The Greater Houston New Media Alliance

To be a leader is to understand that you must transcend being good at just functional and analytical (or problem solving) tasks.

You must be able to build relationships that enable you to create a fabric of personal contacts that will provide you support, feedback, insight, resources, and information. That’s called networking!

Leaders are great networkers and can work effectively with a diverse array of people. We all must become leaders. To that end we must simultaneously learn three types of networking:

1. Operational Networking -The group of people we can depend on to make things happen. It’’s the quality of relationships — the rapport and mutual trust — that gives an operational network its power.
2. Personal Networking – Links with people with whom we have something common. This is done through professional associations, alumni groups, clubs and personal interests communities. These contacts provide important referrals, information and often-developmental support such as coaching and mentoring.
3. Strategic Networking – The key to a good strategic network is leverage: the ability to marshal information, support and resources from one sector of a network to achieve results in another. Strategic networkers don”t just influence their relational environment; they shape it in their own image by moving and hiring subordinates, changing suppliers and source financing, lobbying to place allies in peer positions, and even restructuring their boards to create networks favorable to their business goals.

Bottom Line: Leaders understand the alternative to effective networking is to fail. You simply will not reach a leadership position or you will not succeed at leadership without effective networking skills.

*Harvard Business Review, January 2007, “How Leaders Create Networks”, Hermina Ibarra and Mark Hunter.

When groups accomplish things it is a result of these three factors having been in place:

Purpose, Direction and Motivation. These are the basic tenets of Leadership.

It is taught by the boy scouts, taught by the military. It is the difference between Obama and Hilary.
In intellectual warfare, groups and even whole armies are sabotaged by merely introducing uncertainty around the group’s purpose, direction, or motivation. It is that simple, and that powerful.

Purpose, Direction and Motivation happen on the personal level as well as on the group level, and at any level of task within a project.

Whenever a group does not mesh and things do not happen as planned you can bet it is because one of these factors is missing. This is why many projects are started and yet abandoned.

At the same rate, to ensure any team or organization’s success it is as simple as making sure the team has purpose, direction and motivation and that its members have a common goal, work interdependently and act accordingly.

Even in teams or organizations with weak leads, if the team understands these things it can still succeed because the goal is greater than the individual, and the passions which motivate the team are stronger than the weakest or even most stubborn of leaders.

For example, if a team is low on direction but high on purpose and motivation, it can find a direction and succeed. If the team is low on motivation but high on purpose and direction, it can find motivation and have success. Although this does not come without its challenges,  understanding the basics of leadership and teamwork is a tremendous benefit to anyone who finds them self in any type of leadership role.

All of the link building, the friend adding and messaging in the world means very little if anything at all if people do not like you, trust you, and want to listen to you. The same principles apply online as if you were in a room full of strangers and its easier to harm your own reputation in one click of the mouse.

So what do you want most from me, the internet prospect, when you contact me?

• Visit your website or read your profile?
• to “become” interested in something you have to offer?
• sign up and give you my e-mail or other contact info?
• purchase something?
• to tell my friends about your service or product?

If you want me to do for you, this is what you must do for me!

Do’s

• Show me that you appreciate my time.
• Be thoughtful – be less self-absorbed and to put other people’s needs before your own.
• Be succinct. Your first 10 words mean more than your next 10,000 words. Your next 10 words do, too. Word of mouth depends on the short sound bites! No one will remember a 1,000 word essay on what your business does. This is why being clear, concise, and to the point matters.
• Build rapport! Without common ground you have no reason to be talking to me.
• Get me talking about myself. People LOVE to talk about themselves. People like to talk about themselves. You are no exception to this rule. Do this by asking open ended, non-yes or no questions.
• Ask me questions to gauge my interest and learn my individual hot and cold buttons BEFORE presenting your solution so that you are speaking my language, not yours. Every individual has *different* hot and cold buttons. If your presentation is not tailored to the individual, you are wasting your time.
• Learn a little something about human nature.
• Read the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie!
• “Sell the sizzle, not the steak” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW6HmQ1QVMw

Don’t Do’s

• don’t burn your precious new contacts by trying to pitch them some business or product without first asking qualifying questions.
• Never pitch your product or business opportunity without permission. I said it, ***PERMISSION***
• Make no assumptions about people. Don’t assume I want what you are selling, but maybe my cousin does, or my co-worker. How will you know if you burn every contact you make?
• Don’t take advantage of any trust you’ve worked hard to build.
• Do not add me just to send me an e-mail with your website link in it. I’m NOT clicking, and I may even report you as a spammer.

So, now you’ve been warned. If you don’t adhere to these principles and you spam me on my Facebook, or Myspace, LinkedIn, Twitter, or any social networking site I am SO hitting the REPORT SPAM button!

I wish you success!  – Laban Johnson

Social Networking Projects

• WHTUP – West Houston Tweetup group – for fun social gatherings centered on the west side of Houston, Texas, coordinated via Twitter.com and Facebook.com. Follow us on Twitter, add us on Facebook!

• TwEATup -  ad hoc breakfast, lunch or dinner meetups, coordinated via Twitter.com

Organization: The Greater Houston New Media Alliance shall be organized as a non-profit subsidiary of the Laban Johnson Group, LLC , a community-driven cooperative still being formed. This will allow the us to leverage the resources of the larger organization under a mutually beneficial terms.

• Organization
  • Complete bylaws
  • complete logo design, integration
  • complete state registration
• Systems / Process
  • Member registration form into CMS
  • Project Mgmt / Collaboration Portal
  • Marketing Systems
• Services:
  • Anti spam policy
  • Anti disinformation policy
  • Resources Links (ongoing)
  • to maintain a map the sociopolitical network of the greater Houston community and systematically connect unconnected branches.

* subject to change

How Important Is Social Media in Houston?
by Laban Johnson

In September of 2008 In the wake of Hurricane Ike Houstonians witnessed the importance of togetherness, the value of rapid sharing of information, resources and support in our neighborhoods, at the work place and social circles. It is this spirit of togetherness that the Greater Houston New Media Alliance was formed.

Just one month prior to Hurricane Ike’s landfall, the Houston Chronicle published an article on August 7, 2008 entitled “Harris County’s population nears 4 million“.  Writer James Pinkerton reported on US Census data which showed that Houston, as “one of the most diverse regions of the nation”, is very large and sprawling with  “no sign of stagnation”.

While it is easy to see that this places a growing demand on city government to provide infrastructure to meet growth, the lesser reported story is the increasing challenge for individual members of the community to keep up with what is happening within their own community, and the isolation a single individual can feel amidst a population of over 4 million due to gaps in communication which are created by the sprawl.

Many small local networks exists in the forms of church groups and civic organizations, but few have placed communications with outside groups very high in their list of priorities, leaving communications blackouts, or gaps, to be filled, which continue to increase as the city sprawls.

It will take a “network of networks”, focused on interactive communication via the most effective means available to bridge the gaps created by the region’s rapid growth, to embrace the growth and embrace our city’s diversity, and improve the quality of life for Houstonians. The Greater Houston New Media Alliance exists with the purpose of filling in the gaps using social media primarily.

To illustrate, if Houston were a human body, and each of us a single “cell”, then Houston’s “nervous system” is the local media, both industrial media, and social media. Industrial media, or mass media, includes TV, Radio, and Newspapers, which are all effective for getting the word out but they are also generally one-way modes of communication, let alone expensive. Social media is a more interactive form of electronic communication which allows every single voice to be heard, and gives each individual a means to express his or her own thoughts, needs, wants, hopes, dreams, problems, fears, challenges, potential, likes, and dislikes.

By properly leveraging social media businesses and other organizations have a unique opportunity to show a genuine interest in individual audience members which triggers positive word of mouth advertising at no cost. This provides invaluable feedback data for businesses and organizations which is not readily available through other means. How do you know what people want unless you listen? If your organization does not properly leverage social media in the decision making and planning processes, you’re only guessing, and you are missing out on opportunities every day!