The time frame we sit in is commonly known, by economists, as a consolidation era. If you look back on the last twelve years from a charting perspective, you can notice some very basic things. We just experienced a huge bull run, or a run upwards in the market, with the dot com business which led all the way into the year 2000. From there we have seen a tremendous bear run, or fall in the market. In the real estate world we witnessed one of the best times in industry history through 2007, and since have seen one of the most discouraging real estate markets in our country’s lifespan. This trend, a huge rush upward and then a huge fall, is consistently followed by a 7-12 year period where the markets do not move much. They go up and down but generally stay within a certain range; this is called a consolidation era.

In these times of economic turmoil we see many of trends that are consistent with each other. Some examples include rising unemployment, the power of the dollar decreasing, and shared-space businesses. The shared-space business is a simple concept: two separate companies sharing space to provide their goods or services. If this concept seems foreign, think back ten years ago and consider the gas station business. Could you stop and fill up while you waited for your favorite sandwich artist to make you a turkey on wheat from Subway? Were you able to go to Wal-Mart and buy your groceries, clothing, home goods and a number two combo with cheese from McDonald’s? Of course you couldn’t, it was not a consolidation era.

So what does this mean to you? Why is this so important to understand? The reasons are numerous, and we could discuss them for days. However, in this article I am going to cover three main points and give you some advice on how to leverage your business accordingly. It is important to do the following things to optimize the current economy:

1. Acquire talent
2. Profit by affiliation
3. Locate inexpensive growth opportunities

In eras like the one we are experiencing today, we realize that businesses are going to shut down. The economy has a way of squeezing the weak out of the market, which should be seen as an opportunity for those that are still in business. A business closing means that people will be out of work (talented people), furniture and computers will go on sale for fractions of the cost, and new office space will open up. So how do we take charge and make something positive out of something so negative?

First, remain aware of the local talent that may be sprouting up after one of these businesses closes down. This decade’s employment scenario will include thousands of superstars on the market with nowhere to place them; this is a rare and wonderful opportunity for employers. Individuals that have lost their jobs in this economy accept and understand that they will not make the kind of money they have made in the past; this is just a fact. Use social networking tools like LinkedIn and Facebook to monitor an audience and locate who is out there. Make sure you have your ear to the street and listen to the problems in your community, it will not only help your business but it will allow you to help your community.

Aside from being able to find new talent, many doors will open for you to find more value. The more value you add, the more successful your business will be. The more value a customer sees in your product or service, the more often they will buy from you. Look to find ways to profit by association in 2011. Find ways to use the consolidation era to your advantage instead of resisting it.

Welcome those companies that used to be competition and work together. Find companies that offer a service or a product that can add value to your offering and cut a deal to work as a team. Create a powerful team of relevant offerings that will ultimately drive revenue through your hands. Find a complimentary business and ask them if you can assist in their marketing efforts by opening your book of business to them as a referral network. In times like these, it is just as important to find ways to offer savings as it is to show ways to create profits. If you own an accounting firm and are hurting, go to a local financial planner that could use a boost in his marketing and send clients their way in exchange for a shot at their customers.

Look to new methods of distribution as a way to profit by association. There are so many ways to expand your wings and explore creative solutions it’s staggering. Use the internet and offer your product through affiliate sites, open an e-commerce store, share links with businesses online to create new orders and so on. You can also look to the market to find these avenues in the real world.

For example, I have a friend that owns a candy store in the mall and he came to LWI for advice. We suggested he launch an e-commerce site and start using social media as a way to promote, and it’s working. I also told him to contact another friend of mine that owns a party store. The candy store now offers party supply materials and custom ordering through a store portal, while the party store is offering a ton of new candy to their customers thirty miles away. They both realized that they could work together instead of competing and that they had built in channels to provide a new product to each other through their product carriers. This is profiting by association.

Profiting by association is a simple way to increase reach, revenue, opportunity, and growth. It also happens to be an inexpensive way to expand your business in the blink of an eye. We will go more in depth on this topic and include additional real world studies in upcoming newsletters in 2011. Have a great holiday and remember; always use your vision, not just your sight.

By Eric A. Rice

CEO of LWI

Propelled by one billion peer users, social media has become the fastest growing marketing medium in the U.S. — nonetheless, the much-anticipated monetization of social media remains an unrealized quest for the Holy Grail. Legions of traditional marketers have predictably descended upon Facebook, Twitter, and countless blogs with transparent greed, but have largely failed to monetize social media, due to clumsy efforts that violate peer-to-peer trust etiquette. This can be directly attributed to the low levels of understanding as to how social media really works, within a business.

There are so many “things” involved in social media that it becomes almost impossible to figure out what is truly going on. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Bookmarks, keywords, searches, email, and many more options make it almost impossible for the layman to grasp what to do. In this article, we hope to clear that up by explaining social media as a living thing, a functioning body of communication similar to the human body.

The basics of the body are simple, without food we die in a matter of days, without water that time is cut in half and without air we will die in a couple of minutes. So, the primary needs of the body are air, water and food in that order. In order to do this let’s take a look at the human body first. Within the structure of the body there are certain “musts”, and that’s all we will cover for now. The brain, the heart, the lungs, the vein system, blood, and bones provide us with a great background for explanation of the connection to social media.

The bones provide protection and structure; some would even say they provide protection through structure for the organs in the body. This is easily associated with the basics of an internet presence. Your bones in a social media presence are your website and all its functionality. It is the modern day equivalent to the business card and without it you are spinning your wheels. As the old saying goes, it is the “bare bones”.

Next is your vein system. This caries blood around the body and provides for nourishment and replenishment of the vital organs. They are the highways within anatomy that are in control of blood flow and must be used correctly. If one is sending blood north and it is supposed to sending it south, we have big trouble. So, the association here is that your vein system is directly equal to the sites on the web that one would use to send or spread a message. YouTube, Vimeo, Podcast sites, iTunes, Ezine and many more are the veins, or highways, that help distribute your content and message. Use them wisely and the flow will be steady.

Now that we know these sites work like veins within our social media system, what is the blood? Blood, on its own is the most vital portion of the body. It is the carrier of oxygen, nutrients, and DNA. This is exactly like the content you put out to the world. It is your DNA. This is the information sharing boom and you either are putting it out there or someone else is, period. It is the essence of your brand and the fingerprint of your business. It is the first and perhaps even the last thing a potential new customer will ever see about you and your brand. Your blood, or content, should remain pure and treated as the one thing that you cannot live without. Tell stories; tell them as though your stories become your DNA. Every time someone looks at what you wrote and they will all be seeking hyper-self-gratification for information.

The heart plays a major role in this functioning of your body, as well as your media. The heart itself is nothing more than a muscle; it is driven by electricity that stems from your brain, or neural center. The act of pumping or flexing is the important thing to think of in this process. This is closely associated with the habits and routine of your media actions and behaviors. Good rhythm in your media expression to your audience makes sure that your content is “pumping” through your distribution channels consistently.

Your brain is the command center of the body and your brand’s message. This command center is the place that tells you what to think, do, feel and transmit. The brain takes in information from other organs and makes decisions based on the feeling. For this to be closely associated with a portion of the social media mix for brands, we would have to suggest that it is, in part, run by a non-bias third party, so it can always be ‘just the facts”. The brain is made of many different parts and it always tells the truth, because it is relaying data from one part of the brain to another and providing guidance based on fact, not opinion.

This brings to mind the lungs, the most underrated organ in the human body and the most misused/misunderstood part of the social media mix. The fact is that the most essential thing living things need is air; it is the stimulator for the entire body. Air should be thought of as data. The more you TAKE IN the more success you will have in contemporary marketing. The lungs take in air and send it to the blood and brain at the same time. In other words, data from your audience should feed your content and choices as a modern brand. Social networks are the E-version of the lung. They are ready available organs that draw in all kinds of information then sort the useful from the not useful and pass it on to the brain and blood. Social networks should be used as tools to draw in info, much like lungs to air.

So let’s look at the simplicity of this analogy. The process should go like this when it comes to your media division. You must:

• Create a foundation (website, etc….)
• Determine which ways to use your distribution avenues (veins)
• Be present in the social networks to constantly give you data (Lungs and Air)
• Feed your neural center to ensure that you have the right information (Brain)
• Use this data to create proper content to send through the distribution centers with a purpose of driving people back to your website or sales center
• Create a daily plan of tactics and behaviors (heartbeat) to create a consistent circulation of your message

In conclusion, every business should think of media (ways you connect with the public) as a child or having a new baby. If you are not prepared to create a good body, don’t take it on. It is better to NOT be present in the space if you have nothing to say or a fuzzy message about who you are and what you do. It is tough to abort mistakes on the internet, so take parenting classes, and build a parenting plan for this new organism of engagement and information marketing. Effective exercising of this plan will result in productive and accurate customer information, which in turn will produce healthy lines of revenue.

By Eric Rice

LWI and The Founder’s Den

In a world that is built on information and the sharing of it, one thing is clear, the more information that is out there, the more confusing it becomes. Social media is no different. Social media is sharing media that provides information to people that may or may not be interested, period. It is a form of communication, it isn’t changing the world, it is just making the world smaller. We have to keep that in mind when we think of social media. It is not a virtual gold mine where millionaires are made and dreams come true, it is the modern version of the telephone, just another way to connect.

One thing that can change the world is the information you share with it, in other words content. Content is king and always will be. In a former post I wrote about social media being similar to hiring flagmen, and that is still true. However, it is the first stage of the game. Just by having the right flagmen out there you are one step ahead of the game, you are in places and can point people in the right direction. By spreading yourself out there and making yourself available you are on the right path, but let’s make things simpler.

I was recently in Hawaii with my family on a vacation and the reality of social media hit me, through my 1 year old son. It is amazing how simple life can be and how complex we can try and make it. My wife made him a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner and asked me if I would feed my son Nolan. So I grabbed the sandwich and headed over to him and asked him nicely to eat it, he declined. I tried to place it in his hand, he declined. I tried to act like I was going to eat it, he could have cared less.

As the moments rolled by I gave up and left the sandwich on the coffee table by the TV. As a few moments passed and the sandwich got cold, I looked over and saw him turn from the TV and grab it. He began to eat and then it hit me, this is social media phase 2.

People do not want to be spoon fed, they do not want to be sold, they do not even want to be pitch on endorsement, they want to discover on their own. The goal was to get him to eat (or buy a product), which was the only concern. Even a child of one year in age new that he didn’t want to be forced or sold, he wanted to do it on his own. Imagine what your buyers must think when you shove your product in their face or slam their inbox with MLM propaganda.

The most important thing to notice here is that discovery is the key. Be present and ready, but let others discover your brand; it will give them a real sense of ownership when dealing with your business and help them endorse you all over the place. Let them decide the time and place and then awe them with good content that is the key. Make a REALLY good grilled cheese sandwich and place it is the areas they go to and let them find what you have intentionally left. This discovery process is the most powerful thing in marketing if done correctly.

By Eric Rice

LWI and The Founder’s Den