#AuthenticallyAwesome – Creating Authentic Partnerships

Those of us who own businesses tend to spend a lot of our networking time seeking out new leads and potential clients. I can hear you now, “Isn’t that the purpose of networking?” Absolutely.  However, if you are only seeking out new clients at these functions you are missing out on the valuable opportunity of building your list of power partners. What is a power partner, you ask? This articlehas a great definition and some examples of what makes a power partner.  Basically, this type of partnership involves small business owners that share your same goals, have a similar target audience, would not be considered competition, and that you can trust. 

An important part of building your tribe includes beefing up your list of power partners. This sort of professional relationships is quite symbiotic and allows both parties to benefit and support one another without stepping on each other’s “turf.”
While building a professional tribe may seem daunting and will require some practice, courage, and risk, once the relationship with your tribe has been established, it can be satisfying and mutually beneficial.  So how do you start?
Being Vulnerable

No, this does not mean that you have to share every personal thing going on in your life.  This means that you need to show that you are just as human – even the flaws and accomplishments – as the next person.  Don’t use jargon and big words in your communications just because you can – you aren’t trying to impress, you are trying to build a tribe built on trust and common goals.  Answer emails and texts as soon as you are able – even if it’s just to say “I got your message and I will get back to you.” 
Just be you.  This blatant authenticity will allow others to feel more comfortable around you and develop trust that will result in growing a tribe of Power Partners.  Yes, there will be those who reject who you are but no one needs that kind of negative energy within their tribe anyway. By allowing yourself to be open and vulnerable, the right people will be more drawn to your energy and will want to get to know you better.
Know Your Limitations

When the value of your time is taken into consideration, size does matter.  Studies show that most people can efficiently maintain up to 15 close relationships – this includes both personal and professional.  Determine the relationships you value most and build those.  Making your professional tribe too large can lead to less attention being paid to important details needed to maintain the mutually beneficial relationship.  The synergy developed by a tribe allows them to create something bigger and stronger than anything that could be created individually. 

Share Your Human Capital

The biggest way to build trust is to give more than you expect – this can be done by offering your unique skills to those within your tribe, helping others build their own connections that will benefit both parties, or just being a receptive ear when it is needed.  This help will not always be free, but it will earn the trust and respect from the members in your tribe.  Sharing your experiences and wisdom gained shows others that you are willing to put yourself out there to support them with what you have learned. Share the human capital you have gained to help others.  In return your tribe will step up to help you in times of need.
Give Credit  

The need for recognition is just as large a part of human nature as wanting to belong to a tribe of like-minded people.  Giving credit where credit is due may seem like a small thing, but it can build confidence and comfort.  Creating an environment where your tribe members feel comfortable being themselves while also creating an environment of trust and support. 

Share the Wealth

In addition to boosting confidence, it is important to keep in mind ways that making new connections is a priority for people when networking.  Assisting those within your tribe with desirable referrals that will be mutually beneficial can lead to good things for all parties.  Create these relationships not for your benefit, but because you know it will benefit the parties involved.  The goodwill that you are creating will make your tribe stronger.
Social Media Features

Social media is a good tool to build the bridges vital for business success and can yield some unexpected tribe members.  Featuring your power partners in your social media on a regular basis is a great way to support them and showcase their value to you. With any luck, they will reciprocate and share your information with their target audience as well. This is just one example (a very important one) of how creating authentic partnerships is healthy for everyone involved.

Building these authentic partnerships from your tribe may not be easy, and will definitely require a willingness to give more than you expect to receive.  However, building a strong tribe and working on meaningful connections through social media and in person will bring out the best in both you and your tribe. Plus, you will stand out as a shining example of how to #BeAwesome while networking and growing your professional community.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!
Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedInFacebookTwitterBlogGoogle+,YouTubePinterestInstagram and the tools to manage them.

AllProWebTools Launched AWESOME New Tools for Businesses!

https://www.allprowebtools.com/

Over the last 2 years, I have had the honor of implementing systems within AllProWebTools for my business and a variety of clients. There is so much value in incorporating business processes in a single system.  A single system you ask?  As a customer management program, I use for my business, to a myriad of additional functionality, I wanted to personally share the benefits of the system and recent enhancements that will benefit the small business owner, virtual assistant team managers and social media managers in support of their clients.


CRM – Customer Relationship Management

AllProWebTools provides a tool for robust CRM.  Sure, there are a lot of CRM’s out there, by have you utilized a tool that has customization, with a team that can write code to make the ideas for your envisioned processes work?  We have this team.  I met with the team a few months ago to discuss integration of some key functions of my business systems, processes, and to discuss the challenges of a variety of subscriptions in a massive amount of platforms … wouldn’t it be wonderful to house all of my systems and processes in one place instead of many?

AllProWebTools stepped up to the challenge and the new release provided me with a variety of tools to tackle some of the pain points I have in my day to day work flow. These, I will share with you below.

Newsletters and Mass Communications
Sending newsletters, announcements and drip campaigns have been a large pain point in effectively communicating messages with clients, potential clients and power partners.  How can I effectively setup a communication system without key functionality?  I used another system in conjunction with functions of my AllProWebTools product and it just didn’t make sense to continue tolling and developing processes in multiple systems.  AllProWebTools developed functionality to house my drip along with my newsletters in a single database.  I can now track communications to ALL of my contacts in the system to truly know when I communicated, how I communicated and what their actions were!

https://www.allprowebtools.com/

Email Integration
A Challenge with managing email in a variety of places, such as Outlook, Gmail and other hosts, is the fact that you are literally having to login to different databases to manage email communication and manually take notes on each communication in the system.  The team at AllProWebTools developed processes for my multiple email addresses to track communications as they happen with every single contact.  Which means, if I am looking up communications with Sally Sue of ABC Company, I no longer have to login and search a variety of email accounts for our communications, it is housed nicely in the AllProWebTools system, by email address for each of my contacts.  Additionally, I no longer have to login to multiple email accounts, but the system also works as an email host so that all of my email communication can come from this system alone.  I can also flag specific emails (such as spam) to not save data in the system as a contact, so that my database remains clean, containing only contacts that are truly real and spam gets removed from my tasks on a daily basis, which saves me a ton of time!




https://www.allprowebtools.com/


Social Media and Analytic Reporting

One of my struggles as a Virtual Social Media Manager, has been the aspect of reporting.  In the new launch, they developed a system to automatically import reporting for Google analytics and social media sites, so when my clients want an active report of activity and engagement, I can quickly pull up their reporting within mere moments.  This eliminates the process of manually logging into each profile, taking screen shots of reports and compiling a manual report for our clients.  Literally, 2 hours worth of billable time condensed into a few short clicks for a downloadable report.

https://www.allprowebtools.com/

As an AllProWebTools Expert, it has been wonderful to share the needs of our Virtual clients, provide insight into options for them and for the team to literally hear these requests and develop the processes for me … priceless.

The team is top notch.  If you are providing support services for you clients, I highly recommend this tool for CRM, Newsletters, Drip, Social Media Reporting, as well as a myriad of other functions I haven’t mentioned; including but not limited to Ecommerce, Website hosting, task management, team assignments, landing pages, SEO, Blog functionality, data storage (such as Dropbox for example) and so much more.  If you have a business process that needs be housed in a single database and are tired of logging in, remembering many passwords and if you are interested in streamlining processes, this is the system for you.

 AllProWebTools Certified Marketing Expert DISCOUNT

As an expert, we have the ability to offer you significant discounts on the normal $195 setup fee that would be charged if your clients purchased directly from AllProWebTools. If you contact us for setup with AllProWebTools, we will offer you a 50% discount on your setup in the system. Just mention #ALLPRO201750

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedInFacebookTwitterBlogGoogle+,YouTubePinterestInstagram and the tools to manage them.


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