Last August I was lucky enough to be introduced to the amazing concept and event that is LaidOffCamp.  Laid off myself in January 2009, I was invited to speak to attendees about the experience and try to offer advice and support.  I wrote about my LaidOffCamp Phoenix experience in a blog post here.

Like many of the other volunteers and speakers, I was overwhelmed by the response of attendees.  Not only did I meet great folks that night, but have continued to be introduced to more and more people as a result of my association with LaidOffCamp.  In a subsequent post about what I learned after the event, I established my goal to spend about 15% of my time on non-paid “philanthropy” work to support the community that has given me so much since my own layoff.

This year, in honor of that goal, I’m organizing the next LaidOffCamp Phoenix event, on April 3rd in Chandler.  We have even more resources available to support anyone laid off or looking for a change, seeking a new job, a new career on their own, or just a new direction.

If you haven’t gotten involved in a community event lately, why not consider helping out with one of the events coming up?  There are many wonderful events designed to help others in our community, and outside of it.

LaidOffPhoenix changed my life.  Maybe one of these great events could change yours.

• Twestival Phoenix 2010, a wonderful event supporting Concern Worldwide, a charity supporting education in developing nations.
• AZGiveCamp, a weekend event in which the software comes together to support charities and non-profits by developing and improving their websites and applications — for free.

If you know of other local Phoenix events that need help, let me know and I’ll add them to the list.  And if you’re not helping now, please consider offering your time, expertise, or financial support to one of these worthy causes.

This is one of a series of posts about a real-life attitudinal audience segmentation project.  See other posts in this series.

This project was undertaken for a small faith-based university in the midwest (I’ll call them “SCU” – Small Christian U – for the purposes of this discussion).  The university offers undergraduate, graduate, adult professional and online programs.  They have been working with Higher Ed Growth to develop targeted, relevant strategies for lead generation, and the strategic big brains at Monsoon Strategy came on board as well to conduct an audit of their existing marketing activity.  Both were helping SCU determine how they could better identify, reach and engage with their target audiences – and do it economically.

During stakeholder interviews at the university, it became apparent that there was a lot of internal debate about how best to message to prospective students – adults, undergrads, graduates and online learners.  There were differing opinions about what those messages should be, and where they should be communicated.  With such a diverse audience, it was key to understand which messages were most relevant to develop better marketing and avoid wasting advertising dollars.  The folks at Higher Ed Growth and Monsoon were familiar with my work and called me in to consult with the client.

I immediately liked that this client was actively implementing tools that could make the most out of segmentation.  Their website was fairly robust, but they expressed an interest in adapting content to specific segments to make it more useful to them.  They were preparing to develop a wide range of new collateral materials for potential students, and were in the process of implementing a new CRM system that would allow them to extend their current database to include all sorts of prospect-specific information — including audience segment, communication preferences, and areas of interest.  After just a few minutes on the phone with them I knew they were a terrific candidate for attitudinal audience segmentation.

A key issue was the scope of the research.  While the university was primarily interested in learning about their adult prospects (both at their offsite locations as well as in their online program), many of their potential communication channels would necessarily reach potential undergraduate students as well.  It seemed important to identify the needs of adult learners, but also to determine how they differed — or didn’t — from undergraduates.  And I was interested in finding out the characteristics of their current students. so that we could compare them to those of the students in their prospect database.

One of the most valuable aspects of segmentation research is that, in identifying how messaging needs to differ between segments, it also reveals which messages are powerful for ALL audiences.  This information is extremely valuable in crafting umbrella messages that the brand can use in any and all venues, media and materials and ensure that relevance remains intact.  In order to determine the best umbrella messaging for SCU as part of this project, it became clear that we would need to include adults, undergraduates, prospects and current students in the study.

Next:  Survey development — and how a very complicated survey was made easier with the help of some creative tools.

This is one of a series of posts about a real-life attitudinal audience segmentation project.  See other posts in this series.

I’m a marketing strategist.  I’ve spent the last 25 years (gack!) learning (and then helping other organizations learn) how to get the right message to the right people in order to get those people to do something — consider, visit, tell a friend, buy, or buy again.

I have always been frustrated when faced with the challenge of developing marketing strategy without data.  Despite my liberal arts education, number-crunching is near and dear to my heart, and I have seen many organizations try to develop effective marketing campaigns with nothing but their own suppositions to go on.

So I decided to incorporate fact-based decision-making into my marketing strategy whenever possible.  And today I conduct attitudinal audience segmentation research — gaining quantitative insights into why people (or companies) make the choices they do — solely to give organizations some hard data to go on.

Of course, one of the downsides of research is that it’s proprietary.  Unlike a website development project, where the general public can see the finished product, research is information that organizations typically like to keep to themselves.  And unfortunately, this typically means I can’t show off the kind of information this segmentation research provides.

However, thanks to a willing client and co-consultants, I can now take you through a real-life audience segmentation initiative, step by step — from objectives, to survey development, to analysis and results and client presentations.  I’ll be walking through the project in a series of blog posts over the next few weeks.  I hope you find it interesting, and please let me know if you have any questions I can answer as we go along.

I use mind-mapping software like crazy.  But in addition to its obvious assistance with brainstorming, I’ve found it very useful in a variety of planning activities I do for clients every day.  I use a Mac-only program called MindNode Pro, developed by Markus Müller, an independent software developer in Vienna.  (Markus also has an outstanding free version, MindNode, that is chock-full of functions and has also developed a version for the iPhone/iPod Touch.)  There are lots of different options out there, but I’ve found MindNode to be the easiest to use and most flexible for what I do.

1)  Survey Development

I design a lot of surveys for my segmentation work.  Typically, they’re big, hairy things designed to accommodate multiple groups (current customers, prospects) and ask lots of kinds of questions (competitive set, purchase behavior, motivations, demographics, message relevance, etc.).  They always involve a lot of skip logic (“if answer is A, skip to Question 23″) and inevitably blocks of questions I want everybody to answer, no matter which group they’re in.

As with any survey, my goal is always to make responding as smooth, fast and easy for participants as possible, while limiting the amount of data consolidation I have to do on the back end.  I have found mapping software to be extraordinarily valuable in developing the flow of a survey and ensuring all questions are asked at the appropriate stage, and in helping me to figure out where skips need to happen so I can redirect respondents appropriately through the survey.

The other great thing about this approach is that it’s much more client-friendly than simply showing them a typical text-based survey document for approval.  It’s much easier for them to follow the flow of the survey, to see how a respondent will move through it, and to ensure that all necessary information is covered (and that unnecessary information is excluded).  Once the map is complete it’s a cinch to code the survey accurately.

Here’s a map of a recent survey I conducted for Spring Arbor University in Michigan (more on Spring Arbor’s segmentation project, shared with their permission, in an upcoming series of posts).  Once the survey’s coded I always return to the map and place the question numbers on each node so I can easily find them later.  Believe it or not, this complex survey took the average respondent only 18 minutes to complete and had a very high completion rate.

2)  Marketing Plans

Let’s face it — figuring out what your marketing efforts should look like for the next year can be overwhelming – especially when that fat written document starts to get really long.  However, marketing planning should really be a logical series of decisions based on what you want to accomplish, and what you need to do to accomplish it.  I have found mapping to be a great way to think through the logical requirements of a marketing plan, which can then be used as the basis for a written document (if necessary).  As this partial example shows, a mind map can make the logical extensions of objectives and strategies easier to work with.

3)  Website Content

I also find maps useful for laying out content for websites.  It can help me try different options for topline navigation, and identify the probable number of pages. Here’s an example of a preliminary site map I did for a client — I find they can more easily understand the relationships of pages to each other when I can show them links visually like this.

I’m sure there are many other uses for this kind of tool, and I’ll continue to share the ones I find.  Are you using mapping tools in your workflow?  Please share!

I am amazed at how many companies have fallen into the habit of regularly insulting their customers.

If I pointed them out, I GUARANTEE that each and every one of them would strenuously object to this accusation, claiming (and, in all likelihood, truly believing) that each and every customer they have is of the utmost value to them and that they work very hard to ensure they’re doing the best to serve them every day.

And I’m sure they do.  But unfortunately, many companies torpedo their own efforts to connect with their customers by insulting them — every day, every week, every time they have contact.

Insult #1:  Treat your customers as if you understand them, when you don’t.

Trust me — if you’re sitting around the boardroom deciding who your customers are and what’s important to them, you’re wrong.  We who own and operate our own companies are even LESS likely than the average man-on-the-street to get this right, because we are so involved with our own product or service that we use language our customers won’t understand, see benefits they won’t see, and overlook shortcomings that will be glaring to anybody outside the company.  The fact is, some of your best customers are going to be people you’d never expect, with reasons for buying your product that you’d never imagine.

Insult #2: Treat your customers as if they’re all the same.

It cracks me up to hear companies talk about “their audience.”  Well, I do audience research, and I’ll tell you what — you DON’T HAVE ONE AUDIENCE.  You have many.  (In reality, you have as many as you have individual customers and prospects).  But even if you aggregate folks together based on WHY they buy what they do (called attitudinal audience segmentation), you still are going to be left with some very disparate groups — each of which buys what you sell, but for very different reasons.

Yet if you offer your customers and prospects ONE email message, ONE website experience, ONE promotion, you are treating them as if they all care about the same thing — and they don’t, I guarantee it.  And what’s more, they can spot a marketing message that’s off-target for them in the blink of an eye.  And before you know it, your email’s in the trash and they’re off to another site.  Worse, if your messaging isn’t relevant, some likely prospects won’t find you in the first place — because chances are the search terms you’re using for your SEO efforts don’t cover what they’re seeking.  (If your SEO is based on “aromatherapy candles” and they’re looking for “brown candles” you’re missing the boat.)

Insult #3:  Try to sell them something they won’t want — when you should know better.

Consumers (and businesses) can be pretty forgiving when they’re working with a new company that doesn’t know them yet.  They’ll answer questions about what they’re looking for, explain the problem they’re trying to solve, and share their hopes for how a company like yours might be just what they need.

But once a customer or prospect has spent some time developing a relationship with you — shopping in your stores or on your site, ordering from your catalog, commenting on your blog, engaging with you on Twitter — they expect you to remember them.

I have shopped with Williams-Sonoma for years.  I have ordered from their catalog, shopped online, bought in-store and even taken their cooking classes.  One day last year I received an email from them solely addressing the incredible nature of their new baby food cooking gadget.

Now, my kids are 9 and 14.  OK, so I guess I can’t expect Williams-Sonoma to know that (and would probably be kind of creeped out if they did).

But I have NEVER purchased a SINGLE BABY ITEM from them.  I don’t subscribe to any parenting magazines, get any baby catalogs, or have a membership card for Babies-R-Us  (all things they and other retailers can readily find out about any of us).

So not only did Williams-Sonoma fail to sell me a baby food cooker, they chipped away at what I had taken for granted was a mutually adoring relationship.  They must know me and love me, I’m a core multichannel customer.  Well, guess not.

Insult #4:  Sell yourself short.

I find customers to be very willing to offer up suggestions, criticisms, and any other information that will help their favorite brands and companies do a better job in meeting their needs.

Unfortunately many companies either don’t listen to customer feedback or, equally as bad, are afraid to ask in the first place.  It’s not unusual for me to hear from a prospective research client that they don’t want to ask for suggestions, because then people will get irritated when the company doesn’t follow every one.

Guess what?  YOU CAN LEARN SOMETHING FROM YOUR CUSTOMERS.  I guarantee that you’ll get a suggestion or two that can really make you better — but you have to start by recognizing that you’re not perfect now.

This is harder for some companies than for others.  Especially companies that have been doing things a certain way for a long time and are very successful find this a challenging realization.

In my experience, just asking your customers can go a long way to building a bridge between you and the people (or companies) who might consider buying what you have to sell.  And, if you actually share what you learned and what you’re doing to improve, it can dramatically reshape your customers’ perspective regarding the kind of company you really are.

Domino’s is making a big splash right now with their campaign that admits, loudly, that their customers think their pizza sucks.  It’s clear from the campaign that they’re not just changing their marketing, they’re changing EVERYTHING — their recipes, their operational focus, and their opinion about what’s really important to their customers.  And my guess is that they’ll gain huge points with customers and prospects just for admitting that they’re not all-knowing and all-seeing, but instead a company that WOKE UP when they bothered to ask some questions and got slammed.

Now certainly there will be customers who don’t get exactly what they want from you.  But guess what?  There will always be people out there for whom your company, product or service isn’t a good fit.  The better you can understand and communicate what you do well, and the type of buyer who is most likely to find that valuable, the more likely it is that those consumers won’t become sucked in by false promises and then get disappointed.

Results — Not Insults

Understanding your customers better will help you communicate in a more relevant way with them, help them find you more easily, and help them want to engage with you over the long term. (More on being relevant and making your business memorable in this slideshow.)

If you’re not doing this now, give it a try:

• Ask your customers what’s important to them.  Do it yourself, have a friend help or get a professional.  Ask online, in-store, in social media — wherever you engage with customers and prospects.  Let them respond anonymously and they’re more likely to tell you the truth.
• Think about ideas that might be valuable for each of your key audience groups.  Got folks who like how your product smells?  Scent your catalog or your business cards.  Got some who want to gift your product?  Add gift wrapping or incorporate a reminder service on your site, or do a post on how to tie the perfect bow.
• Try segmenting your email messaging.  If you know a business prospect is in a particular industry, offer up an example of your experience in that industry in particular — or pass along an interesting article that you think might interest them.
• If you’re not collecting data on your customer transactions, START NOW.  Anything you can capture — promotional codes used, products purchased, whether they get your newsletter — can be used to understand them better (even if you haven’t figured out how to do that yet).

How might you be insulting your customers without realizing it?  What could you do better?

USA TODAY has a fascinating article today about a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll looking at the President’s approval rating and how he’s faring in public opinion.

AMAZING!  It’s attitudinal audience segmentation for the President of the United States!

I’ve conducted audience segmentation for big companies, small companies, business-to-business, business-to-consumer, government and even a faith-based university.  I’ve seen it offer incredible insight into why people — or companies — make the purchasing decisions they do.  But have to admit I never imagined I’d see it applied to the President.

Image credit

So the article, which profiles each of the four segments, never uses the term “audience segmentation”.  So how can we tell that’s what they’re doing?

Here’s the telling statement:  ”Analysis of polling data has sorted Americans into five groups of like-minded people in attitudes toward the President.”

This is the classic definition of attitudinal segmentation — literally, sorting people into groups based on their attitudes about something instead of by a specific purchase behavior.  Typically we’re finding out why business or consumers have made a particular decision to purchase, become a member, enroll, etc. — and for the President, that purchase decision is reflected in his approval rating (an indicator of voting behavior).

In addition, the article reveals that “Whether Americans believe Obama shares their values turns out to be a key factor in rating him.”  It’s not about whether you’re male or female, or how much money you make.  It’s about what’s important in a President COMBINED with whether you feel he shares your values.  Again, these are WHY questions, not WHAT questions.

So politics aside, I’m just tickled pink to see the type of work I do applied to such a fascinating topic.  I’m sure the Obama team will be using this information to determine how best to respond to each of these groups in a relevant way.  But in the end, if the choice largely being made on the basis of shared values, there may be groups that the President must prioritize over others in order to be successful — just like any other business.

Do you find these segments interesting?  Can you imagine what the segments might look like for your business?

I’ve been asked by many people over the years for my homemade eggnog recipe.  This year, when I am celebrating a wonderful new community and a flourishing new business, seems a good time to say thanks by sharing it with anybody who cares to read.  But first, a quick diversion into where it comes from and why it’s so special to me.

I come from a long line of strong women.  (For those of you wondering where I got that certain, irritating je ne sais quoi, this is it.)  The photo on the left shows myself at 1 1/2, sitting on my mom’s lap.  My dad’s mom, Evelyn, is on the right and my great-grandmother Sarah Allie Boyd is in the center, looking at me.  My great-grandmother and my grandma are gone now, and my dear mom suffers from Alzheimer’s disease so isn’t able to help me make this eggnog any more, but they are all in my thoughts as I make it every year.

My great-grandma Allie was remarkable woman, and obviously made a hell of an impression on the family as my grandfather Boyd, my dad Boyd, my Uncle Robert Boyd, my brother Boyd, my sister Sarah, myself (Susan Allie), my son Andrew Boyd, my daughter Emma Allie and my niece Sarah Allie all carry her name.

She lived in a small Indiana town and rode her bike to give piano lessons.  Her husband was firmly against drinking alcohol of any kind, so she made beer in the kitchen cabinets without his knowledge.  (Even, as my father remembers, managing to keep the secret after a particularly warm night when the corks all blew and she and my dad had to mop up 2 inches of beer before Grandpa woke up.)

Grandma Allie died when I was very young, but I’ve heard stories of her all my life.  To my father, she was the surrogate mom when his own mother was preoccupied with guilt over my uncle’s diabetes and anger over my grandfather’s philandering in France during the war.  She touched him with so many small kindnesses that he still tears up thinking about her.  To me she has always represented strength, intelligence, creativity, compassion and irreverence — a combination of qualities I hope every day to carry in myself.

So now to the recipe — but first, a quick warning.  THIS EGGNOG IS IN NO WAY GOOD FOR YOU, NO MATTER HOW YOU TRY TO JUSTIFY IT.  It’s full of fat, sugar, liquor and — arrestingly — UNPASTEURIZED RAW EGGS.  While no one in my family has every gotten ill despite over 80 years of drinking this stuff (maybe it’s because of all the liquor in it), you drink at your own risk.  Make sure your hands and all utensils and storage jugs are nice and clean before you start.

So here we go!  You will need:

12 eggs

1 and 1/2 cups of sugar

1/4 teaspoons of salt

1 quart of half & half (you can use heavy cream if you really don’t care about your arteries)

1 quart of milk

4 cups of bourbon (I use 2 cups of Canadian Club and 2 cups of Jim Beam, myself)

1 cup of rum

Beat the egg whites until stiff, then beat in 1/2 cup of sugar.  Empty into a large pot.  Beat the egg yolks, 1 cup of sugar and salt until very light in color.  Combine with the egg whites and stir until blended.  Add half & half (or cream), milk, and liquor.  Stir well.  Pour into gallon jug and quart jar (I use clean milk jugs).

HERE’S THE NEXT STEP, AND IT’S IMPORTANT!  Store the eggnog in a cool cellar or garage for 1 week to 10 days.  DO NOT REFRIGERATE!

So this is the part that freaks people out.  Yes, I know — raw eggs, milk, etc., all stewing on the floor of your garage for a week without refrigeration.  I’ve tried to make this and refrigerate it, and it just doesn’t turn out as well — the liquor just doesn’t blend in and become as smooth and luscious when you refrigerate it.  Of course, you can try that if it makes you more comfortable, but I’ve found leaving it on the concrete floor in the garage, where it stays cool but not cold, works great.  Shake it every once in a while as all the air in the eggs will condense and you can consolidate it into fewer jugs if you want.

After a week or so, stick it in the fridge and it will last for another couple of weeks just fine.  Serve it with nutmeg on top and make sure you confiscate everybody’s keys before you get going — it’s deceptively potent.

Oh, and my husband has a milk intolerance so he can’t handle much of it full-bore, but likes to mix it with 7-up for an eggnog spritzer (yuck).

There you go.  Make it, drink it and enjoy.  I know Grandma Allie would want you to.

Image via Wikipedia

I had an interesting experience last week when a client pulled me aside to make me aware that the company’s CRM guru was loudly expressing his concern that this “warm and fuzzy” attitudinal approach to audience segmentation couldn’t hold a candle to good, old-fashioned database analytics.

This isn’t the first time it’s happened.  I often run into database managers – especially in e-commerce organizations – who feel that basing segmentation on an analysis of who buys what, when, and response to which offers is the right way to drive up sales and drive down cost per sale.  There’s even a fair amount of debate on this topic in the industry, with the database folks haranguing the attitudinal folks for primacy in the marketing effectiveness world.

Honestly, it’s something I’ve never understood.  From where I stand, everything you can add to your knowledge of a customer’s (or prospect’s) motivations, red flags, and lack of self-control when it comes to purchase is  a beautiful thing.  Why settle for limiting your understanding to just what they do, or just what they want?  Go ahead, it’s the 21st century — take both!

The fact is, the more insight you have, the better.  And if you’re lucky enough to capture sophisticated data on your customer’s purchase patterns, email response, customer service contact and promotional triggers, all the better.  That information, combined with an understanding of attitudinal drivers — WHY people buy what they do, and what’s key to them in making their purchase decisions — can result in a highly successful driver for marketing messaging, product development and promotional strategy.

And because it doesn’t require a previous purchase history with your company (or even your category), attitudinal segmentation can offer additional insight into identifying prospects — who, based on the intersection of attitudinal segmentation and existing customer statistics, can be fairly reliably pegged as to future revenue promise.

So let’s stop bickering about which is better.  The reality is that far too few companies are reliably capturing comprehensive customer data, and even fewer are analyzing it to improve their relationships with those customers.  And this is particularly true of smaller firms that could most use the additional sales such relationships can bring.  THAT’S the battle we should be fighting.

Is your company doing all it can with customer data?

I am currently finishing up an audience segmentation project for a large multi-channel retailer.  As usual, we’re trying to identify the key motivations for their various customer groups.

I was surprised to hear from my client contact that, when pursuing such a project was discussed in a team meeting, one of the team members was actually reduced to tears.

Why?

Because she was afraid the research findings would result in the abandonment of some current customers — people she credits, rightfully, with helping the brand grow to where it is today.  She was sure that we’d pick the segments that seemed promising, steer the brand ship in their direction and never look back at the poor souls treading water in our wake.

It’s true that segmentation work seeks to identify the key differences between groups that help us understand them more individually.  Candle buyers can be Fragrance Lovers, Decorators or Gifters — Chamber of Commerce members can be Socializers, Movers & Shakers or Sellers.

But another fascinating result of attitudinal segmentation is that you get to see what everyone AGREES ON.  It’s like one of those optical illusions where you can see either a white vase or two profiles facing each other, depending on how you look at it.  Segmentation shows you where groups differ, but also where they don’t.

All Together Now

And why is this information valuable?  Well, for one thing, it can give you clear direction as to your brand’s umbrella messaging — those things that everyone should hear, know and believe about the brand.  These messages are relevant to all segments, while segment-specific messages can be left to one-to-one communications like email and unique landing pages.

And the segmentation process can also help you recognize that, in most cases, there’s no customer segment you’d jettison.  Our job as marketers is to nurture every customer we can — while admitting that, with a limited prospecting budget, we need to focus on bringing in more of those likely to be our most productive customers.

I hope to reassure the entire client-side team on my current project that segmentation is as useful in recognizing the shared motivations of their customers as it is in pointing out their differences.  And perhaps offer a tissue.

Last week was a whole bundle of incredible experiences for me.  It was so overwhelming, in fact, that it seemed like the “NOW DO YOU GET IT?” gods had decided to teach me a lesson.

On Saturday I presented at LaidOffCamp in Gilbert (see my post here), and witnessed an amazing instance of a community beginning and developing over the course of only 4 or 5 hours.  The community-building continued over the next few days as many of the participants took the universal advice of presenters and started to reach out to the other folks they’d met with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

On Tuesday I was contacted by a writer working on a presentation about the benefits of social media for small business.  While I’m certainly not a social media expert, she was looking for entrepreneurs using social tools to grow their business, and I can certainly speak to the value of that (as you’ll soon see).

On Wednesday I took advantage of my kids being back in school, packed up my stuff and headed over to Gangplank, a co-working facility a few miles away.  I had wanted to try Gangplank out as a break from my normal workspace at home, and Wednesday seemed like a good day because I’d also have the opportunity to attend a brownbag presentation by the intriguing (and, it turns out, engaging and insightful) Joshua Strebel, whose company Obü Web is headquartered at Gangplank.

A far more prestigious visitor graced Gangplank on Wednesday as well — an ABC News team, who arrived to capture video and interviews for a national piece they’re doing on the trend towards co-working.

I arrived home Wednesday afternoon to find that I had won a new project — a large segmentation analysis for a major national retailer.  The opportunity had come my way after I connected with an old college friend — one I hadn’t spoken to for over 20 years — on Facebook.  Turns out he’s in California running a small business that does the same kind of audience segmentation work I do.  A few chats down the line we agreed that we could work well together — and submitted some joint RFP responses, one of which came through in a big way.

Now that my head has stopped spinning from the incredible rush of  last week, I’ve had a chance to sit back and think about the implications of all this good stuff.  They consolidate a number of realizations I’ve been mulling in the last couple of months of starting — and building — my own small business.

Realization #1:  Community Counts

For your business, for yourself, for your sanity — for God’s sake find some like-minded folks and dedicate some of your time to hanging out with them.  The first time I started my own business I didn’t bother — and while I had great clients and good steady work for four years, eventually I accepted another “real job” in part because I desperately missed the social aspects of an office.  If you’ve left a job to start out on your own (either by choice or necessity) this is particularly important — like it or not, you’ve probably left much of your former community behind (or vice versa) and you should start building a new one, pronto.

Which is not to say that community only serves the “softer side” of being an entrepreneur.  I recently gained a big project with an old college friend I hadn’t spoken to since graduation over 20 years ago.  How?  Facebook!  It’s amazing what you can discover about the network you already have (but may not have considered for work-related benefits).  I’m not advocating that you browbeat your old high school and college buddies for work or jobs, but take the time to find out what everybody’s doing — it might open some surprising new doors.

Realization #2:  Social Media Doesn’t Isolate

Contrary to what appears to be popular opinion, getting involved with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter DOESN’T necessarily reduce you to a moon-eyed lump of deteriorating (and unnecessary) muscles and ligaments.  While it can be time-consuming (and sometimes, at least for me, a great procrastination tool and criminal time-suck), I have found it a great way to meet and get to know people in the Real World.

Twitter, in particular, is a great way to find and talk with people discussing stuff you’re interested in.  Unlike LinkedIn, Twitter doesn’t require you know somebody to listen to (or publicly chat with) them.  And Twitter’s search function makes it easy to find relevant conversations to eavesdrop on.

The trick, of course, is to actually GO OUT AND MEET PEOPLE YOU MET ON TWITTER.  Find local events they’re attending (Twitter’s GREAT for this) and go.  Hang out at co-working spots.  Go to happy hours or breakfasts – the Twitter crowd is famously fond of free, casual, come-as-you-are opportunities to meet and greet in real life.

When I started my first consulting practice, social media didn’t exist.  Just six months into my new venture, I have a larger, more relevant and more productive network than I ever gained in four years the first time around.

Realization #3:  Pay It Back (or Forward)

Part of being a member of a community is CONTRIBUTING.  As great as your network may be, they’ll tire of you quickly if all you do is show up and ask for support.  Speak at a brownbag – comment on other people’s posts – help somebody out.  Whatever your thing is, give some of it to somebody else.  It feels good and it’s good for you — and your business.

Personally, I try to split my “time/effort pie” three ways:  one chunk for stuff I do for pay, one chunk for stuff I do for free because it will build my business, and another chuck for stuff I do for free because it helps somebody else in my community.  The ratio changes based on what’s happening, but I’m trying to maintain about a 60/25/15 split.

Realization #4:  It’s Never Too Late (Or Too Early)

Man, I really wish I’d started all this community-building earlier – it would have made those first few months of my new business a lot easier to handle.  Having said that, I can certainly testify that it’s never too late to get on Twitter, sign up for Facebook, update your LinkedIn page or start attending an event or two in your community.  You (and your business/career) will be better for it.