At some time or other, usually in a social setting, you’ve been asked for and given free advice and information. While this may be unavoidable when at a party, when developing a new business relationship, it is vital to clearly state, from the outset, that, as a professional, you get paid for services delivered, including consulting.

It is often accepted practice to meet the first time at no charge. This is the time to say that while this initial meeting is free, the next one will be on the clock. Explain your fee structure and follow the meeting with the fee arrangement in a written letter or formal proposal and contract.

This is how business works. Until now.

Now we are spending lots of time on the social web giving it all away. Hard selling is taboo. Often discussions of rates and paying for information and expertise is also forbidden, especially in social communities.

How to get around this? First, consider your time is money. Share your expertise where you will most likely get feedback and possibly business. Remember that social networking is a marketing and outreach tool. While a lot of C-floor executives are socializing online, this may be a better use of your marketing, human resources, or development staff.

Guest blog. You can still share your expertise and opinion, without having to maintain a blog yourself. This is also a good way to cross-market your work. Write a white paper once or twice a month to share with others in the industries where your clients and customers reside. Do some research to see who is and established blogger with a lot of readers and ask them if they’d like to have a monthly article from you. You’ll save yourself and them time — and they will do a lot of the heavy lifting on the marketing side.

Time management. Take a time management course, hire a consultant, or DIY (do it yourself), but learn the principles of time management – and put them into practice. Set appointments for when you will read and respond to email, list and group discussions, and still enjoy your life, while growing your business.

It is easy to get swept into the vortex of Web 2.0 – to get so caught up, you lose sight of the goal. The way to make it all work for you is to keep your eye on the proverbial clock. Remember you learned what you know from years of education and practical hands on experience. This is your value – and it will be that for others if you make that happen.

Gayley Knight is a guest blogger for GMI. She is Founder/Principal of Business Her Way (a social media management company). Delighting in opening the technology world for your company, Gayley draws on her extensive network and personal business experience to simplify your online world. Showing you best social business practices and simple tech tools designed to increase your business visibility brings social media into perspective, saving you time and money. You can contact her directly at http://www.businessherway.net or via email at gayley@mothergeek.com.

At some time or other, usually in a social setting, you’ve been asked for and given free advice and information. While this may be unavoidable when at a party, when developing a new business relationship, it is vital to clearly state, from the outset, that, as a professional, you get paid for services delivered, including consulting.

It is often accepted practice to meet the first time at no charge. This is the time to say that while this initial meeting is free, the next one will be on the clock. Explain your fee structure and follow the meeting with the fee arrangement in a written letter or formal proposal and contract.

This is how business works. Until now.

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At some time or other, usually in a social setting, you’ve been asked for and given free advice and information. While this may be unavoidable when at a party, when developing a new business relationship, it is vital to clearly state, from the outset, that, as a professional, you get paid for services delivered, including consulting.

It is often accepted practice to meet the first time at no charge. This is the time to say that while this initial meeting is free, the next one will be on the clock. Explain your fee structure and follow the meeting with the fee arrangement in a written letter or formal proposal and contract.

This is how business works. Until now.

Now we are spending lots of time on the social web giving it all away. Hard selling is taboo. Often discussions of rates and paying for information and expertise is also forbidden, especially in social communities.

How to get around this? First, consider your time is money. Share your expertise where you will most likely get feedback and possibly business. Remember that social networking is a marketing and outreach tool. While a lot of C-floor executives are socializing online, this may be a better use of your marketing, human resources, or development staff.

Guest blog. You can still share your expertise and opinion, without having to maintain a blog yourself. This is also a good way to cross-market your work. Write a white paper once or twice a month to share with others in the industries where your clients and customers reside. Do some research to see who is and established blogger with a lot of readers and ask them if they’d like to have a monthly article from you. You’ll save yourself and them time – and they will do a lot of the heavy lifting on the marketing side.

Time management. Take a time management course, hire a consultant, or DIY (do it yourself), but learn the principles of time management – and put them into practice. Set appointments for when you will read and respond to email, list and group discussions, and still enjoy your life, while growing your business.

It is easy to get swept into the vortex of Web 2.0 – to get so caught up, you lose sight of the goal. The way to make it all work for you is to keep your eye on the proverbial clock. Remember you learned what you know from years of education and practical hands on experience. This is your value – and it will be that for others if you make that happen.

Gayley Knight is a guest blogger for GMI. She is Founder/Principal of Business Her Way (a social media management company). Delighting in opening the technology world for your company, Gayley draws on her extensive network and personal business experience to simplify your online world. Showing you best social business practices and simple tech tools designed to increase your business visibility brings social media into perspective, saving you time and money. You can contact her directly at http://www.businessherway.net or via email at gayley@mothergeek.com.

What is social capital? How do you invest in your online social capital? To what extent does your company facilitate social networking with (existing or potential) clients and business partners? What’s the value of this social capital to your company (i.e. the connections within and between social networks as well as connections among individuals)? How does it influence your marketing strategy, online conversion rates, search engine rankings and ultimately, ROI? And the bottom line, how do you measure it?

Social Capital Defined
Social capital is the value of your relationships. Creating online communities and social networks allow you to build and invest in your social capital. The more targeted your social media plan is, the better your results and more visible the ROI. You need to understand how to measure your social capital and grow it for organizational viability for the long term. Creating and cultivating your community builds relati

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What is social capital? How do you invest in your online social capital? To what extent does your company facilitate social networking with (existing or potential) clients and business partners? What’s the value of this social capital to your company (i.e. the connections within and between social networks as well as connections among individuals)? How does it influence your marketing strategy, online conversion rates, search engine rankings and ultimately, ROI? And the bottom line, how do you measure it?

Social Capital Defined
Social capital is the value of your relationships. Creating online communities and social networks allow you to build and invest in your social capital. The more targeted your social media plan is, the better your results and more visible the ROI. You need to understand how to measure your social capital and grow it for organizational viability for the long term. Creating and cultivating your community builds relationships between you and your customers and constituents and it has all sorts of benefits.

Some of these benefits include:

• brand advocacy
• product conversion
• engagement
• trust
• transparency

How is it Measured?
Measuring your social capital comes down to quantifying activity metrics, survey metrics, ROI measurements (marketing/sales, customer support, product development, HR, etc.), individual metrics for your community members, and independent internet tracking measurements.

Here at Terametric, we’ve developed an algorithm that uses a proprietary blend of over 50 variables, including website structure, social media presence, search engine data, site metrics, and conversational measurement, and coupled it with human engagement analysis as a way to measure your community’s effectiveness and profitability. Contact us directly for more information about how you can receive a social capital measurement score and learn where your social capital potential lies.

The Role of Web 2.0
How does that translate into your online systems platform? That’s where Web 2.0 comes in. Supporting social networking in the organization means more than simply bringing in-house functionality from (public) social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter. Instead, social networking functionality should be integrated not only with existing information systems, but also with the particular needs of the organization to enable people to grow informal networks which exist alongside formal structures, and fully exploit the wealth of information and expertise circulating in and around the organization. The foundation of this infrastructure is called a “Hub” Web site which integrates social networking components to allow the flow of information in and out of your larger community.

The Criticality of An Integrated Web Platform
Web 2.0 is based on the concept of using the Web as a platform and therefore benefits from the collective intelligence of the technology community to further its development. Using a Web 2.0 platform such as Drupal or Joomla, can eliminate the need for organizations to continually invest in their systems platforms like they have in the past. Since this is the trend that will ultimately become the norm, it also opens the door to integrate APIs and widgets from other Web 2.0 applications (Salesforce.com, Facebook, Wordpress, etc.) so that you are focusing more time on retrofitting the solution to your specific needs and less time on actual development. In the end, an investment now will position your organization for rapid development, lower development costs, and ultimately greater ability to build community, relationships and your social capital.

The Cycle of Building Social Capital
I’m including our product illustration (see below) to demonstrate the cycle of building social capital. When the flow of financial and human capital in the form of a social marketing strategy is infused into a core, centralized Web platform (or “Hub”) with social networking integration, you begin to build relationships with your community and the rate of return produces loyalty, engagement, trust, etc. which in turns increases your visibility in the search engines and online social networks, which increases your desired online business objectives – and the cycle continues…

The End Result
If you invest in Web 2.0 technology and enable your ability to rapidly integrate open tools to fit your social media strategy, your community will become more active, which will drive more contributions towards your goals (brand advocacy, product conversion, etc.), which will in turn build stronger relationships, which will result in higher social capital — the best investment you can make for long term business viability!

Michael Gilbert, from Nonprofit Online News, has an article entitled, “Turning To Each Other in Hard Times: Four Steps To Save Money and Building Social Capital.” Gilbert defines social capital as “the productive value inherent in human relationships” which is a new term for most organizations as they learn to add another essential level of capital to build their structure.

Social capital requires new investment in open technology and a change in marketing practices so that it can put the customer first and center. Instead of trying to mold the minds of its customer to behave a certain way, it looks to customer and provides them with an online toolkit to find his/her own relationship with the product — one that is personal and can be shared with others. It becomes less about the technology but how it is used to enable a user to successfully interact with both the organization and their customers.

Gilbert goes on to suggests organizations enact four principles to build social capital:

1. Ruthlessly drop any technology that erodes social capital. It comes down to control. Evaluate all online communications and remove any obstacles that might prevent people from openly communicating with your organization (good or bad).
2. Reduce investment in any technology that fails to build social capital. Specifically, stop investing in outbound methods of marketing communications and begin to open the door to conversations between customers and every level of your organization.
3. Immediately invest in technology that allows you to identify and nurture existing social capital. Consolidate all current methods of communications and try to track it user behaviors using analytics to gain some insight as to what relationships you currently have and how you’re perceived in the marketplace.
4. Strategically invest in technology that helps you build social capital. SAAS, APIs, Open Source Web platforms…there are many choices out there to leverage. A central strategy and an integrated approach to building the platform that meets your needs is required.

To further Gilbert’s wisdom, he stresses the urgency that organization need to respond to for their survival during tough economic times. What is missing is a discussion around how these changes can be implemented and how to overcome the obstacles that will be present.

Change has to come from within every area of the organization and change, by definition, does not come easily when it requires a shift in corporate culture. Corporate culture has its origins in outbound marketing styles and proprietary methods of systems development which reside in the need to control end user behaviors while protecting their knowledge base.

Companies might realize that they need to begin to have more of an online presence and have invested in PPC and SEO but again, this is not a difficult exercise because there is a method of measurement and control. At the core of this resistance, an organization has to retool its workforce and train them to embrace this new medium.

The good news and bottom line is that the financial investment is one that is made in the relationships you have both from within your organization and outside in the greater community. Instead of building huge systems infrastructures and expensive advertising campaigns, your expenditures are made integrating APIs using open source Web 2.0 platforms and mentoring and training your workforce to learn how to facilitate conversations learn from them.

Simply put, where’s a good place to start? Begin by asking some basic questions.

• Who is your audience? Audiences are determined by their level of participation and classification according to how they use social technologies. Once classified, you can use that information to start building your community.
• What is your goal? Be clear about your business goals whether it be to solve a specific business problem, target new opportunities, or develop brand loyalty.
• What is the action plan? Listen to find out what people are saying about you by using various online monitoring tools (Google blog search and Twitter searching on your brand). Once you determine what is being said about you online, you can take it to the next level and do something about it.
• How do you utilize social networking tools, tactics, & techniques? Companies must move toward embracing open source technology so that they can get up and running quickly. Social networking tools are free to use so the effort goes into how it is used ? thinking out-of-the-box.

Once you’ve gone through this basic exercise, you can begin to have discussions at every level of the organization to develop a comprehensive strategy around embracing social media inside and out. You’ll also begin the activity of performing a staffing inventory to determine where to invest in training to support these new activities as well as evaluating the IT structure so that open source can infiltrate your systems platform and link information together and drive revenue.

Building social capital is a matter of short term financial survival and long term prosperity.