I recently attended Social Media 09 in London, which was a face-paced tour of social media comment, case studies and demos.

As usual at these excellent mashup event, there are always some nuggets of information which change your perceptions.

For me, a couple of speakers nailed it.

Mat Morison talked about how "social norms", rather than "business norms" are applicable within social media and Andrew Grill made the point that it's the same rules which apply to any social gathering, such as a networking event.

Now these may seem obvious, but if you look at how many people behave within social media you can see how the point isn't always grasped.

It's a bit like seeing someone at a networking event who's rushing from group to group, working the room and gathering business cards rather than engaging in meaningful conversations.

In a networking environment you'd just call them a jerk; on a linkedin group you'd call them a spammer.

Many of the speakers used a simple 3-step approach for brands using social media. I think that it's equally applicable for business development.

Firstly you listen. Next you respond. Finally you engage.

It reminds me of much of the advice about "networking" in the 90's so it makes perfect sense in the context of social media, such as a Linkedin group that you've just joined.

Listen to what's happening and wait for an opportunity to respond.

Finally, once you understand the tone of the group you can initiate a discussion.

I kind of think that if more people took this approach then every LinkedIn group wouldn't have those "featured discussions" laying down the rules.

Labels: business development, social media, social networking sites

I've started a new group on LinkedIn called ExecPitch: "It's Dragon's Den meets the boardroom... on LinkedIn"

Our business is all about pitching targeted executives direct with new business ideas. Whether it's to get a meeting, a referral, or even funding, this outreach approach is the bedrock of business development.

But, with the rise of social media, I was wondering whether there was another way?

What if you could pitch a global audience of executives with your business idea and inspire some of them to take action?

I imagined something a bit like Dragons Den but pitching to a broader audience than investors and using an online platform rather than face-to-face.

From my experience of pitching senior executives, I know that they are open to hearing new business ideas; the problem is that they are time-poor.

Groups on LinkedIn (like a lot of social media and Web 2.0) are effectively crowdsourcing solutions; the pitches that get the most attention will get the most attention.

Great pitches will get followed most and, because this is social media, there is always the opportunity for your pitch to get accelerated globally both within the group's members' networks and outside of LinkedIn).

The cream rises to the top, as they say.

So, if you're open to discover new vendors with business ideas that could potentially transform your business... or you're a vendor who's willing to put your pitch out there... jump in and join ExecPitch.

Labels: new business development, social media, social networking sites

The jury's out but, with some degree on scepticism, I've decided to start a twitter account.

As I've posted on my blog before, see Is Twitter a B2B marketing channel? I'm still trying to work out where the return is (truth be told, I'm sure everyone else is too!) but I've seen a growing number of clients, associates, prospects and organisations I know join so... who knows?

If you're interested in my 140 character musings - follow me here

Labels: b2b marketing, social media, social networking sites

The guys over at RainToday are running an interesting webinar by Dana VanDen Heuvel called "How to Create a Web 2.0/Social Media Marketing Strategy for Your Firm".

Aimed at professional services firms, the webinar promises to "provide you with ideas, examples, and a plan of action for immediately putting these technologies [Web 2.0 & Social Media] to work to attract new clients."

I've been using social networking tools, such as LinkedIn for a number of years now. Back in January 2007 I posted "Is 2007 the year for Business Social Networking sites?"... maybe I was a year early :-)

Certainly social media marketing is getting more and more attention. Recently, I noticed that this year's adtech conference in London is being sponsored by Xing.

For me, LinkedIn remains the key social networking site for any professional service firm; I use it daily.

If you want to know how to use social media, and LinkedIn in particular, to develop new business, read this post on LinkedIn's own blog "From startup mode to being acquired by Yahoo! - The MyBlogLog story". Here's an interesting quote from the post:

"It occurred to me how they did what they did, and I reached out to Eric via LinkedIn - we had Sean Bonner of metro blogging in common. I called him up; he got Todd on the phone"

The key phrase for me is "I called him up; he got Todd on the phone".

You see, social media has changed the game, but it doesn't mean the old rules don't apply.

Sites like LinkedIn help you make a more intelligent approach. You can understand whether your proposition will be of interest before you contact them. This means that you can phrase your message so it doesn't appear as spam or just another cold call. And, where relevant, you can reference other people that you both know.

Essentially, you can warm up a cold call.

Labels: marketing, new business development, social media, social networking sites

The guys at Jigsaw sent over an email today for a webinar they're running next week "Microwave Your Cold Calls -- Sales 2.0". Catchy title, I thought.

But why does it seems that everything is "2.0" nowadays?

According to their blurb,

Prospects today are even more short of time than ever and "Old school" selling techniques are less-and-less effective. It's time to not only warm up your cold calls. It's time to "nuke 'em". It's time for Sales 2.0.

I agree that things have moved on. Email is the preferred method of contact for many prospects (particularly senior ones) and, as I've blogged about many times before here, you need to target prospects with precision to make an impact today.

Nigel Edelshain, who's behind this Sales 2.0 concept and is presenting on the webinar, says that most sales people "do reasonably well once they are in a sales meeting. But most of them are unable to execute a successful prospecting/lead generation program".

100% behind you there, Nigel. For salespeople also read: "any small business owner and Director". Nigel goes on to say:

One element that really distinguishes "Sales 2.0" in my eyes from "old school selling" is the focus on the front end of the sales process not the back end. The "old school" sales books always focused on closing techniques and said very little about prospecting. "Sales 2.0" flips this approach and puts most of a sales person's time and energy into research and prospecting.

Again, couldn't agree more Nigel. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that if lead generation is done right the deals almost close themselves (OK, maybe that's a bit far)

But, he's correct that if you target the right people with a well researched proposition it's at least 50% of the way there.

Whether that's really 2.0 or not I'm not so sure.

No doubt, Nigel will go on to show us how we can use Jigsaw, LinkedIn, et al to target prospects and that's where the 2.0 bit will come in.

But I wouldn't rule out the "old school" either. Even with the all the tools available to target prospects, sometimes you've still got to pick up that phone.

But that's just my 2.0 pence... or 2.0 cents if you're on Nigel's side of the pond.

Labels: sales lead generation, social networking sites, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

The two main business-focused social networking sites, LinkedIn & Xing, have both received additional investment and the signs are that 2007 could be the year these sites really take off.

LinkedIn they've recently closed another $13m Venture round, and Xing completed an over-subscribed IPO last month, valuing them at EUR157m.

But, aside from this investment, the world is finally starting to get that these sites really deliver value. Scott Allen, co-author of The Virtual Handshake, charts many of these stories here.

When I last blogged about LinkedIn back in March 2006, the site had 5 million users. It now has 8.5 million.

Now, LinkedIn had predicted that they would grow to 10 million by 2007, and there has been some talk about the fact that they have missed their target, but they say that they put more focus into improving the site, rather than localising languages for Europe and Asia (which is the route that Xing have taken).

Personally, when you look at how LinkedIn has changed in the last 12 months, then it makes sense, and 8.5 million is still keeping up with the "1 million users every 3 months" Konstantin Guericke talked about in this interview back in March 2007.

So, given that both these sites are still growing, have strong valuations with real revenue streams, and people are starting to understand how to use these new tools... I'm certain that 2007 will see even further growth and uptake of Business Social Networking sites.

And, BTW, I just checked LinkedIn this morning and another 5,679 people have joined my networking in the last two days :-)

Labels: social networking sites

What was once openBC has now been re-launched as XING, and it looks a much improved interface.

OPEN Business Club AG (the company behind XING) has been named one of the world's hottest Web 2.0 startups by Business 2.0/CNN Money and one of Europe's "Top 100" by Red Herring.

With it's re-launch it looks set to remain the #1 Business Social Networking site globally.

Of course, you could argue that LinkedIN is #1 with 8 million users compared with XING's 1 million+, but LinkedIn has never really considered itself a "social networking" site. Certainly, compared with others such as Ryze & Ecademy, XING is clearly ahead in terms of users.

The thing that interests me is XING's potential for international business development. The site is truly multilingual, supporting 16 languages, and has a global footprint.

It's easy to identify potential partners by searching for what people "have" and "want", as well as by industry. In addition, the platform facilitates open dialogue through sending private messages (your contact details are kept hidden unless you agree to share them with a contact) and online forums.

I still think that it's search capability could be improved with the ability to search "free" text on "About Me" pages (LinkedIN certainly has the edge here) but XING's "search agents" are an excellent way to find new contacts as they join the network.

I've been using this platform since 2004 (here's my profile) and have successfully developed relationships with global business partners & associates through it.

If you're interested in building your business network on an international scale, XING is the place to start.

Labels: social networking sites

I've started playing around with Spoke recently which, since this summer, has now opened up access for free.

Last time I looked a while back I decided not to join as it appeared to be predominantly US focused and I couldn't justify the monthly fee (when compared to the access I was getting via LinkedIn).

[BTW, it's still very US focused as you can't search for contacts by country, although there are non-US contacts & companies on Spoke)

So, how is Spoke different?

At a first glance, it's obviously set-up more for sales & marketing people than LinkedIn. It allows you to search it's full database of 30 million contacts (which makes it nearly 4 times the size of LinkedIn) and you can save searches and set up alerts (which is something that would greatly improve LinkedIn).

The main difference, however, is how it generates it's data.

This article, "Spoke frees up its database", explains this in more detail.

Until now, Spoke has created its database by scouring the web, using third-party providers, as well as asking its members to share their address book contacts. You could think of it as a cross between LinkedIn & ZoomInfo, I guess.

But, as the article points out, "Any kind of database becomes practically worthless if you don’t know whether an entry is accurate or not. Even if 10 percent of it is wrong, you can’t trust it."

To me, this is always the main issue.

All these tools, LinkedIn, Spoke, etc are just the starting point of any names sourcing or business development research. When you're tracking people within companies, guess what, they move about. It's about finding an appropriate entry point.

Sure, if you're after anyone in the C-suite, then just pulling up the website will normally do it. But if you want specific role-holders then you need to get digging.

It's like I pointed out in my post "Drive-thru or counter?", sometimes it's easier just to pick up the phone.

This was illustrated the other day when a colleague emailed me and said he was trying to get hold of a senior budget holder within a major UK retailer. He said he'd searched everywhere and couldn't track down a name.

I just picked up the phone, called their Head Office, got through to the right department and asked. Sometime the simplest route really does work.

It would be nice to think that we can sit at our computers and do everything by searching & emailing (and sometimes that does work). But then you're just limiting your options.

Labels: sales lead generation, social networking sites

I've just started a new blog on my personal website to cover my musings on online networking in general.

I'll still post on Maine Blog with any aspects of online networking which I think are of particular interest, but the core focus of this blog remains sales outsourcing and business development.

Labels: social networking sites

Just to add to my post this morning about the global reach of online networking platforms such as openBC, LinkedIn and Ecademy; here's a snapshot of my network on LinkedIn:

LinkedIn provides some interesting statistics on your network. On LinkedIn, your network is anyone that you can contact directly or reached through a friend and one of their friends (three degrees away)

As of right now, my network on LinkedIn has 3,082,900+ people. I say "right now" as it's just grown by 7,046 new people since March 25, and that was over the weekend ;-)

As you can see from this snap-shot, in the last couple of days 636 people in the UK have come within "reach" in my network. That means I can now find them, and vice versa. That's some growth-rate.

Does that mean that I know who they all are? Of course not, these are the weak ties that online platforms such as LinkedIn turn into potential relationship capital for business development.

Labels: social networking sites

openBC have just published their 2nd international openBC survey "Communication & Networking on the Internet".

Amongst it's findings is the fact that "beyond establishing business contacts (55%), almost one in six are now reporting business deals with openBC contact partners."

China tops the global league of openBC users with 22% having already generated new business and sales via openBC. This is followed by South America (18.7%), Europe (16.4%) and USA with 11.9%.

For me this is very interesting as it demonstrates that openBC really does have a global reach. Seeing China at the top of generating business online makes sense and, for me, illustrates how successful the platform is for finding (or being found by) new business contacts; a point I made in my previous post LinkedIn or openBC...or both!

Another even more interesting fact is that networking on the Internet is now seen as more important than at events.

The report shows that "Communication on the Internet is standard business practice. Apart from email, messenging and blogging, networking platforms for maintaining contacts with business associates and friends have developed into a convenient application. It’s interesting to note that networking on the Internet is currently more important for openBC users than maintaining contacts at events. Cultural differences play hardly any role in this."

I can certainly agree with this statement. For me, online networking platforms are a daily part of my business. Over half of my clients find me through either openBC, LinkedIn or Ecademy. Plus, when I am working on consulting or sales outsourcing projects for clients, I am able to use my network to help shape a client's value proposition and identify the most appropriate contacts within organisations.

Plus, openBC has been a great way of meeting new people to understand specific markets and sectors, as well as find associates to collaborate on projects.

Labels: networking, sales, social networking sites

I use online networks a lot in my work, and am often asked by my connections about which platforms I use.

To me, there are three clear leaders in online business networking sites. They are LinkedIn, openBC and Ecademy.

In many respects, openBC and Ecademy are similar platforms so, to keep things simple, I'll concentrate on LinkedIn and openBC (openBC has about double the membership of Ecademy at 1 million).

So what's the real difference?

In my mind, LinkedIn is focused on the connections and relationships you already have outside of LinkedIn, whereas openBC is a platform that enables you to make new connections and develop your relationships online.

LinkedIn has a culture of barriers to direct contact with people you don't know. Contacting someone on LinkedIn (on the whole) has to go through your network of relationships. Your contact, to their contact, etc. Despite their being upgrades such as "OpenLink" or "InMail" designed for direct contact, this is not used by the vast majority on LinkedIn.

Is this a bad thing?

No, because it has allowed LinkedIn to attract very senior people who value their privacy and don't want to be approached by just anyone. I suspect that if LinkedIn ran a different model then a lot of people would simply not join. LinkedIn explains the concept best here.

Because LinkedIn has over 5 million members, it should be something that everyone uses for their professional success.

However, if you want to find new people and develop relationships online, there are other places with a different approach. LinkedIn isn't really an "open networking" platform (which is why everyone who wants to network joins Yahoo! groups such as MyLinkedinPowerForum)

With openBC, everything is much more...well, open.

Firstly, you can search for anyone on the network (regardless of how closely they are connected to you). You can send direct private messages to people even if they don't know you (they have a very strong anti-spam policy - your email address is always private), and you can participate in forums with people who share the same business interests.

So if you're looking to meet with new people and develop a relationship online (or take it offline by phone or face-to-face meetings) then openBC is a very good platform to use.

It's worth knowing that openBC has a large European membership, so if you're only looking to connect to people in North America you may find the overall numbers are smaller than on LinkedIn.

So, personally, I can see advantages for using both; it all depends on your own objectives.

Labels: social networking sites

I've been a member of the Go BIG Network for some time and find it an excellent tool to tap into the latest deal flow running through the startup business community.

Essentially, Go BIG is an on-line community for start-up companies. Members of Go BIG post a request for what they are looking for, such as investment capital, job opportunities, partners, etc., and the network routes that request to other members who have expressed interest in that type of opportunity. Members can also post their requests publicly so that everyone can see who needs what.

Well worth checking out.

Labels: funding, social networking sites, start-ups, venture capital

I was alerted to a website called TopLinked today. Someone approached me and said they found me on the site so, naturally, I had to find out more.

Essentially, the site aimes to chart the growth of Linkedin and lists the top 50 people by the number of connections they have - I'm #37 apparantly :-)

The thing that surprised me most is the growth of LinkedIn. In July 12th, 2003 there were less than 12,000 people on LinkedIn (compared to 4.8 million now). LinkedIn predict that there will be 10 million users by the end of 2006 - that's some growth.

If you're not on Linkedin and are wondering what this is all about...sign up for free!

Labels: social networking sites

Anyone who's been following the recent bust-up between Linkedin's Management and it's "Power Networkers" will perhaps be wondering why the Friday 13th date has been and gone without any noticeable change (to me anyway)

For some background, check out For a New Etiquette of LinkedIn and, in particular, the comments by Konstantin Guericke, Linkedin's co-founder.

In essence, Linkedin's management are upset that some members are using the tools they provided (ability to upload thousands of email addresses and send mass invitations to connect) to SPAM thousands of people who are not interested in connecting on Linkedin. This obviously gives Linkedin a bad name and discourages people who would otherwise join and only invite the people they know and trust (as the founders of Linkedin intended).

Much of the revolt is happening because Linkedin have announced measures to curb this abuse by putting a limit on how many people you can invite. The figure of 3000 has been mentioned. At present it seems unclear if that's a total lifetime cap, or simply a cap of how many can be sent out at any one time.

For many of the "Power Networkers", who have upward of 3,000 connections on Linkedin, they will have certainly exceeded this limit already and therefore face the possibility that they can no longer invite anyone to connect with them. To a "Power Networker" this is basically stopping them from functioning.

I understand exactly where Linkedin are coming from in terms of stopping SPAM (and agree with them). However, I would say that they did create the tools to use the site for this purpose, whereas other networking platforms, such as Ecademy and openBC, actually have some inbuilt daily limits that stop this approach.

Anyway, this was all supposed to happen on Friday 13th (I think Konstantin has a great sense of humour) along with a few other changes but, as I say, I haven't noticed any major change on the platform.

But then, Konstantin did say that the people who were actually abusing the system (and had received complaints against them) were a small number and that "they know who they are" as they will have already received a warning by Linkedin's Privacy Policy Department.

Labels: social networking sites

"Don't get mad! Get money!"

That's the credo at the LinkedIn Ventue Capital Group on Yahoo!. I've been lurking there for a few months now and think it's a great forum.

Two of it's moderators, Bineet Ramrakha, and Christian Mayaud offer an experienced perspective from the world of corporate finance and venture capital. Their contributions are always informative and enlightening.

Labels: social networking sites, venture capital