We all like being social, but if you're running a business, you also need to be strategic. You want to use content marketing to build you brand and attract attention, but you don't want to simply give away all your most valuable intellectual property for free on social media platforms.
So while social media is great for showcasing your IP, if you share too much it actually devalues your IP.
This is particularly important if you're an independent consultant or trying to build or maintain a practice. You want clients and other professionals to place a high value on your time, your expertise, your industry knowledge and networks. In short, you want people to value your personal intellectual property.
Similarly, if you rely too heavily on the social media and content marketing for your professional development, for your networking, leads, and industry and market information, then the information you're using is already public knowledge. It gives you no competitive advantage because it's information that has already been given away.
You need to manage the balance, by being judicious about what you socialise, how you strategise, and who you let into your network.
While we’re at it, let's ask who is benefiting from you gathering all your valuable network contacts and their details on one or more web platforms? Are you really the one monetising your network? Or is it the platform that generates subscription, advertising, recruitment fees and other revenue streams from your network? Let’s change that too, and generate revenue, for you, from your networking activities.
To be clear, at 50metres we're not advocating giving up on your social media activity. We're simply suggesting that you should add a complementary activity, and that is, being more strategic with your network.
Monetising Your Most Valuable Resources
Social media, content marketing and jobs board sites want you to feel like all that activity is highly valuable professional networking and lead generation, and that sharing your valuable technical information and market intelligence is good for your reputation. And it can be. But if you’re sharing too much your valuable market intelligence, with everyone on the planet, that information is immediately devalued.
The most important information you have, you don't (or at least shouldn't) make public. It's the inside information you have about your major clients; who's who, their issues and challenges, their internal politics and motivations, their decision making processes and selection criteria, the projects on their drawing board, their skills and capacity gaps, and much more.
Research¹ shows that over 70% of B2B buyers choose the adviser who first provided insight and value. So the opportunity is there for you to identify ways to add value to your customers, and share in the benefits. Just don't give it away.
But learning how to leverage your knowledge assets is a skill that many people simply don't get the opportunity to hone, particularly if they haven't worked at consulting firms that foster these skills. That's where 50Metres comes in.
Why 50 Metres?
In communications theory, the Allen Curve (developed by Prof. Thomas J Allen of Massachusetts Institute of Technology) revealed a strong correlation between physical proximity and the frequency of meaningful communications between professionals.
Allen's research showed that people mostly communicate and share technical and professional information with those individuals who they are regularly within 50 metres of. And that distance hasn't changed with technology. The more often we see someone face to face, the more often we phone and email them.
Social media has made the spread of a plethora of information wider, and resulted in many of us giving away lots of valuable information to people we don't know. But the meaningful contact we have with people, even using technology, is still with the people we are within 50 metres of, on a regular basis. Just think about the people who you network with the most. That's not to say you wont communicate with others too and give lots of information away. There are always exceptions, but frequent proximity lifts all interaction, including social media, and also the value of those interactions.
Our aim at 50Metres is to help you optimise the value you generate from your professional network and your market intelligence.
So now, on a regular basis, let’s work on getting you within 50 metres of the people who matter strategically to your business.
Getting Started & How It Works
Invitation Only
You can only join 50Metres by invitation, and only then by being seconded by another existing 50Metres member.
This is where your 50Metres journey starts.
If you haven't yet been invited to join, you need to ask around your professional network to find a member.
Then, maybe with their help. find a second full member, and ask if they will agree to nominate and second you.
Limited Contact
If you have already been invited to join, it is probably because an existing member wants you to join their advisory team to work on a specific account; being a client or prospective client, an opportunity, a product, a service or a portfolio.
Once you are in the system, you will be ONLY be able to collaborate with people who have invited you to work with them on an account, or people who have accepted your invitation to work with you on one of your accounts.
Otherwise, you will not have any visibility or contact with other members on the platform. This platform is for strategic collaboration with people you know and are typically within 50 metres of on a regular basis.
If you want social interaction with lots of strangers, there are plenty of other platforms for that. 50metres.com is for providing you and your team with tools and methods to help you monetise your IP.
Tools
In the platform you'll find tools and templates to help you with account planning, to work with your team, to manage and grow your major clients, to win new customers, to develop and monetise your IP.
Over time we will continue to add and improve the tools and templates, and the feedback of our members will drive our prioritisation of new developments.
This is not a CRM system. It is not designed to manage your contacts, their addresses, phone numbers etc. There are other systems for that. But 50Metres will help you to optimise your CRM by turning that information into monetisation.
Subscription Fees & Monetising Your Network
There is a financial benefit to a person nominating you to join, not just because of the valuable work you will create together with your and their major accounts. But also because of our network monetisation programme.
When a new member successfully subscribes to 50metres.com, the person who nominated them receives 50% of the new members' subscription fees. That applies for all members, for up to 250 people they nominate to join their network, every time those people renew their membership.
This element of our programme is designed to help every member to monetise their own networks, up to a limit. It allows you to recoup 100% of your annual subscription fee by bringing just two new members into your network. This allows members to monetise their network immediately, and earn a base income sufficient to compensate for time they might otherwise have to invest simply to manage their network and accounts in the hopes of generating fee paying work.
So if you're ready to monetise your own network, to build a collaborative team around your most valuable clients and IP, and to work pro-actively with others on building their accounts and IP, we look forward to welcoming you to the club.
You just need to get invited. Good luck!
