...but they may refer/recommend you.
One of the biggest challenges that self-employed/self-starting workers face is self-promotion/self-marketing. Many F2F networking groups work hard to educate their members on how to identify those people in their business network that are potential customers as opposed to those who will be partners. When it comes to new Social Networking media online, many self-styled "Social Networking experts" appear to have difficulty understanding the difference between these two groups. They treat Early Adopters as potential customers rather than potential referral partners.
What is an Early Adopter?
Simply put, an early adopter is a user who buys into technology ahead of the curve. Early adopters are the folks who put Firefox on the map as a browser alternative to Internet Explorer. They bought Macs in the mid-1980s. They switched from WordPerfect to MS Word in 1990. In terms of Social Networking, they're incorporating technology like Twitter and Pownce into their use of sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
Early adopters are technology hackers, experimenters, self-educators. They wear being on the "bleeding edge" as a badge of honor. They don't need someone to teach them how to use new tech, they figure it out on their own. These are often just as much "experts" in the technology as those who market themselves as such.
In short, they're not going to hire an "expert," but they are very likely to recommend an expert to someone else.
Early adopters may enjoy a technology, and may even develop an addiction to its use. Most of these folks have jobs that don't directly involve the new technology, though. The legal secretary who switched from WordPerfect to Word in 1990 didn't have time to sell others on the wonders of MS Word; she still had to get the work done. Still, she was likely to talk on CompuServe with other Word users. In short order, she was an expert and didn't know it! For all her expertise, however, the odds were against her capitalizing on that expertise by going into business for herself.
Fast-forward to the Social Networking sphere of today. One of the newest angles in this sphere is the concept of "micro-blogging," using systems such as Twitter and Pownce. It's logical that the people to take up micro-blogging first would be those who have already bought into blogging and other maturing aspects of Social Networking. They've climbed one mountain and are ready for the next expedition.
And they're not going to hire you.
Still, the "experts" promote themselves and their skills, causing many of us to doubt their expertise as they continually promote their blogs, Facebook and LinkedIn groups, and announce how much they love helping people learn technology that all those in earshot (and monitor-shot) already know how to work. It's all preaching to the choir.
So, what's a choir member to do? Talk! Socialize! And ask for referrals. F2F networking groups encourage their members to get to know their fellow networkers, developing a level of trust that will enable them to recommend and refer each other. I'm not going to get the guy who owns the local comic book store (follow "bsicomics" on Twitter) to hire me to help him develop a Twitter strategy for his business-he's already there. I will, however, get him to refer others to me, because, even though he knows as much about Twitter as I do, he has a business to run. Same goes for the computer programmer who is at university, finishing her degree.
To get to these early adopters, one must establish a relationship with them. Since you're not going to tell them anything they don't already know about the specific technology, one must reach out to them on other levels. I've already written on how it's not a bad idea to be social when doing Social Networking - that's a good start. Finding common ground with fellow early adopters is both fun and profitable. Get to know your colleagues and they'll turn you on to the people they know who would benefit from your skills.
Case study in developing early adopter relationships: Greta Perry is the "Princess of Positive" She's a New Orleans blogger who writes for both her own site, Kiss My Gumbo, as well as writing and doing video projects for Nola.com. I may be a computer trainer and consultant, but there wasn't much about Twitter I could teach a blogger who was using the system as much as I was. That doesn't mean she was a "lost cause" in terms of business, though. By talking to her about our home town and sharing ideas on other subjects, I learned she was starting her own radio show on a local AM radio station, WIST-690. Next think you know, she's inviting me to be a guest on her show for a 10-minute segment. We're going to talk about streetcars tomorrow afternoon, allowing me to promote my book and the New Orleans Street Railway Association.
If all I ever did would be to try to sell Greta (follow "kissmygumbo" on Twitter) on my skills as a Social Networker, I'm sure she would have dropped me from her Twitter stream in no time flat. Working at the relationship requires more than just saying "Hello, I'm here to solve all your problems!"
The bottom line: Treat early adopters as colleagues, not students. Show them respect. Get to know them, both socially and on a business level. Develop trust and turn them into your sales force!
Feel free to comment on this post here, or follow YatPundit on twitter and talk to me there!
Recently in Business Networking Category
My Twitter buds are talking about receipts and business cards this morning, so here's a run-down of my scanners. I own three scanners, one standard, flat-bed, one portable that is 9" wide, and one that is business card size.
My flatbed scanner is a Canon CanoScan 600U that is a few years old now. It runs the CanoScan Toolbox software. It's also set up with a TWAIN32 interface, so I can use it with a wide variety of applications. This scanner is your basic $80 flatbed. I haven't even attempted to install this scanner to firefoot, my new laptop. I just added getting the scanner running under Ubuntu as a task for me for this week.
I was using this to scan receipts for expenses reimbursement, but it presented a complication. Because it's a standard-size flatbed, I didn't pack it and bring it along when I traveled to teach. If I'm on the road for 3-4 weeks in a row, I wouldn't want to be bothered with doing expenses in the 24-36 hours on the in-between weekends. That meant the receipts were piling up on my desk for the week where I was home. by then, the entire task was the ultimate pain in the butt, and an experienced procrastinator like me got very good at avoiding them.
Most of us can get away with this to an extent. sure, your bookkeeper/accountant will fuss at you that they can't get things done. When you're married to your CPA, however, it's more complicated, as you can imagine.
Since I fly Delta regularly, I pass through Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL) regluarly. There are three great geeky things at ATL: a Palm Store, vending machines that sell iPods and accessories, and NeatReceipts.
The NeatReceipts concept looked interesting - a portable scanner that's not a flatbed, but a feed-through design. A typical scanner works like a photocopy machine; you put the original face down, and the bar with the scanning element is pulled across the length of the original, storing the image digitally as it goes. A feed-through scanner switches the movement. The entire scanner is page-width (9"), but it's only as thick as the scanning element, maybe 3" or so. That means it's very portable. The software is straightforward, scan-to-PDF, which is all most of us need to scan receipts.
I hesitated buying it, thinking, do I really need to spend $200 on another scanner? When my CPA threatened to withhold marital favors, I still procrastinated. When she threatened to change the locks, I figured she might be serious, so I bought one.
It's wonderful. I can pack the NeatReceipts scanner in my suitcase and do bills while watching TV on the road, emailing it all back to my CPA, thereby guaranteeing I don't have to sleep on the patio when I come home late one evening.
NeatRecepits has a MAC version of the software, as well, Greta. :-)
My third scanner is for business cards. It's an older CardScan (600x). In addition to the very-techie stuff I travel to teach, I also do a bit of "end-user" training, particularly stuff that helps self-employed and self-starters. It started with me showing folks in my BNI chapter a thing or two, and that grew into regularly scheduled classes. I taught the ACT! contact management software, occasional classes on MS Outlook, etc. One of the most popular classes I ever taught is called "How To Use A Business Card Scanner." I talk about how the scanner will scan a bitmap (graphical) image of the card, then use OCR (optical character recognition) software to turn that into fields in an "address book" style database. Depending on the specific software used, that scanned-card database can be exported to various other applications, like Outlook or ACT!
Business Card scanners are a very useful tool for those engaging in a lot of face-to-face business networking. If you go to business card exchanges, networking mixers, etc., you trade a lot of cards, and the prospect of keying all that data into your computer can be daunting. The CardScan scanner+software's pricetag ($225 or so) doesn't look so bad at that point.
(As an aside, the NeatReceipts website says you can scan biz cards with that scanner as well. I don't know how good their OCR software is, though.)
Which scanner works for you? A flatbed scanner is important for anyone who wants to scan photos, or use the scanner/computer/printer combination as a photocopy machine. NeatReceipts is perfect for road warriors, and the small, bizcard-size scanners make business networking a snap.
