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Getting your message in front of people has turned into a real cat and mouse game for some.  Seems like those boxes with the letters and numbers used for web site security to thwart those evil spammers isn’t enough to stop ‘em.  Reminds me of when I lived in the woods in Maine.  The mice were always figuring out whatever trap, bait or other contraption we could come up with.  The only thing that worked consistently was a cat: the personal touch. 

Other forms of leads acquisition are spokes in your marketing wheel, but for most of us the personal touch is the way to go.  So building a diverse network and creating key relationships is the best path for new business. 

I’ve been chained to my computer a lot this week, doing proposals.  Getting out has been tough but the shame of having to report my networking score card results in my coaching group drives me out.  Had a lunch with a group of folks yesterday (points) and will be going to a mixer tonight (more points.)  Watch out!  I’m looking for referrals for my “P’s”.  (Really big points!)  And I need the points. 

“ Strategy without tactics is the slow road to victory but tactics without strategy is merely the noise before defeat.”   

                                                                                                                            Sun Tzu                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

It seems that the idea of developing a business strategy is gaining more attention all the time.  I’ve often related my favorite quote, above, to business people I know.  And the theme is showing up more and more in books, articles and seminars.  Good stuff, all, and certainly important to business success.  But it’s one thing to articulate a good strategy and another to implement it.  In military circles, things like the fog of war are recognized as disruptions to even the best strategies. 

This fog of war shows up in our business world as the day-to-day execution of the “thing” we do. In fact, the biggest challenge that we may have is executing well on a consistent basis while maintain focus on our longer range strategic intent.  Strategy has more to do with competitive advantage while tactics are about delivering the goods.  Not easy when you’re wearing many different hats on the organizational chart, like most of us do. 

Just read this in Robert Middleton’s More Clients EZine: Twitter may be the most powerful tool yet invented for powerful online networking. Don’t get left out. Jump in today and create and implement a Twitter plan that expands your network, visibility and credibility.

Wow!  I hadn’t figured Twitter out yet.  I have a couple pretty savvy friends who are Twitter fanatics and my marketing guru, David Meerman Scott is a fan but I couldn’t quite make the leap past the mindless “I’ve just eaten my 4^th donut” kind of comment.  I think I get it now.  Here are a few ways Twitter can be an integral part of your online marketing effort:

The first rule is “How can I share value with my network?” 

So if you read a good article, tweet. 

If you write a good article, tweet.

Learn about a valuable event?  Tweet.

Want to get people to read your great blog: tweet.

Learn something new that could be helpful to your network?  Link them to it with a ….tweet.

Found a great video, you got it: tweet.

While an occasional tweet about your kid throwing up on you or your dog swallowing the car keys might be amusing to your friends, the real value of Twitter is bringing value to your network.  There’s a lot going on out there that could help us succeed but it impossible to keep up with it all.  That’s where a solid, savvy network and Twitter comes in.  Think what Paul Revere could have done with it.

Communicate, collaborate, and share information with your LinkedIn network like never before. You’ll be able to work much more closely with your contacts on LinkedIn with tools such as file sharing, project management, business trips and many more.

The video below gives an overview of our application platform featuring many of the application partners mentioned above.

Biznik has launch a new networking feature today: video profiles.

If you have been on my monthly technology webinar then you know we use EyeJot.com to instantly record and send video emails. Now Biznik has teamed up with Eyejot.com to offer Active and Supporting subscribers up to 5 minutes of video, all from within your profile on Biznik. No need for editing software. No need to shoot first and upload later. No need to cut and paste the link from Youtube. All you need is a computer with a video camera and they’ll take care of the rest.

Watch this two-minute video to see how it works:

Dan McComb, founder of Biznik says, “As far as I know, Biznik is the first online business networking community to include recordable video from within profiles. LinkedIn didn’t even give users the ability to upload photos to their profiles until last September, so don’t hold your breath on seeing video there any time soon.”

Stay tuned …

Something looks surprisingly familiar here?

Social networking site Facebook appears to have had strong influence on the new Linkedin homepage. The new left sidebar and tabs along the top of the window are a reflection of the popular Facebook UI without all of the nonsense non-business clutter common to many most Facebook pages.

One update to the site is “status” messages to indicate current activity, similar to that found in Facebook. However, in an effort remain business-like, you can only set your status to “(Your name) is working on…,” “will be traveling to,” “is looking for advice on,” “is looking for a job,” or “is reading.” THese restrictions are designed to be informative without being whimsical.

Another welcomed addition are the customizable “modules” that gather information from your networks of contacts. There’s an “Answers” module to show what questions have been asked recently by your contacts, a “People” module to offer potential new contacts, and a “Jobs” module to show what opportunities are available in your network.

Finally, to view the official Linkedin presentation of these new features, click on over to the Linkedin Blog.

This weekend, Linkedin announced the Mobile version of their site. This will allow all mobile device users with internet browsers access to select features on LinkedIn. It is live now. Just go to http://m.linkedin.com/ on any mobile browser. Of course, if you have an iPhone, you will see a version optimized just for that device. The stripped-down site offers a search bar, and the ability to view contacts, updates, and your own profile. You can invite other members from your phone.

Why is this important to business networking?

Imagine you are at a Chamber of Commerce afterhours and meet someone with whom you want to build a relationship with. Now, instead of exchanging business cards and having to remember the following morning to invite them to connect with you via Linkedin, you can simply go to http://m.linkedin.com/, click on the “invite” link and key in their email address. Linkedin does the rest. The following morning they will have an email waiting for them to accept your invitation and you will receive one back after they have accepted. Elegant. Simple. Way Cool.

Linkedin CEO, Dan Nye, said in a statement that “many of these professionals are on the move, attending conferences, sales meetings and client events. Making LinkedIn available on mobile devices responds to both these business realities and will be great for our users.”

For more details, check out the Linkedin Corporate Blog or this YouTube video:

I picked up a book last week, The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott. It set my hair on fire! I’ll get on that topic another time, (not the hair, the book) but right now I want to comment on something that kept coming to mind while I was reading. That is, how people use the terms “word of mouth marketing”, “referral marketing”, and “networking” when talking about obtaining leads. I’ll add another that I like better, “relationship marketing”. (That may be redundant, because marketing is about creating and maintaining relationships.)

The term that kept coming to mind is “word of mouth”. The reason is, most of the business people I talk with seek the holy grail: referrals.

And so they “network”. They ask for referrals. They rely on “word of mouth”.

And this is where we are falling short.

Most of our word of mouth comes from our own mouths. There has been a lot written and said about developing referrals through building networks and developing relationships. Heck, that’s my specialty and I’ve learned from some of the best in the business, as well as through the school of hard knocks. But the old referral guru, Dr. Ivan Misner, said it a long time ago: word of mouth marketing. (He even created a marketing plan called the WOMBAT Plan.) But it was lost on me, like I suspect it is lost on most sales and business people. I got caught up in the tactics, the getting referrals.

Networking and building referral relationships are only one of the aspects of marketing by building word of mouth. Check out Dr. Misner’s World’s Best Known Marketing Secret and David Scott’s books and learn about creating WOM. Dr. Misner’s focused on the fundamentals of good, old fashioned, hit the streets WOM; and Scott’s high tech, changing everyday, got to keep up, cutting edge version. Both approaches valid, one a part of the other. The basic elements are the same: market, motivation, message. They just offer different media.

How do you stay connected to the people you have met and interacted with over the course of your career? If you are like many, you really don’t. AS you life changes and the people you are in relationship with change, you tend to lose touch with many people. It’s not intentional (usually) but relationships require attention. Even if it’s a simple activity like keeping your address book up to date.

One thing we can be certain of in life is CHANGE. Sometimes life throws us a curve ball (or an opportunity) that requires us to re-ignite a prior relationship that has grow cold. Wouldn’t it be convenient to be able to reach out to them again without having to track them down?

Thankfully, today’s social networking tools present us with this opportunity. For example, one of the foundations of Google’s GrandCentral service is the “one number for life” concept. Craig Walker, one of the creators of GrandCentral, puts it this way,

When creating the company we thought about all the pain points of having a new phone number or a number that switches every time your life changes. Go to college? Get a new number. Buy a house? Get a new number. Change jobs? Get a new number. Not only is this a pain for you as you need to now memorize another number for yourself, but its even worse for your friends and family who have to keep up updating their address books to keep track of you. With GrandCentral as your only number, these problems go away.

Did you catch that? One number for life!

The service is still in a closed beta so you must request an invitation from a current tester. Until such time that everyone I know has a GrandCentral number, I’m back to the challenge of how to stay connected. Enter Plaxo.

Plaxo provides automatic updating of contact information. Because you store your contact information on Plaxo’s servers it is available to you from any location and any changes you make to your information automatically appear in the address books of all those who listed you in their own books. The ability for people to update their contact details on Plaxo and push that information out to other people is a definite positive.

Like many Web 2.0 apps, the basic Plaxo service is FREE and includes an easy to use sync functionality. A Plaxo plug-in supports major address books including Outlook/Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Mac OS X’s Address Book. Plaxo can also download LinkedIn contacts; LinkedIn does offer downloads/ plugins as well but nothing quite as comprehensive as Plaxo. There has been much talk around the blogosphere recently at Facebook replacing LinkedIn as a business networking tool, however being able to access LinkedIn connections via Plaxo makes LinkedIn all that much more useful as it delivers access to LinkedIn contacts everywhere, including the iPhone (Plaxo imports into the Mac OSX address book, that can then be synced to an iPhone via iTunes).

So there you have it. Get a GrandCentral number, sign up for a free Plaxo account and continue to expand your Linkedin connections inviting them to join Plaxo and you can go a long way towards maintaining contact with your network past, present and future.

When The World’s Best Known Marketing Secret came out in 1994, it was one of the few books in the bookstores that talked about networking. Now there are dozens, if not hundreds. Over the next several years, you will see more and more about the importance of networking to build your business. It is developing into a science as well as a way of life.

Networking is all about learning how to connect with other people in meaningful ways despite, or possibly because of, our technological revolution. Online networking works, but relationships must still be part of the process. Using the internet to exchange ideas, share knowledge, and increase your visibility will be imperative in the coming years. Technology flattens the communication hierarchy and provides opportunities to improve your networking efforts, not replace them. I believe people who understand this will begin to effectively use technology without replacing relationships, to take their marketing to new levels in the years to come.

Dr. Ivan Misner, in the recent New York Times bestseller, Truth or Delusion, says, “We truly live in a high-tech, high-touch society. The more technologically advanced we become, the more important it is to reach out and touch real people in our work – to connect on a personal level with people.”

And yet, as new as all this technological connectivity is, it simply takes us back to an earlier era, when we lived in small communities with our extended families and knew all our neighbors. The old ways have become new again.