I know you think you don’t have enough time on your hands to manage your marketing, financials, legal and your hard working team, let alone your Twitter account, Facebook Page, YouTube Channel, and blog.
However, if you haven’t yet recognized the importance of joining online communities and networking with entrepreneurs just like you, then you better get started. Why?
Reason One: Survival to Thrival
Community sites that support entrepreneurs are a vital part of your survival strategy. Not only are you accessing like-minded entrepreneurs, you also realize that you’re not the only crazy one trying to launch a start up or grow your business.
Reason Two: Boundless Opportunities
You can connect, collaborate, partner or just ask questions of others or experts. It’s a whole lot of powerful people, resources and tools at your finger tips ,and it’s free.
Reason Three: Return on Investment
It just requires time – yes that’s right your time, which if you want to invest it wisely you should at least check out these three sites (although there’s many more which I plan to feature):
The Visa Business Network
Last year I was invited to be a featured blogger on the Visa Business Network. I was naturally jumping with enthusiasm at the offer as Visa not only has global credibility, but they have also been committed to the ongoing development of innovative solutions that help small businesses grow, capture new opportunities and increase efficiencies.
Over the last few years, I’ve been really impressed with their clever branding and marketing campaigns that have made them way more personable, international and responsive.
This support of small businesses was made even more evident when they launched the Visa Business Network, the online community that helps small business owners manage their businesses more efficiently, connect with and gain insight from peers, and ultimately grow their business.
This site is pretty damn cool, it allows small business owners to easily interact with peers in a collaborative way allowing them to get personalized help on goals ranging from growing their customer base to managing their business. It’s obviously working as the community is now 100,000 members strong and growing!
They have also recognized the important role that social media plays in small business today and upgraded the entire site last week to cater to this need, especially after seeing the results of recent study by the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
This study determined that social media adoption by small businesses has doubled from 12% to 24% over the last year; 57% have built a network through an online networking site.
The new features include:
- Business Goal Toolkits – unique step-by-step “how to” guides that lead small business owners through the process of setting and achieving business goals.
- Small Business Mentor Program – small businesses get personalized help and guidance from other successful small business owners. Having faced similar business challenges, these seasoned mentors offer advice and perspective to help Visa Business Network participants achieve their goals. I’m proud to say I have been asked to be a mentor for Facebook Pages!
- Question & Answer Forum – members are able to collaborate by asking questions related to their goals and receive personalized advice and responses from small business peers and mentors with experience across a wide range of industries.
- Content Ranking – a feature that provides small businesses with quick access to the resources and articles fellow small business owners have declared most useful.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, then head over to Visa Business Network. www.visabusinessnetwork.com.
Sprouter
Sprouter.com is the newest darling on the scene and growing very quickly with innovative new features and a vibrant community. What’s more it’s founded by a kick ass female entrepreneur Sarah Prevette who I’ll be featuring on WomanzWorld in the coming weeks.
Sprouter was launched in private beta in August 2009, and in public beta in November 2009. Sprouter is devoted to creating a vibrant community of entrepreneurs.
Sprouter facilitates networking and collaboration between entrepreneurs globally. It provides a platform for users to connect with other innovators, and entrepreneurs can expand their networks to include fellow entrepreneurs and startups with similar interests and goals.
What I like about it is that by answering the question `What are you working on?’ in 140 characters or less, entrepreneurs can discover and join events in their local areas, start discussions and follow topics of relevance to their business.
But it’s more than a Twitter like community. It’s a place to meet like-minded entrepreneurs, bounce ideas off each other and find out about the latest events in your area for business, startups and more – all over the world.
Each week you get a newsletter highlighting cool new startups, great blog posts and highlighting some cool new members. It’s very social.
They’ve just introduced a new `Ask the Expert’ feature too, and you’re guaranteed a response. I tried it the other day and was impressed at the reaction time and the answer (thanks Andrew Patico!)
Check it out at https://sprouter.com
**
Startup Square**
I first came across this site last year via a LinkedIn connection with one of the founders Tristan Kromer. I always think entrepreneurs starting a community for entrepreneurs is something that has real value, purpose and meaning – because only an entrepreneur knows what an entrepreneur goes through! They want to be the Yelp for Entrepreneurs.
They enable entrepreneurship by creating a space where co-founders can meet one another and brainstorm the next big idea. Then they turn those ideas into businesses by matching them with funding, tools, and services in a virtual marketplace.
And in their words, here’s where they differ:
‘But we want to go beyond that. We’d like to become a long term business partner who helps companies find the tools, services, and funding they need to thrive. We pledge to continue to push our business model further down the lifecycle of startups and tie our key metrics to the metrics of our customers. We will judge our success on the basis of whether or not we’re able to increase the percentage of entrepreneurs on our site who are able to form businesses and the percentage of those businesses that succeed.’
It’s personal too. I mean what other co-founder talks about being an anti-ninja, posts a photo of his dislocated foot on the blog and still takes the lesson out of failing at a Parkour lesson (the cause of said foot). For example, here are Tristan’s lessons learned:
- The universe has a wicked sense of humor.
- You’re going to fall down at some point.
- Pick yourself back up.
- If you can’t pick yourself back up, make sure you’ve got a good team to help you.
PLUS, they’re putting together a peer reviewed list of resources for entrepreneurs. Take a look here https://www.startupsquare.com/