Is Rejection Real or Not?

One of our greatest fears and the reason most people do not ask the questions they need to ask in order to succeed, is our irrational fear of rejection. We are so terrified by the prospect of someone not accepting our request, that in most cases the most important questions go unasked. This leaves us trapped in lives, which may be less than satisfying. Yet the prospect of asking someone, who we know could mentor us and support our growth, is so daunting, that we never ask the question.

For me not asking the question is the worst kind of rejection possible, you are in effect rejecting yourself and telling yourself that you are not worthy. This belief that you are unworthy and that the person you have identified as a possible mentor for you, would not be willing to support you, is due to your consistent negative self-talk and doubt. You start every day with a pocket full of possible choices. You can choose to hold positive beliefs and think positive thoughts or you can waste your day thinking and believing negative thoughts

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The best analogy I know, to describe this irrational behaviour, where we have the choice to choose positive thoughts, which will uplift and support us, over negative thoughts, which limit and restrict our potential. Is the story of the person who is given a million dollars and sent to a shopping centre to buy fittings and furniture for an apartment.

On arriving at the first store, they look around and see the most hideous lamps for sale. After asking the price they are told they are $ 100 000 each. They hate them, but still buy two and ask for them to be delivered. On walking into the next store they see a painting, they hate, which matches the lamps they have just bought, so they enquire about the price. The sales person tells them that it costs $ 200 000. Hating the painting more than the lamps, they ask them to wrap and deliver it.

That sounds like a really ridiculous story doesn’t it. Well choosing to run your life by choosing only negative thoughts and holding negative beliefs about yourself is as ridiculous. If you would never buy two lamps and a painting you hate and ask for them to be delivered to your home, then why do you allow yourself to think negative, damaging thoughts, which restrict and limit your potential? Asking for these to be delivered every day as the foundation for creating your future?

The type of thoughts you choose to think is always a choice. Are you going to make better choices from this moment on and no longer allow your mind to walk down the path of negativity? You get to choose, stop inviting negative thoughts, which you do not want, to be delivered throughout your day. Start to make wiser choices and invite only positive thoughts to be delivered throughout your day. Positive thoughts uplift and empower you, whilst negative thoughts restrict and limit you.

Getting back to the concept of rejection, I do not believe that there is such a thing as rejection. Before you ask a question, you do not have what you want. If the person declines your request you still do not have what you wanted, nothing has changed. If however you ask a question and the person accepts your request. Then things change, now you have what you wanted; now things are different. There is therefore no such thing as rejection, which is one of our greatest fears; there is only acceptance and support.

Action Idea: Explore your world and find all those questions, which have gone unasked. Make a list of all these questions and armed with the knowledge that there is no such thing as rejection, only acceptance and support. Begin to approach all the people on your list and ask them the questions you know will accelerate you success. What have you got to lose?

Author: Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

To Network and Market using Social Media or not to, that is the Question.

The arrival of the large number of social media platforms is not something to fear and resist. It offers any wise entrepreneur a number of new ways to communicate and research his markets. Embracing this new technology and using all the amazing benefits it offers, will allow your business to stand head and shoulders above the competition. The most effective way to leverage all the benefits offered by this new technology is to use a blend of traditional marketing and networking strategies, combined with a targeted social media strategy.

Effective, traditional marketing and networking strategies were always about targeting the right market, identifying the right organisations or people, within those markets and then communicating the right message to them. The objective was and still is to connect with these people, so that they could get to know like and trust you and your product and service. Using traditional methods to market your business, such as print media, radio, television would be pointless, unless you knew who your target client was and how best to reach them. The same basic business principals hold true for any social media marketing strategy.

Effective traditional networking where you would develop, mutually beneficial,  connection with the right people, required face to face meeting and developing meaningful connections with people, who could make a difference in your life or business. This has not changed with the advent of social media. Social media has simply accelerated the pace at which you can identify prospective people to connect with. The incredible volume of useful background information, which is available on the various social media platforms, is a powerful tool to help you get to know your prospects and clients better.

An effective social media strategy is not about building massive networks of thousands of distant connections. To be effective you must use the information available through social media, to research and get to know your prospects better. To get the most from your social media marketing and networking strategy, you must know who your ideal client is, what their needs are and where to find them.

 Traditional marketing and networking strategies were never effective unless they were targeted at the right people in the right place. The same is true for any strategy, which utilises social media. Carefully select and target individuals, consistently communicate with them, always trying to add value to them. Over time you will build a network of raving fans, who will not only buy your products or services, but who will be an important part of your marketing strategy too.

Social Media as a Networking Tool

Non-relational approaches to networking can never work. Faceless websites, handing out bucket loads of business cards at conferences or sending pointless mass emails is not only ineffective, but can actually drive potential connections away from you. Networking is never about quantity, it is about the quality of relationships you can develop and sustain. The way your business or life turns out is directly proportional to the quality of meaningful relationships you can develop and most importantly sustain.

In this very competitive market place it is imperative that we are known. It is impossible to be needed if you are not known. So yes social media does serve as an opportunity to create awareness about what you and your business offer. Awareness does not create trust or meaningful connection. So if it is purely awareness that you want to create in the market place, then by all means continue to spray a diluted message into the market place via your social media platforms and pray that someone will see it, need it, trust you and then approach you.

On the other hand you can identify your target market, companies and individuals within those markets. Combine your social media and traditional networking strategies. Research these companies and individuals, using social media and Google and then develop a targeted strategy to approach these companies and individuals.  The background information can be used to connect with these people at networking events or face to face meetings. This targeted approach, where you know exactly who you want to meet, connect and develop meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships with. Places you at a huge advantage over your competitors, who go unprepared to any networking or face to face meeting, hoping to bump into the right person and then connect with them.

All it takes is just one great mentor, coach, friend or individual who is willing to share an insight or make a really important introduction and you will catapult your life or business to amazing new heights. So is it not worth the effort to identify the right people who could make a difference in your life, either by purchasing your products or services or guiding and helping you and then researching them to get as much background info on them as possible. The time invested in this endeavour could deliver returns, which would astound you.

Although social media has opened new doors of possibility to us, it still remains crucial to build credible relationships with people and to get personal references and referrals from them. Social media has just made it easier to research and communicate with all these important people on a regular basis. It has also made it easier to share any testimonials you receive from any clients, with targeted individuals, via your social media platforms.

The best way to use social media is to get your clients to endorse you and your product or service via social media. There is no easier or effective way to get prospects to trust your business than getting a raving fan to write about it on your social media platforms. People may doubt the truthfulness in an advertisement, but they will always trust any feedback from an independent third party. Building great businesses and personal success is about building trust in the market. Real meaningful trust is delivered through references, endorsements and testimonials. Your social media strategy must be designed to invite feedback from your clients.  

Social media allows us to have access to massive quantities of people. This is great as it means that we can easily access the people that we have targeted and discover how we can connect with them. We can research them and get to know them even before we meet them. When you have only 100 friends in your first line of connections, you can easily access over 10 000 people by association through LinkedIn. Wow that is power, which you could use to research and discover the right people to connect with.

The power is not in the fact that you can spray a meaningless message out to so many people. The power lies in the fact that you have access to such an incredible data base, from which you can draw to develop your targeted networking or marketing strategy.

Become a value adder in the social media arena. Create awareness around who you are. Become part of the conversation that goes on in the social media arena and you are developing the first tier of connection with people. It is only when you target people and you take the conversation out of the social media realm that you can really leverage social media and turn it into something that will work for you.

Pray and spray tactics never worked before the advent of social media and the internet. These same tactics will not work now either. Human psychology is fundamentally still the same, technology can help us to become global and have access to masses of people, but fundamentally we are still the same. We still have the same desires, needs and ways we operate and we still want to do business with people or businesses we know, like and trust.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Building Meaningful Networks – Means You Won’t Need to Succeed Alone

We all have gifts and amazing natural strengths in certain areas of our lives, yet no matter how well we may perform in these areas. There are still parts of our lives where we need support and are not very adept or strong. These areas where we have weaknesses cause us to reach a chasm in our lives or businesses, where we are unable to proceed without the support of someone else. Identifying people with whom we can form mutually beneficial relations, who can assist us and whom we can support or help get what they want in return. Will accelerate our daily progress and help us achieve our goals.

Identifying and connecting with the right people, with whom you can form meaningful connection, is one of the main reasons for building a successful, mutually supportive network. Trying to build a successful business, without building a supportive network, using face to face networking events or the various Social Media platforms as tools to support your efforts, is like carrying a heavy suitcase without wheels at the airport. You very quickly feel tired and overwhelmed.

Creating an effective networking platform of mutually supportive people, who really connect and can depend on each other for support, is like walking at the airport along one of those travelators, with a perfectly balanced suitcase on wheels. You have momentum and quickly reach your destination. The same is true when you engage in effective networking and you form meaningful, mutual beneficial connection with the right people. You support each other and accelerate each other’s success.

The support you get from an effective, carefully chosen support network will make succeeding in both your personal and business lives feel effortless. It will feel like you have a travelator under your feet, speeding you along the path of success. Mutually beneficial connection with the right people is the catalyst, which will accelerate your ability to achieve all your goals and dreams.

Meaningful Relationships

The Dunbar 150 theory states that we can only realistically have 150 meaningful relationships at any one time. The average Facebook user has around 130 friends. So this theory seems to hold true even with social media. This means that even though you may have built huge networks of connections via your social media platforms, you will only ever be able to communicate with these individuals on a daily basis; you will never be able to form any type of meaningful connection with them.

Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump and Richard Branson have revealed in their biographies that their incredible success was supported and accelerated by about one to two dozen people. Your life is no different; the energy you are wasting on attempting to build meaningful connection with thousands of people via your various social media platforms is wasted. You would be far better off using your social media presence to support your networking efforts, where you can form meaningful connection with a smaller group of targeted individuals.

There are some opportunities that will come from communicating with a broader base of individuals via social media. You get to consistently communicate with a huge spectrum of different individuals. This opens up possibility and people, who you did not even think were potential connections, may contact you to connect. This has happened to me on a few occasions over the past few years.

In October last year I was contacted by someone from Dallas Texas to come over to the US and speak. I had never thought of going to Dallas, it was not even on my radar. The gentleman in question had been following my daily quotes for about eight months. He enjoyed my work and having seen the consistent quality of work I could produce, he wanted to see me speak in Dallas. I have enjoyed a couple of these windfalls over the past few years. I must however state that these have all been great experiences, but have contributed very little to the overall growth in my business. The consistent growth in my business has come from identifying targeted individuals within carefully chosen organisations and then building connection with them.

The very nature of social media offers us the opportunity to have thousands of connections. These connections open doors, which may have never opened, had we not had these connections. I must however state that if you are basing your entire marketing and networking strategy on building connection with thousands of strangers and then hoping they are going to contact you. You are going to struggle to get your business to grow.

Communicating with thousands of strangers via your social media platforms and then waiting for them to contact you, is like waiting to win the lottery before you become successful. Yes people do win the lottery, but the odds are really stacked against you. Use a strategy of consistently communicating to a wide base of people via your social media platforms to create awareness of who you are, build the perception of a huge presence in the market, create the perception in the market that you are an expert and in the rare case, to get people to contact you and do business with you.

There are many ways to expand the number of superficial connections you have. To get the maximum benefit from this part of your networking and marketing strategy, you can use some really powerful CRM software to assist you. By using customer relationship software it is possible to effectively connect with significantly more people. Your CRM software when managed properly will help you to keep track of your extensive network and to more effectively communicate with them. They by no means are a substitute for real face to face contact and relationship building. There are great tools available like Gist.com, rapportive.com and plaxo.com that make managing your social networks easier and more streamlined.

Treat everyone you meet like a VIP.

It is clear from everything stated above, that building a successful business is about developing meaningful connection with a targeted group of individuals. All other strategies are supplemental to this and in effect only support your efforts to connect with the right people. When you meet the right people, either via social media platforms or face to face networking events, ensure that you have their express permission before you add them to any mailing list or newsletter. You will very quickly alienate people if you follow this reckless strategy.

You build meaningful relationships by making people feel special

It is crucial that you take a real interest in everyone you meet and that you strive to treat them as VIP’s. Always try to go the extra mile by glancing at their bio on LinkedIn, Facebook or twitter, before going to any meeting with them. It is always great to have something to comment to people about when you meet them. Things like, it is great to meet a fellow engineer etc. will stand you in good stead to start a conversation and eventually develop meaningful connection with them. Even better would be to have an understanding of their interests or hobbies. People love to speak about their interests and will readily connect with you, if you have researched them and know a little about their background.

There is one word people love to hear more than any other, their name. Use people first names as often as realistically possible in any communication with them. This applies whether you are speaking to them in person or if you are communicating with them via email or on any of the social media sites. By using the sweetest sounding word in their vocabulary will build great rapport with everyone you interact with. Please make sure that you pronounce and spell people’s names correctly.

Connection is Crucial

Get out of the idea that you must always be in broadcast mode. This applies at face to face networking events and on your social media platforms. No one likes to interact with people that only push content or information one way. Respond to as many people within your social media network as possible. I try to comment on at least 3 targeted people’s blogs every day communicate with 5 targeted people on Facebook every day and join one or two targeted twitter conversations a day.

Strive to be someone, who always adds value to everyone around you, who helps and connects with people daily. Someone with whom people can connect to with confidence, form mutually beneficial relationships with, which will serve both parties, leaving everyone better off after making the connection. Successful networking either face to face or via social media is all about looking for ways to connect with and support other people. Always try to contribute as much as possible to the people in your network and they will return the favour.

These contributions must never be made with a hidden agenda. You must be completely transparent when supporting people in your network; people will know when you are not being authentic. As you build your social equity you will attract the right type of people into your network. The law of reciprocity will most certainly be activated and you will form great long term sustainable relationships with people that matter

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Social Media Has Not Changed Business Fundamentals

Using social media as a powerful networking and marketing tool does not mean that basic business practices don’t count any more. Quite the contrary, any business that wants to carry out effective networking or marketing strategies on any of the new social media platforms, must follow some basic principles first. The first and most basic step is to first get to know who you target market is. This will give you the information you need; so that you can discover where to start searching on the various social media platforms to find your prospects.

Social media has not changed the way we think, or make buying decisions; it has just given us an incredible medium for researching, communicating and connecting with potential clients. We still need to identify which businesses we want to do business with, i.e. prospects that require our products or services and then we need to identify the individuals within those organisations, to connect and build mutually beneficial relationships with.

The business basics have not changed and if you want to enjoy great success with your social media networking and marketing strategy, it is crucial that the basics are in place first. Know who your target market is, what businesses within that market are the most likely to purchase your products and services and then drill down into those businesses and discover the decision makers within each business. Once you know who these people are, you must use the tools I have described below to research and connect with these people.

As soon as you are connected with the right people on your social media platforms, it is easy to begin forming mutually beneficial relationships with them, by consistently posting valuable information, which is useful to them, commenting on their posts or blogs, sending them birthday cards, targeted information about their hobbies etc. Your computer guru can help you to pull all the information you need regarding birthdays, hobbies, sporting interests, family etc. to help you to get as much background info on your prospective clients as possible.

The more you can consistently connect with your prospects and add value in a non-business sense, the sooner they will get to know, like and trust you. As you know all buying decisions are made using the emotions, so once you have established real connection with anyone, they will buy from you.

Action Idea: Set aside an hour each day for the next week. Take your prospect list and research each one of them in turn using Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and twitter and see how much personal information you can discover on each of them. You will astound yourself how much background information you can discover using this methodology.

I was bidding for a 12 month road show with a labour broker and was up against some really stiff competition. My offering was equal to any of the other bidders and as such I had to pull out all the stops to win this one. I researched the individuals that would be making the final decision about who would run the road show, using Google, Facebook and LinkedIn and discovered that the CEO was a keen motor cyclist. I discovered this by looking at his pictures on his Facebook page. There was a picture of him standing next to his motor cycle in Cape Town, after completing a trip from Johannesburg to Cape Town.

I immediately connected with the C.E.O via Facebook and LinkedIn. I commented on the Photos of the ride to Cape Town and sent him some information on similar rides, which were coming up. We started to communicate regarding motor cycles and very quickly connected. I discovered that he did not own his own motorcycle, but that he hired one every time he did a motor cycle tour. I researched various options on motor cycle hire and sent him a few competitive quotes on hiring motor cycles. He was delighted as he was planning another tour and my efforts had saved him a significant amount of money.

I am a keen motorcyclist myself and breaking with my usual tradition, of wearing a suite to any meeting, I went on my motor cycle, dressed in my motorcycle gear. I walked into the meeting, where we spent an hour discussing motor cycles, never mentioned the contract. I walked out of the meeting with the contract. I still do regular business with this company.

Social media can be a really powerful research tool and a wonderful medium to communicate with people, who you want to connect with. It gives a means of discovering a whole lot of non-business related things to assist in building meaningful connection with people. Get anyone to know like and trust you and doing business becomes simple, profitable and sustainable.

Some of the tools, which will help you to research and discover how to connect with the right people on the various social media platforms, are listed below:

1.    The most obvious place to start is always Google. It is astounding how much information is available via his search platform.

2.    The searches on Facebook are also really powerful. Facebook is always my second port of call when doing any research.

3.    Twellow.com is a great tool to find twitter users by means of some carefully selected key words in their bio, category or location. This will allow you to find people that are aligned with the vision of your business.

4.    LinkedIn is also a great resource. As a free user you can carry out a number of useful searches that will help you to find and connect with the right people. You can upgrade you Linked in account, which will give you access to a number of very useful tools that will help you find the right people to network and connect with.

5.    Identifying and joining LinkedIn groups is also a great way to identify and connect with the right people.

6.    Use search.twitter.com to search for conversations that are relevant to your goals. You can then join these conversations. Contribute real value to the conversation and you will appear real and honest. You will become someone that they will want connect with.

Make sure that you have all your social media profiles printed on the back of your business cards. This makes it far easier for people you meet to continue the conversation with you after the event. Ensure that you have an up to date photograph on your business card so that people can easily identify you on the various social media sites.

All these strategies will help you to connect with the right people, regularly communicate with them and ultimately get them to know like and trust you.. This connection will be the catalyst for you to turn your networking and marketing efforts into sustained online networking and meaningful connection.

Social Media Helps Communication and Connection

I am sure that you are like me and that you meet really important people, who can help and support you. The challenge we all face is finding and making the time to actually turn these relationships into mutually beneficial long term connections. We get so wrapped up in our busy lives that we never find time to do what we know is really important. If we want to finally become super achievers, we need to invest time to build connections with all the people that matter. People with whom we can form mutually beneficial relationships with, who will support our vision and help us achieve our goals.

After meeting someone either at a networking event or via any other forum, it is crucial to maintain the momentum and to build connection with them as soon as possible. Social media offers you a really great opportunity to maintain and develop these relationships. As soon as you return to your office after any networking event, immediately send connection requests to all the people that you want to stay in contact with. Have system in place that reminds you when they accept your request and immediately send them a thank you for connecting. Continue communicating with these people and discover ways that you can help them with a hobby or challenge they are facing. Keep sending out useful information over your social media platforms, comment on their post, blogs etc. and allow the relationship to percolate and develop. This connection can be the catalyst for you to turn in person networking into sustained online networking and meaningful connection.

I have devised a simple weekly strategy where I plan to do the following each week:

1) Meet in person for a drink or lunch with three important contacts. This is planned and scheduled each Friday afternoon.

2) Connect with 15 important contacts via the internet. This can be a comment on their blog, a targeted email or via their social media platform.

3) I send a gift to one important person. This is not a gift because I feel obliged, it is a carefully thought out gift with meaning. The recipient is always really pleased with the unexpected gift and they will feel more connected with you after receiving it.

Social media has not changed how we think, but it has most certainly changed how we can connect and communicate. The sooner you start using social media in your business, the sooner you will get to share in the abundant fruit that hangs from the social media tree of success.

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Marketing Networking via Social Media is all about Fostering Meaningful Connection

Marketing Networking via Social Media is all about Fostering Meaningful Connection

The rapid rate of technological advancement over the past few years and the incredible growth in social media networks has made connecting and communicating with people easier than ever before. This has led to the illusion that when using social media as a networking and marketing tool for your business, you must attempt to connect with as many people as possible, building superficial connection with thousands of people. This strategy may work if you are in a business that relies on this type of superficial connection with a mass market, to sell your products or services. My experience has shown me that very few, if any businesses, have enjoyed success with a strategy of simply trying to exponentially grow the numbers on their social media networks.

The secret for utilising social media as an effective means to network and market your products and services successfully and to regain the personal touch in the new digital world, is to accept that it is never about how many contacts you have. It is always about the number of quality contacts you have. Despite the apparent ease of making thousands of superficial connections via social media networks, the fundamentals of Networking and marketing still apply. You still need to know who your ideal clients are, what their needs are, where to find them and then to connect with them, so that they can get to know, like and trust you and your business.

Unless you connect with the right people, who need what you have to sell. Building mutually beneficial relationships with them, whereby you can support each other, share ideas, leads and information. You are wasting your efforts on social media. The need to be a great matchmaker is as important today as it was before the advent of social media. Yes we need to be seen, build credibility for our brand and bring attention to our businesses via all the marketing channels available to us, including all the social media platforms.

One of the best ways to connect with the people we want to do business with and turn social media into a power tool for success is to explore opportunities to connect these people with other people, who they need, in a mutually beneficial way. The law of reciprocity, states that people are always willing to help people that helped them. Get to know your targeted group of clients by using social media and search engines to research these prospects. Once you have an understanding of their businesses and their needs, explore your network and see if you can help them to connect with someone in your network that can support or assist them in any way.

The second way of utilising social media as a networking and marketing power tool is to consistently post relevant, useful information, which your network finds of value. Over time the people in your network will grow to respect you as an expert and they will get to know like and trust you and your business. People always make a buying decision based on their emotions, only using logic to guide them. So as soon as you have managed to get people to know, like and trust you. Getting them to buy from you is simple.

As I stated before your social media network must consist of carefully selected people that need what you have to sell. This ensures that your message is reaching the right people and over time these targeted individuals will start to do business with you. Communicating your message and offering consistent value to your social media network can be facilitated in a number of different ways. You can simply post short exerts directly on the social media platforms. If you have a longer message you want to publish, you could create a blog where you write longer articles and then post links to your blog posts, onto your social media platforms. By following these links people will be able to read, like and comment on your articles.

Another way of building connection with people and becoming the resident expert on your social media platforms, is to comment on others people’s posts or blogs and to retweet things that are aligned with your vision and networking and marketing objectives. Your objective whenever working on your social media networking and marketing strategy, is to ensure that you consistently add value, so that people invest time to read and utilise your information. Success in using social media as a power tool for networking or marketing your business is always found in giving and never taking.

These new high-tech methods of networking and marketing our businesses have opened new doors of opportunity. It has become far easier to identify and meet the right people and have direct access to our markets. This ability to communicate a relevant message, which is of value to our market, makes creating awareness about our products and services simple. It also allows us to appear to have a very large presence in the market place.

Invest the time to learn to use social media as an effective marketing tool. As you learn the skills needed to successfully develop and sustain your social media marketing strategy you will gradually build momentum and increase your influence and visibility. This will give you access to a system that will allow you to leverage maxim advantage from technology for very little cost. During this entire process, always stay focused on building only mutually beneficial relationships and you will have the added benefit of enriching your life too.

When you read a tweet, blog or an online post that is aligned with your networking or marketing strategy and you support the author by offering them a compliment or a different perspective. You are opening up a whole new world of opportunity. You get to connect with new friends online, who are aligned with and need your products or services. These remain only superficial relationships and if you want to use these contacts to support your business or buy your products you will need to foster meaningful relationships with these new connections. These are by no means the type of relationship you will need to develop if you want to grow your business. You cannot depend on any of these connections to support you or to help you with meaningful referrals. If you want to really network with these people you will need to pull them out of your social media pool and make real contact with them.

Always have you antennae out; looking for ways to connect people that you feel will be beneficial to each other. As you grow your list of contacts and connections always remember that networking is not about how to get the cash registers ringing. It is about connecting with people, forming mutually beneficial relationships, where the payoff may only be sharing information, support, advice or introductions. The advantage may simply be the benefit of sharing a cup of tea with someone that will expand your thinking.

The way you can stand head and shoulders above your competition is to commit to blend old school networking with social media. If you are planning to attend an in person function, follow the simple procedure as laid out below:

1. If it is possible contact the organizers and see who is attending the function.
2. Research the people by visiting LinkedIn, Google or Facebook and see who you want to connect with on the day. By identifying key individuals before the event and knowing a little about them places you in a very favourable position to connect with them at the event.
3. Subscribe to their blogs or ezines.
4. Try to discover some background information on all of the people you want to meet. This will give you something to initiate the conversation with them when you meet at any networking event.  All the information you gather before the event will help you to build rapport with these really important contacts at the event.
5. Print pictures of the people you want to connect with and search them out at the event. This saves a huge amount of wasted time at networking events trying to discover the right people to connect with.
6. Does the event have a # tag? Use the # tag to tweet during and after the event. This feature on Twitter allows you to visit the # tag group after the event and see what everyone at that event was tweeting during the event. Reading these tweets after the event will help you to identify other people that may need what you sell.
7. Follow anyone that is tweeting about the event on twitter.
8. Tweet any specific attendees, before the event and invite them to connect at the event.
9. Make a twitter list of all attendees and tweet about it. This will make you the go to guy for information.
10. At the event tweet live about the event via your mobile device with the # tag.
11. This will help you build rapport with other attendees and build relationships with the organizers. They will love the visibility you are creating for the event.

Social media is here to stay and has changed the way we network and market our businesses forever. The fundamentals of business will always apply and people will always be the final decision makers, but technology has now made these functions so much more streamlined. Social media is not something to fear and avoid it is a powerful tool that when used properly, will catapult your business to levels of success you can only imagine.   

 Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Has Technology Changed The Fundamentals of Networking?

Effective networking has been one of the cornerstones of building great businesses, since the dawn of time. Before the explosion of social Media it was a pretty simple process and was conducted face to face, at events designed to build relationships and meaningful connections.

All the new social media options available today have completely changed the game, and presented us with a myriad of new ways of opening doors. This new form of media presents us with a number of innovative options for identifying and finding the right people to connect with, allowing us to become far more effective with our networking and marketing activities. All these changes are affecting not only the way we connect, but also the pace and scope of the connections we are able to make in a very short space of time.

These changes have seen a massive paradigm shift in how we function, communicate and do business, both online and offline. It has now become more important than ever to be highly versed in the art of effective networking. Building quality relationships and making real meaningful connections is still important. But the new high tech methods of networking have now made it far easier to find the right people to connect with and the process of making contact with them is far more streamlined.

No matter how technologically advanced we get; it will always be human beings that will make the final decisions. The principles of networking will always apply. The more people you really connect with and the more people you can offer mutually beneficial opportunities to, the better and more effective will be your network. Technology is not changing this it is just changing how we get to make these connections.

The internet and social media have changed the networking and marketing playing field forever. You can now be sitting in your bedroom at 3 am in the morning communicating with someone anywhere in the world. Technology has turned us into a completely 24 hour society, where different time zones are virtually irrelevant. If you are willing and able to put in the effort, you can connect with anyone, anywhere at any time.

The trick to use this amazing new technology effectively is to carefully select the right people to connect with on the three main social media networks, namely LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Over time keep adding real meaningful value to your network by posting useful information, which will serve your social networking community, without directly trying to sell anything or promote your product or services. As you keep posting relevant, valuable and useful information on your social media networks, you will gradually be viewed as a subject or industry expert.

I post inspirational and educational articles and quotations every day on all my social networks. It has taken me about 18 months of consistently posting relevant material, which is viewed as valuable by my network, for me to be viewed as an expert in the field of human behaviour and expanded awareness. This status has resulted in a number of the people in my network contacting me to facilitate Key Note addresses or workshops at their respective businesses. You can do the same for your business if you post relevant material daily, which will be of real value and have relevance and meaning to your social network.

Never try to promote yourself directly on any social media site. As soon as anyone in your network feels that you are directly promoting your products or services via any social media channel, they will immediately stop following your work and will leave your network. The trick is to invest time into posting great material every day, which is of value to everyone in your network and then to wait for them to contact you. I know this seems counter intuitive.

The reality is that your social media network is no different to any networking meeting that you attend. When you attend any networking event, you work to build connection with the right people, so that you can build mutually beneficial relationships with them. This helps you ensure that over time they get to know like and trust you. Building trust and connection is a process it is not an event. It takes time and effort to develop a mutually beneficial relationship with anyone. This relationship you are attempting to build, results in both parties benefitting, you provide solutions to satisfy their needs and they purchase your products or services.

If you attend any networking meeting where you stand on your sales platform, trying to tell everyone how wonderful your products or services are. Everyone at the meeting will give you a wide berth and avoid you all together. The same is true for your social media strategy. Never try to sell anything on your social media platforms. Invest time to build connection with the right people and over time you will have created one of the most powerful networking and marketing systems possible.

Building your network and consistently posting valuable material takes time and effort. It can be a very challenging thing to do, as it can take quite a while before the people in your network learn to know, like and trust you enough to want to do business with you. The trick is to be consistent and post great material at minimum twice a week. You cannot just occasionally dip your toes into the social media pond and expect to get results. Consistency and relevance are the two bookends of a great social media strategy.

Once anyone that is interested in doing business with you, makes contact, take the conversation off the social media forum and continue the interaction via email, texting, telephone or face to face meetings. Once someone in your network has shown an interest in your services, they have been following your work for a while and over time have grown to view you as an expert. They already know like and trust you, so all that is left for you to do, is to convince them that you are indeed capable of delivering on your promises.

The quantity of unsolicited emails, messages and advertising messages we are exposed to every day, has made people detest spam. Anyone that uses this as a means to try to communicate their marketing message will very quickly alienate prospects. Never ever send out a bulk non personal email that has no soul or meaning to the recipient. This spray and pray strategy does far more harm than good. People are so overwhelmed with emails and information, that when they receive unsolicited messages they actually get turned off by the sender of these messages. The only way to use email marketing effectively is to use a carefully targeted and focused strategy, which includes targeted marketing, one on one scaling and personal, meaningful messages.

We live in such a now world, with instant popcorn, microwaves and instant everything that we expect networking to be instant too. Nothing could be further from the truth. Building relationships and connecting with people takes time. Your social media strategy is no different. The only way to succeed with your social media strategy is to accept that building connection with the right people will take time and effort. You need to be patient and measure your progress weekly to see what impact your strategy is having. Your computer guru, can very easily send you weekly reports on the activity on all your social media sites.

The trick to ensure that you connect with the right people is to follow basic business principals. First identify who you ideal client is by identifying specific demographic, psychographic and emotive characteristics, which your perfect client should possess. Once you have identified who your ideal client is.  The next step is to search via Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn to identify exactly which business you want to connect with. Once you have identified the businesses you want to do business with, next search for the individuals within those organisations. These are the people you want to build connection with.

Many people have missed the point of an effective social media strategy and they have attempted to connect with thousands of people on their social media platforms. Very often these people are not interested in your product or service and will find no value in your postings. A superficial connection with thousands of people is of little or no value. To become really successful and turn yourself into a super achiever requires searching for the right people to connect with. Identifying the ones that you feel will contribute to your future success. Then developing a focused strategy to communicate with and build long term connections with these people.

Next begin to write articles that will be of service to your social media network. Each week view the reports from your computer guru and see what type of articles or posts get the best response. Over time keep polishing your posts until you consistently get good responses and positive feedback from your network. The more often you measure your performance and massage your message, the better the final result of your social media campaign will be.

The art of connecting, referring, helping people and sharing information about products and services has not changed. Networking remains a mutually beneficial process where people share ideas, leads, information, resources and support each other. None of these universal truths has changed. The main thing technology has changed is the pace of discovering the right people to connect with and number of contacts we can make in a very short space of time has grown exponentially. Social media has not changed the fundamental business principals, people still buy from people they know, like and trust.

Author: Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

How Are you Doing So Far in 2012?

As the first month of 2012 draws to a close, how are you doing with turning this into your best year ever? If the results you have managed to achieve to date are less than satisfactory, there is only one barrier that is standing in your way and stopping you from accomplishing every wildly ambitious dream or goal you have for 2012. Let me give you a hint. It is the most useful piece of equipment you own, which unfortunately does not come with an operator’s manual and it is situated above your neck, between your ears.

It is your own mind, which is preventing you from succeeding. Therefore the place to start, to ensure that the next 11 months turns out better than the first month, is to get your head straight. It is time to stop filling your head with negative thoughts and doubts and to develop a “Super Achievers Positive Attitude” This is a mind-set, where you have the mental fortitude and discipline to take the daily actions, push yourself through and overcome the inevitable challenges and difficulties that will cross your path on your success journey.

Discovering and living according to your higher purpose is the ultimate goal for any super achiever, but as getting to this place is a process. It requires discipline and willpower to keep taking those actions, growing and becoming, until you reach a place where you are completely aligned with your purpose. It may require some gruelling or even painful work to move you down the path to uncover, define and refine your purpose and then create your vision for the future. It is your “Super Achievers Positive Attitude” that will ultimately empower you to keep going, even when things seem really tough or challenging.

This never die attitude and positive mind-set is what you need to develop, so that you have what it takes to push through the inevitable challenges, which will cross your path. I am a great believer in guiding your efforts and supporting your attitude and beliefs, with positive affirmations, creative visualisations, meditation, vision boards etc. All of these tools offer great support to your efforts, but nothing can ever substitute for commitment, daily discipline and willpower, to ensure that you remain focused and driven to take the daily goal specific actions you need to succeed. Developing your “Super Achievers Positive Attitude” is one of the most crucial steps on your journey toward living according to your highest purpose.

Once you have travelled the path of discovery and you are aligned with your Purpose. You are living in a place where you do what you love and you love what you do. You no longer need discipline to carry out the tasks you need to do every day, because they inspire you. The challenge you need to overcome, to reach this place, is to ensure that you have the drive and willpower to keep going until you reach this point in your life.

We all love to hear about the easy way to discover success and look around our environments, where we see what we perceive as overnight successes. People that have burst onto the scene, who appeared to have come from nowhere and are now enjoying the success we desire and we want to believe the same is possible for us.

The instant world we inhabit, where we have micro wave ovens, instant popcorn and the illusion that these people have enjoyed overnight success, reinforces this illusion. The reality of all of these apparent overnight successes, where they are living their purpose, is that they have invested many hours into doing the things they did not enjoy doing, worked long hours and did the uncomfortable, until they became the kind of people they needed to be to attract the success they desired.

Your “Super Achievers Positive Attitude” is the drive you need to discover, which will help you to take those daily actions, even when other things seem more appealing, read those books, when entertainment seems like a better option or to work long hours, when giving up feels like an easier choice. There is magic all around you and my experience shows that when you have the discipline to do what may seem uncomfortable at times. Incredible things, way beyond what even you thought possible, will begin to manifest in your life.

The secret to start this magic flowing is to stop coasting through life and to begin creating. You cannot create anything sitting slouched in front of your TV every night or visiting happy hour on the way home from work every day. You can only start the magic flowing if you get off your butt, do the work and put yourself in the path of success.

Author: Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Vision is an Expression of Your Purpose

Our goals are no more than an organised expression of our dreams. So to convert your dreams into your future reality, you must constantly keep defining and refining them and organising them into achievable goals. This process will ensure that you keep polishing your dreams so that you can create a clear system to create future you desire. The way you convert your dreams into your goals must feel realistic, achievable and something that will inspire you to take action daily. The secret to turn your dreams into reality is to create a set of goals that are completely aligned with your vision of the future.

Ensure that the goals you set are indeed what you really want and that when you achieve them, they will deliver on your concept of what success really means to you. You will know when your goals are aligned with your highest purpose, when you can’t wait to get up in the morning to carry out your goal activities. This is a fantastic place to be where you are living your dreams and love what you do. If you still find yourself procrastinating or avoiding doing the goal activities you need to do each day, you have still not discovered or refined and defined your higher purpose enough.

One of the most limiting factors in your life is living a life that is clouded by the illusion, where you do not recognise your true power and magnificence. You limit your true potential because you live according to a belief that you “have to do something”, that “you should do something” or “you need to do something” rather than discovering that something that you “love to do”. You are on this planet to realise all those magnificent dreams and live a fulfilling life, where you live according to your higher purpose and are directed by your vision and mission. You can only achieve this when you are authentic and honest with yourself, allowing yourself to do what you love and love what you do.

It can really be a scary place when you realise for the first time that you are 100 % in control of your life and the outcomes you get to enjoy. It is far easier to be guided by the outside world where you can apportion blame to everything around you for your lack of progress. Rather than accepting that if you are guided from within, you are 100 % responsible for how your life turns out. The wonderful truth of being human is that we have freedom of choice. It is up to us to decide, whether we unlock our higher purpose and then to use this power to create the life of our dreams.

We all live our lives led by a set of evolving priorities and values and every decision we make is guided by whatever is highest on our value list or what has the most meaning or importance at that time. Whatever is highest on your priority list and the thing that gets most of your focus and energy is where you place the highest value. So until you unlock your true purpose and align your priorities to deliver on this purpose, you will continue to place a higher value on doing all the day to day activities you need to do to survive and you will remain trapped in an unsatisfactory life.

The key to unveiling and unlocking the apparent mystery, which is your highest purpose, is to look at all the clues your life is offering you every day and see what your life shows is truly most important to you and you love doing. Your life demonstrates your purpose daily, the things you love doing, the heroes that inspire you, the thoughts you think, the way you spend your leisure time and the way you fill your space, are all clues about your purpose. Pay closer attention to everything around you and you will quickly discover your purpose.

Determine what is truly important to you and what you love doing and you have unlocked your purpose. Keep refining and defining this until you have a clear picture of exactly what your purpose is. You will know when this happens, you wake up every day, excited about your day and you love taking action to realise all your goals. Understanding and living according to your highest purpose is a process, never an event. So do not expect a huge fanfare when you are aligned with your purpose, it is just a place of grace, a deep knowing and contentment where you do what you love and love what you do.

Author: Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Discovering Purpose and Clarifying Your Vision

The first month of the New Year is well on its way to being over. How are you doing with keeping your commitments, to carry out the daily activities you need to do, to achieve your goals? Have you started this New Year the same way you have always done in the past, with a commitment to reinvent yourself and to finally live your greater life purpose? Yet by the middle of January, things feel like they are falling apart and you are once again so wrapped up in doing to survive, that getting to actually carrying out the tasks you need to do to achieve your goals, is a distant memory.

The challenge you face and the reason you seem to lose momentum every year is that you have not really discovered your true life or higher purpose. In other words you do not have a clear vision of what is important to you and more importantly why achieving this really matters. Until you know why making time for and ensuring that you keep all the goal activity commitments you make, is important to you. Other things will always be viewed as a higher priority to you and you will gradually neglect your goal activities.

Your purpose, vision or reason why you want to achieve something, must become really compelling and be construed as more important or as important as all the other activities you carry out each day. Or the things that you see as more important will, over time, flow into your day, almost unnoticed to replace your goal achieving activities. You will always find time to carry out the activities you see as your most important tasks for the day, at the expense of anything that you subconsciously view as less important.

We all have a higher purpose and deep down we all know what it is. The challenge is to uncover yours and to then articulate it into a clear vision or purpose statement, which will inspire you. Discovering your life purpose and formulating a vision statement that clearly defines why achieving anything is really important to you, is not an event, it is a process.

I want you to start this process by exploring your life, where you begin to understand and read the clues that are visible all around you, clues that will gradually unlock and reveal your higher purpose or reason for being.

Action Idea: Scan your life and explore all the actions you are taking or have taken that have really inspired you. Try to uncover the common thread in all of them, this will begin to point you in a meaningful direction and help you to begin the process of discovering your higher purpose: Explore all the activities that have been or are the most meaningful, inspiring and make you feel the most alive and synthesize these..

·         What were you doing when you felt the most inspired or driven?

·         Where are your skills most profound?

·         What inspired you most when you were taking these actions?

All the actions you take, which make you feel good and you feel passionate about doing; are directing toward discovering and formalising your vision. When you experience feelings of gratitude or any strong positive emotion, you are on track and moving toward discovering your higher purpose. Pay close attention to those moments they are incredible clues. Living a life of meaning and purpose is all about doing what you love and loving what you do.

Action Idea:

·         Look back over your life and see who your heroes have been. What they do or did is an incredible clue to help you discover your life purpose.

·         What have you studied most or what do you enjoy studying most?

·         What do you think about most?

·         What in your environment inspires you the most?

Integrate all of these and search for a common thread. Each of the answers you come up with should give you a massive clue and will help you to uncover your higher purpose.

Until you have a clear vision and know why achieving your goals and dreams is important to you.  You will not place a high enough importance on carrying out the daily activities you need to do, to achieve your goals. Everything else will be seen as more important and you will relegate your goal achieving activities to the bottom of your daily to-do list. Uncovering and discovering your higher purpose, formulating a vision and understanding why your goals are really important to you, is one of the most crucial things you must do. Invest the time today to start this process; the results you will enjoy will be well worth the effort.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Know and Play to Your Strength Zone

My experience has shown me that when you focus your energy on improving your strengths and carrying out only activities, which are aligned with these, you are far more effective and efficient. Average people spend time to save money, doing things they hate, whilst super achievers spend money to save time, so they can focus on doing what they love. Money is infinite and easy to earn, whilst your time is finite and far more valuable.

The most effective way to utilise your time is to focus on only doing the things you are good at and to get people, who play at what you feel drains your energy, to do the tasks you find difficult or tedious. When you focus all your energy on doing what you love doing and only do tasks, which are aligned with your strength zone. You not only become far more productive, but you also get to enjoy your life far more.

I am positive that Richard Branson and Donald Trump are as successful as they are, because they use their available time, focused in their strengths zone. They never waste valuable time doing things they hate or are not good at doing. Stop doing the things you hate and you will add many hours of productivity to your day.

Action Idea: Spend one day focused on doing things you are good at and love doing. At the end of the day examine how much more productive you were and how much you enjoyed your day. Now gradually extend this exercise until you have delegated all the tasks you hate, to people, who are more effective at carrying out those tasks than you are. When you do this, the tasks you hate doing get done far better because they are being done by people that love doing those things and you get a whole lot more time to do the things you excel at doing. Everything becomes far more efficient, effective and enjoyable.

Imagine how amazing your life will be, when your entire day is invested into doing the things you love and are good at doing. You get to live the life of your dreams and success becomes almost effortless, as you do what you love and love what you do. Now add your commitment to constant and never ending improvement into the mix, where you focus all your energy on only improving your strengths. Your growth is diluted if you waste time trying to improve areas where you have any weaknesses

Action Idea: Identify a specific area in your strength zone and introduce a focused approach to improve this strength. Only read books, listen to audio books and attend seminars that are dedicated to improving this strength over the next 90 days. This focused approach will see you develop this strength far beyond what would be possible, if you diluted your efforts and read books, listened to audio books and attended a seminar in many diverse fields during the same time frame.

As you take this focused approach to the next 90 days, don’t forget to look for guidance from people, who can assist you and support your efforts. Now go marching boldly into 2012 and use your natural talents, gifts and strengths to become far more productive, efficient and effective. The results you will see start appearing in your life, when you make this shift will astound you and everyone around you.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za