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HUDDLE TIME
BNI's WebRing Offers a Business Boost to Members
By Damon Segal
Members across Canada and the United States could soon be doing substantial additional business with each other, thanks to the arrival of the BNI WebRing, an Internet service which creates a borderless web-based business community, opening up a host of major new networking opportunities.
By joining www.BNIWebRing.com, chapters from New Orleans to Nova Scotia will be equipped with many exciting tools—all at the click of a button:
- The ability for anyone—BNI member or not—to obtain the details of any member and his or her services by chapter, country, business category, key word, company or member name. In practice, it means anyone with Internet access can locate just about any product or service across BNI's global business community.
- The opportunity for any BNI member to send an eReferral(tm) to a member of any other chapter in the U.S. and Canada (as well as to colleagues in the U.K. and Ireland), if a product or service is not available through his or her own chapter.
- The chance for chapter leadership teams to obtain instant print outs of continuously updated lists of their members and services, and link their own chapter's website directly to the international BNI web community.
- The benefit to individual members of being able to advertise their own business websites to tens of thousands of BNI colleagues across the world.
- Any member being able to change and update his or her business details on the WebRing within minutes—allowing the promotion of new services or special offers to a worldwide business community.
Since BNI's WebRing launched to U.K. and Irish chapters just four months ago, more than 55 chapters have joined, attracting well over 1,000 visits a week by members.
Such has been its impact in Britain that BNI's U.K. national director Gillian Lawson described it as "probably the most significant single development in BNI's continuing evolution." She said: "In one giant leap, the WebRing has taken all the benefits of belonging to a BNI chapter and turned them into truly worldwide business opportunities for every member. This is a fast and sophisticated Internet business service with the rare advantage of being amazingly easy to use."
As BNI has grown and matured, it has become increasingly obvious that individual members want and need to do business with colleagues in different chapters, usually because they are seeking access to a product or service not represented in their own group, or because they want to refer valuable business to a BNI member, rather than see it go to waste.
Damon Segal commented: "While the WebRing allows anyone to access a vast database of information about the services, products and members of BNI chapters through North America and the UK, only BNI members can enjoy the WebRing's main benefits—such as the ability to send cross-chapter eReferrals and market their own business services to potentially millions of customers worldwide."
To learn more about this significant new BNI service and view its many features, go to: www.BNIWebRing.com/usa. When you're convinced about its benefits, you can register your chapter's subscription through the website—and start reaping immediate rewards.
Damon Segal, the brain behind WebRing, is a graphic designer, marketing and IT specialist whose London-based company, AGI Agencies, launched the service to UK and Irish chapters.
HUDDLE TIME
Show Your Appreciation with 10 Dimes a Day
By Tom Connellan
What if I told you that you could boost your kids' grades with one dollar a day? Does it work? Absolutely! And the best part is that you can use the same dollar every day. What's more, the dollar isn't even for the kids. It's for you! Here's how it works.
If you were a carpenter and reinforced a table, it would be stronger after you reinforced it. The same thing happens with behavior. If you reinforce it, it will be stronger.
Simple enough. We're all at least familiar with the concept. Reinforce behavior and it occurs more frequently. So if you reinforce things like studying, doing homework and writing papers, grades will go up. Unfortunately, those positive behaviors are not usually reinforced—at least not as frequently nor as fully as they should be.
"Well," you might say, "I certainly don't punish the kids for studying."
No, probably not. But there's another type of feedback that can be even more punishing than punishment. Here are the three types of feedback you need to consider.
1. Positive feedback is energizing! It validates people's efforts. It makes them feel like they've accomplished something. Everyone has experienced this, and everybody knows it works. That's why we generally hand it out as often as we can remember to do it.
2. Negative feedback is also energizing, but in a different way. When somebody is told, in a negative manner, that he's fallen short of what's expected, he's being punished. Frequently, the person receiving the negative feedback has been trying, but just hasn't improved as much as we hoped. To the recipient of the feedback, this feels like being punished for trying. And people who are consistently punished for trying will eventually stop trying.
3. No feedback is called extinction. This can be even more punishing than negative feedback. It's the least motivating response you can make to any action. And yet it's the most common response to achievement—particularly to achieving improvement.
Think of it this way. If you tell a joke and everyone laughs, that's positive feedback; tell a joke and everyone groans, that's negative feedback. Tell a joke and there is no feedback—no laughter, no groans, no change in facial expression—that's no feedback. That's extinction. Which is worse to have happen? For most of us, no feedback—absolute silence—is.
The odds are pretty good that—without realizing it—you're extinguishing efforts your children are making to improve their grades. If you're like most parents, you're probably pretty good at reinforcing excellence, but not so good at reinforcing improvement. What can you do to change this?
That's where the dollar comes in. Put ten dimes in a pocket the first thing each day. Every time you reinforce someone for his or her effort, move one dime to another pocket. Make sure that at least five of those dimes are moved because of something you said to one of your children. Also make sure that at least three of those five are for reinforcing an improvement in their efforts. Your goal is to get the ten dimes moved by the end of the day. Do that and you'll be noticing opportunities to acknowledge others that you've been missing.
Do it for thirty days. At that point, you will have formed a habit and you'll be doing it naturally.
Oh, by the way. Here's a "BNI Bonus Question:" How are you doing with other BNI members who are helping you strengthen your network? Are you letting them know how much you appreciate their efforts? Are you acknowledging their role in growing your business and the business of other members? How about your director? No? Well, put those ten dimes in a pocket and get to work!
(c) Thomas K. Connellan. Tom is the author of the just-released book, Bringing Out the Best in Others! - 3 Keys for Business Leaders, Educators, Coaches, and Parents. You can download the first two chapters for free at http://www.bringing-out-the-best.com. If you like them, forward them via email to everyone in your address book.
HUDDLE TIME
How Getting Published Pumps Your Business
By Bill Treloar
It all started with an exercise at the Short Hills, NJ, chapter of BNI. I was there substituting for a member of that chapter (I belong to the East Hanover chapter).
Anna Banks, our regional director, had just asked all of us to write down a list of terms that describe our target markets. Then she asked us what we had done to get published in periodicals aimed specifically at that target market. What a great idea!
Getting Started
My target market is small businesses, sole proprietorships and SOHO businesses. A trip to the county library revealed several publications that serve these target markets. I decided to write an article about the fastest growing part of my business, which is search engine optimization. That's the process of recommending and implementing changes to websites with the purpose of driving them to the top of the listings when people search for products and services in search engines.
I wrote an article and sent it out to several editors. I also sent an abbreviated version to the editor of the local Mensa newsletter and that turned out to be the first article to make it into print. Despite a self-abasing remark from the editor that she wasn't sure how many people actually read the newsletter, my copy arrived in the mail on a Saturday, and on Monday it had resulted in a new client.
Boy, was I pumped! If this newsletter with its narrow focus and small circulation (about 700 or so) could generate a new client that quickly, what would lie in store for me when I published in something statewide or nationally?
Establishing Expertise
Well, it turns out that things are seldom that dramatic. A couple of months later, my full-length article appeared in the New Jersey Small Business Development Center's website http://209.73.224.210/ebusiness/websiteroi.asp. I promptly placed a link to it on my own website.
My next opportunity turned out to be writing an article for our county Chamber of Commerce's newsletter, "Business Technology Today." The article was entitled "Don't Fire Your Website!" (http://www.treloarassociates.com/bustechtoday.htm) and was published in June. Another link went up on my website.
These articles may not have directly generated new clients, but they still benefit me by establishing my credentials as an expert. When I introduce myself to a prospective client, I don't only need to explain my expertise, but I need to acquaint them with the process of search engine optimization. What better way than to send them an introductory email with links right to my published articles? That establishes me as an expert without requiring me to claim so explicitly and immodestly.
Increasing Circulation
Emboldened by my modest success so far, I sent an email to the business editor of the local daily newspaper, listing some selling points for an article about what I do. A reporter interviewed me and some other small business owners who've had success with search engine optimization, and the article appeared on the front page of the Sunday business section (http://www.dailyrecord.com/business/02/08/25/business1-smallbiz.htm). It quoted me extensively as an expert in the field. Again, a new link for my website.
I have another article that will soon be published in a Canadian print newsletter for home business owners. This has already been published online in the U.S. by the National Business Association (http://www.nationalbusiness.org/NBAWEB/Newsletter/756.htm).
Well, Anna's got me on a roll, I'd say. Even if no one ever reads one of these articles and calls to hire me to market their website, these articles provide valuable content for my website and are a great marketing tool in general. You can bet that I hand out copies when it's my turn to speak at our BNI meeting.
The payoff isn't always instant or dramatic, but it's long-term and long-lasting. I recommend you give it a try.
Bill Treloar is president of Treloar Associates in East Hanover, NJ, a consulting firm specializing in making Internet marketing and search engine placement more efficient and cost effective. You can reach Bill at (973) 887-0778 or http://www.TreloarAssociates.com.
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