A friend, who had formerly worked at the <a href=”http://www.wsj.com”Wall Street Journal, and I were talking about the changes within the media industry, how it is evolving.
There were two things we agreed on: media was not going away (only changing) and networking is the power tool to getting to the next opportunity.
Infopreneurship and the social network are the two most powerful tools that any marketer can use to be stronger, faster and more innovative.
What is Info-preneurship?
Infopreneurship is where the media industry is going today. It comes in different forms: company databases (CrunchBase, TradeVibes), Citizen Journalism (Blogs like this one), Traditional News and websites (TheStreet.com, WallStreetJournal.com), and of course, a whole host of RSS readers and social bookmarking sites, SaaS devices like CRM that support the management of this information.
What do you mean by the Social Network?
There is a distinction to be made here between tools like LinkedIn and Plaxo and your social network. The difference is information. LinkedIn and Plaxo are great tools to identify who is connected to whom but it doesn’t tell you anything about the activity of your social graph.
This is where info-preneurship comes in on your part: that is, you have to take control of the information available to you with the resources that you have. While it may be obvious to some more adept at this, most people don’t understand the value of a network, or how to use it effectively.
The answer: It starts with positioning your personal brand as an individual of resources. Identify a person that you admire, and you may see that it is true of them, that they often have many things to offer.
So, for those who are early in their career or simply prefer using IM as a main form of communication, or hate networking…here’s the difficult truth to swallow: You may have to meet people in person. And you may have to pick up the phone… Eek!!
How do you handle your own personal business development? What are the resources that have helped you be successful? Share it with us in the comments section below–I do not moderate for comments; I only moderate for spam.
