Two Heads are better Than One
As the old saying goes….two heads are better than one. While
this may be true, entrepreneurs and small business owners are often lone
wolves, reluctant to share ideas or ask for help. Many are sole proprietors out
of necessity – they can’t afford employees or even the cost of an occasional
contracted expert or specialist.
The good news for entrepreneurs and small business owners:
finding new customers for products or services has become easier and the
marketplace has expanded – with minimal cost – due to social media. Sending an
email or tweet, uploading a Facebook posting or a You-Tube video has become the
new way of advertise. The bad news: as more and more other entrepreneurs and
small business owners have also picked up on these social – media driven
strategies, offerings can be easily lost in an avalanche of information and
advertising overload. Your company’s message may be out there, but is anyone
reading it, looking at it, or responding to it?
Enter the idea of collaboration. It is a strategy whose time
has come. With increased social media exposure, competition has reached an
all-time high. Today, simply trying to out-shout your competitor no longer
works. What does work is putting heads together to offer something more and
better than can be offered by a single person or company alone. Creating synergy,
where the combined efforts produce something greater than the individual parts,
is key. While we have recently become so focused on social media, we have almost
forgotten that the real magic comes from social interaction – people connecting
mind-to-mind and heart-to-heart with a common intent and a common desire for
mutual success, as opposed to one-upmanship or “beating out the competition.”
Joanne Weiland, CEO of LinktoEXPERT, a web portal
specifically designed to facilitate collaboration, sees a trend toward more
collaboration, as entrepreneurs and experts alike recognize that they can more
quickly and cost-effectively solve problems and meet business challenges when
they share the load instead of trying to do everything themselves. “People get
stalled and run into roadblocks when they reach a point in their project where
they don’t have the skills or the expertise they need to complete the next
step. And sometimes, they simply don’t know what it is they need to do next.”
For instance, a
writer or speaker may have a number of products or services that appeal to a
specific niche audience, but they may not have a large social media presence, or
sufficient knowledge about social media to use it to reach their target market.
In such a case, partnering up with a social media expert, perhaps in a
commission –based affiliate partnership, would make sense.
Weiland says the best collaborations happen when you find a
person who not only has the necessary skills, but who also has the right fit
for your personality and working style. Collaboration can be a win-win, but
only if the right connections are made.
To encourage and facilitate collaboration, consider visiting
www.LinktoEXPERT.com find the type of expert you are looking for,
check out their credentials and call the candidates to discuss your project,
event, etc. You can hire them in minutes. This process traditionally takes months.
Together we elevate each other!
Interested in a collaboration with Rita Milios? Call 863-496-7223 to discuss your project or idea.