few people understand what the next steps are. Technology and internet availability have finally collided giving a new opportunity that has yet to be understood. Is it and opportunity worth exploring?

At least for the rest of this week it is! Stay tuned!