In 2010, the Boston Marathon had 26,790 entrants and 22,721 finishers.  In 2011, registration closed in a record 8 hours, 3 minutes.  And those were people who ran fast enough to qualify for Boston (BQ)!  For every person who crosses the finish line, there will be hundreds who don’t.  (If you’re interested in reading more about the marathon, The Boston Globe has an entire section dedicated to it: http://www.boston.com/sports/marathon/)

What do you think: does not crossing the finish line a matter of failure?  Not running a personal best?  Not hitting ‘submit’ fast enough?  Not getting that qualifying time?  Injury, weather, unforeseen circumstances:  does the reason the goal wasn’t reached matter?  How about at which step it occurred: training, registering, racing?

Everyone’s heard the speech about how failure makes us stronger.  But how many of us really, truly, actually believe it?  It’s probably people who, at one point or another, didn’t cross the finish line.  (Me! How about you?) For some reason, failure’s this month's hot topic.

When "Failure is not an option" neither is innovation.  - @BreneBrown

Here are some recent articles worth reading:

1. The Failure Issue, Harvard Business Review, April 2011 (splurge for a copy, check it out from your library, borrow it from a friend.)




2. 9 Business Icons Who Faced Utter Failure And Came Back To Kick Ass, Entrepreneur Kelly K. Spors




3. Fail often, fail well: Companies have a great deal to learn from failure—provided they manage it successfully. The Economist,  Schumpeter, Apr 14th 2011




4. Anatomy of a Business Failure, BNET.com,  Mary Goodman and Rich Russakoff, April 14, 2011

Obviously, no one sets out to fail. Hey, we’re addicted to winning!

Knowing when you’ve missed the mark is relatively easy.  The data (clock, grade, bank account, termination notice) tell you.  Processing what went wrong is the tough part.  It’s much easier to fuggedaboutit and move on.  But it’s the deconstruction and evaluation that really will make you, your company, your goals stronger.  Trust me – I’ve learned this both the hard and easy ways.  You tried and didn't succeed. Do you understand what went wrong?  What did you learn from it?  What are your next steps?  How will you move ahead?

One of the great things about the rise in social networking is how easy it can make starting the evaluation process. There are countless resources available with just a connection, tweet or post.  (SocialGrow makes it even easier to build those networks!)  The possibilities and examples are endless – and almost clichéd.  A programmer found a job on LinkedIn.  A novice athlete joined a training group to prepare for her first triathlon.  An entrepreneur found investors.   And when things didn’t go right?  They had the resources and contacts to develop a new plan of attack.  At the end of the day, it’s not whether you succeed or fail, it’s how you proceed.

I hope your training goes well, that you get that qualifying time and finish with a personal record in whatever arena it may be.  And hey – if it doesn’t go as you’d planned?  Take a minute. Understand, learn, and recover. Now, what’s next?

For many people, keeping all of your business and personal contacts organized is a drag – the process can be monotonous, time-consuming and frustrating. We, at SocialGrow, feel that maintaining an online contact management system does not have to be that way. We will show you how to make the process of building and maintaining your contact databases more efficient and less time-consuming.  Once built, you will have your contacts organized in order to be able to both leverage your network effectively and be able to systematically grow and improve it.



Getting your contacts organized starts with the goal of creating a master contact list. To do this, you will need to export the contact databases from your email programs and social networking accounts. Eventually, we will merge all of these export databases into Excel or Google Docs so you will have one spreadsheet of all your contacts. There are two good reasons to do this exercise. First, a complete contact list gives you comprehensive view of your relationships so you can begin to categorize and rank your contacts. Second, the list provides an essential backup of your contacts.



While exporting your data from a web service is typically a straightforward process, recent developments have made this exercise more difficult on some web sites. Over the past month, Google and Facebook have been debating policies regarding the export of user information. Google has always been about “open access,” while Facebook has chosen to continue to restrict the exporting of certain user data. This dispute is far from over and is one we should all pay attention to – learn more about it at these links:



• Google Warns Facebook Users of “Trap” Before Data Export
• Google to Facebook: You Can’t Import Our User Data without Reciprocity
• Give Us Our Data, Facebook


Here is the process to export your contacts from the top email programs and social networking services.



Facebook

While Facebook allows you to download your Facebook content, your Facebook export will not include your friends’ email addresses. As a workaround, Lifehacker has put together an effective trick using the Yahoo Address Book to export your contacts.



Gmail

Go to Gmail and click on Contacts. Choose More Options. Before you export, choose merge contacts first. Choose Export. Choose All Contacts and Google Export.



LinkedIn

After logging into LinkedIn, go to Contacts and then My Connections. At the bottom right side of the page, you will see Export Connections. From the next screen, you can download a CSV spreadsheet file.



Outlook

Open Outlook and go to File. Choose export, export to file. Create an Excel 98-2003 File. Choose Contacts as the export folder. Click Browse and give the file a name. Your export will download to a CSV file. If you choose Map Custom Fields, you can choose Default Map or select certain fields. To ensure you download all fields choose Clear Map and then Default Map. Name the file and click Export.



Twitter

Sign into MyTweeple using your Twitter credentials. Synchronize your account and choose Tools. Choose Export into a CSV.



Yahoo

Go to Yahoo Address Book. Click on View All Contacts and choose Tools. Choose Export and Choose Yahoo! CSV.



Unless you have another web service with your contacts, that is it – now you are ready for the next step to merge your contact databases together into one spreadsheet, which we will cover in the next post in the SocialGrow Content Series on Social Networking and Online Contact Management. In the meantime, let us know how these contact management tips worked out for you or if you have any suggestions on how to improve the contact database export processes.



To do this, we have identified a number of topics we think are critical for any individual or organization –- whether you are a local start-up in Palo Alto, a global enterprise in Tokyo, a non-profit association in Washington, D.C., or a certain Mr. Donald Trump in New York City –- who wants to improve the effectiveness, the efficiency, and most importantly, the results of their contact management efforts. Over the next few weeks, we will explore the following topics. As a company at the heart of social media, we view our blog posts as conversation starters with you, our network:



• How to Effectively Manage Your Contacts in Less than 25 Hours a Day


• Discovering Valuable New Contacts Where You Least Expect Them


• Do You Make Your Contacts Feel Special? Really, Really Special?


• Guaranteed Painless Ways to Input Your Contact Information


• Cool, New Ways to Do Contact Tagging and Organization


• Leveraging Trust to Build Mutually Beneficial Relationships


• Turbo-Charging Your Social Networks


• Making Regular Networking Deposits at the Contact Relationship Bank


• 10 Easy Ways to Synch Your Contact Databases


• Tips and Tools to Improve What’s In Your Little Black Book


• Do You Know What You’re Growing? How to Cultivate a Weed-Free Social Media Garden


• Friend, Follower, or Foe? How Do You Decide Which New Social Networking Relationships to Accept?


• What IS Your Social Graph, and Why Should You Care?



Please share with us in the comments section below which topics interest you the most, and what topics we are missing. We’re all ears!




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While hard-pressed to name an industry that hasn’t been impacted by social networking, on a daily basis Noelle sees first-hand how the effective (or not) use of social networks makes or breaks local wedding vendors. “A significant percentage of our new business has always come from word of mouth. Our bottom line is now extremely dependent upon people talking about us — favorably — on social networks.”



No matter what product or service they provide, wedding vendors now have more opportunities than ever to directly engage and interact with their target customers at the very earliest stages of wedding planning — often long before the actual engagement. “It is critical for all of the vendors in my industry to effectively leverage social networks. We could invest tens of thousands of dollars a month in advertising, but just a single toxic post on either either a mainstream, or a wedding-specific social network will scare away clients who were previously considering using our property to host their wedding. Even if negative posts are old, written by disgruntled former employees, or unethical competitors, readers can still be put off.”



Just as social networking has changed marketing for wedding vendors, it has completely transformed the planning process for brides and grooms. Just a few years ago, couples were limited to the for-fee real-world experts available to them in their local community. There are now dozens of different wedding websites, from dedicated wedding social networks to online communities, discussion forums, and highly interactive blogs.



Here’s how social networks help brides and grooms to plan their rehearsal, ceremony, reception, and honeymoon, along with some of our favorite wedding websites. As we’re just barely scratching the surface, please let us know your favorite wedding social networks in our comments section below.



Manage the Project



Unless you’ve been a professional event manager, creative director, logistics expert, or operations chief, you have likely never had the responsibility of managing a $22,000 event for 125 people — the average wedding cost and size according to the National Association of Wedding Ministers. Arguably, the most valuable feature of many wedding social networks and websites are their surprisingly sophisticated project management applications which allow you to create and execute projects plans down to the smallest task. You can quickly and easily create timelines and budgets, assign tasks, and track completion — all online and for free.



On “social network, community, registry, and wedding shop” The Knot, you can “create and track your wedding budget, create guest lists, create wedding albums, find products, discover ideas, share wedding and reception locations, and recommend local service providers”. According to Noelle, “one of The Knot’s best features is their hosted offline social networking events which allow brides and grooms to form local meetup groups to discuss all things “wedding”, and form new real-life friendships with local couples whom they wouldn’t have otherwise met.”



Share New Ideas



As brides are usually on the receiving end of “help” from every friend, family member, future in-law, and colleague at work, wedding social networks and websites enable them to network with their peers who have no agenda other than to share their ideas and real-world experiences. Learning from others disasters and successes is invaluable in planning for what is often a once-in-a-lifetime event.



The staff of Wedding Channel share their professional expertise, and their personal experiences as wedding guests, wedding party members, and brides and grooms. The Wedding Channel, “strives to embrace and celebrate the very best of marriage traditions, while at the same time addressing the unique tastes, interests and issues of concern to today’s couples.”



Make Better Decisions



Economics 101 taught us that the more information we have on the quality, service, and prices of different product options, the better decisions we will make. With exhaustive and recent peer reviews on all local wedding vendors, wedding social networks enable you to source exactly what you want from the vendor best able to meet your specific needs.



This is at the heart of WeddingWire’s business model: “Based on our personal experience and the consistent complaints from other engaged couples and vendors alike, the WeddingWire team became aware of a remarkable inefficiency in today’s wedding market. With engaged couples continually struggling to find the vendor that best suits their needs and vendors constantly searching for new ways to expand their businesses, WeddingWire set out to solve this persistent disconnect and provide both parties with simple, yet productive, channels to interact.”



Save More Money



While not all vendors may appreciate the ease with which wedding social networks and websites allow couples to compare prices — after all, all else equal, why would you purchase an item from store A when the identical item can be purchased from store B at half the price? — brides, grooms, and their families enjoy the cost savings.



Our Wedding Day helps couples to “save time and money at every step with your own personalized Wedding Website, Save The Date e-cards, Gift Registries, Address Book Assistant, and our constantly-updated Hints and Tips Article Archive”.



Wedding social networks and websites are aggressively competing for your attention, which means you can pick and choose the best product information, project management applications, and online communities from each site to help you plan for your big day.




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Investment portfolios.



Airline seats.



Chocolate fudge cakes.



What do these three things have in common with the size of your online network? Big is good, bigger is better, and biggest is where you want to be.



As marketers, we have stuff to do, and failing to reach our objectives is not an option. Our brands and businesses require us to make things happen. Customers, sales, revenues… it’s up to us. Having large online social networks gives us the juice we need to make things happen.



Over the past few months, I have seen a surprising number of articles attempting to convince me that whether I’m a B2B or a B2C marketer, the focus for my portfolio of friend, follower, and connection-based online networks should be “engagement.” Hogwash.



Size matters. Size gives you power. Size gives you control. Size gives you leverage.



Everyone is an expert in something, but no one is an expert in everything. One of the reasons to be active on social media is to learn how to use cutting-edge and proven marketing strategies and tactics. If you follow one marketing professor on Twitter, you learn his/her approaches. How much better if you follow all of the top marketing professors on Twitter in the areas of B2B marketing, B2C marketing, public relations, corporate branding, and marketing research? The larger your network, the smarter you can be.



In the concept of six degrees of separation, all of us are, at most, six steps away from any other person. This is the heart of LinkedIn’s business model. If I have one connection on LinkedIn, I’m two degrees away from everyone my connection knows. Whether I need to buy or sell, I have a personal introduction to everyone in my connection’s network. As a marketer whose livelihood depends on your ability to get things done, would you rather have one connection on LinkedIn or 1,000?



What if you had a large mailing list of people who want to receive your communications because they’re interested in what you have to say? Each of your messages can reach more target customers. The larger your online network, the more people you can sell, real-time, 24×7×365.



As marketers, part of our value is to persuade our target audience to take action. If you’re Ashton Kutcher and develop the largest online network, you’re not just in the media, you are the media. You can directly broadcast to your five million-plus member audience anytime. That’s marketing. You want each and every one of your communications to command a level of credibility so high that other media outlets are forced to report on them.



As my boss likes to say, “Your message can only go as far as the size of your network.” Besides, as any five year old will loudly and unashamedly tell you when you’re standing in line with him at the bakery, “Who wouldn’t want the biggest chocolate fudge cake?”



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Additional Reading



“It all starts with having the largest possible audience.”

-Dan Zarrella, Hierarchy of Contagiousness



“Marketers must connect on social networks with people they don’t know, namely their customers.”

-Charlene Li, Groundswell



“I have always admired the way successful entrepreneurs put themselves in a position to ‘get luck’ by developing relationships with relevant people and taking advantage of promising opportunities.”

-Jeff Bussgang, Mastering the VC Game



Boston, MA. — February 26, 2010 — SocialGrow Inc., a Microsoft BizSpark program member, today announced that it has launched the alpha release of its patents-pending SocialGrow Application at http://socialgrow.com. The SocialGrow Application automates the search and connection processes across multiple professional and personal social networks. The SocialGrow Application also helps social networks around the world to accelerate their membership growth. At launch, the SocialGrow Application is compatible with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and MySpace, with additional global and regional social networks being added throughout the month of March.



“By automating the process of inviting people to join users’ social networks, SocialGrow makes it easier to connect with people you don’t know and faster to connect with people you do,” said Marsh Sutherland, President of SocialGrow. “Facebook and LinkedIn users know the larger their relevant networks, the more people their professional and personal messages will reach.”



“SocialGrow simply allows Rec.fm to grow our customer base faster,” said John Appler, President of social recommendations website and 2010 SXSW Web Awards Finalist Rec.fm (http://rec.fm/video). “By quickly expanding the number of users creating and using our ‘high fidelity’ product recommendations, SocialGrow has also accelerated our revenue growth. We are very fortunate to be their first business customer.”



SocialGrow was recently named Microsoft BizSpark’s most promising “Start-Up of the Day”, and selected by MassHighTech (The Journal of New England Technology) as one of their “Five Start-Ups To Watch.” Additionally, SocialGrow’s Chief Marketing Officer Ken Herron was named one of the “Top 5 Chief Marketing Officers on Twitter” by Systemic Marketing for his use of Twitter on @SocialGrow (http://twitter.com/socialgrow).



Twitter-Friendly Quotes



Microsoft BizSpark @SocialGrow today announced the launch of the Alpha release of its software application at http://socialgrow.com.



“We make it easier to connect w/people you don’t know & faster to connect w/people you do” – @SocialGrow President @marshsutherland.



“@SocialGrow allows @recfm to grow our customer base faster” – @SocialGrow business customer and @recfm President @johnappler.



About SocialGrow



SocialGrow Inc. is a global social networking software, consulting, and professional services company. SocialGrow’s flagship software application helps individuals, small businesses, corporate enterprises, government agencies, academic organizations, and non-profit associations around the world to more quickly and easily grow their social networks. SocialGrow was founded in July 2009 by Marsh Sutherland, Ken Herron, and Charbel Elkhoury. SocialGrow’s mission is to help people realize the value of social networks. For more information, please visit the SocialGrow website at: http://socialgrow.com, and follow SocialGrow on Twitter at @SocialGrow (http://twitter.com/socialgrow).

We, SocialGrow’s three co-founders, wanted to share with you our perspectives on an exciting and productive week.



Ken’s take (Ken is SocialGrow’s CMO):


“As a new company, you of course want as many potential users of your product to know about, and get excited about it. From the marketing perspective, participating was a great way for us to share with people who use online social networks that our new software automating the process of adding new connections to their networks is under development. Our participation allowed us to tap into the exciting new features of Windows 7, while reminding people who use Macs, Linux, and older versions of Windows that SocialGrow will work for them, too, just as it will on their iPhones, BlackBerries, Android phones, and other mobile phones which can access the internet. In short, our participation in Incubation Week was not only a great opportunity for our company to make our new product even better by leveraging Windows 7’s key features, but an opportunity to further share our story with people who otherwise might not have heard about us.”



Charbel’s take (Charbel is SocialGrow’s CTO):


“The Windows 7 development training at Microsoft was an incredible learning experience. We spent time on Windows 7’s key features, including: federated search, jump lists, accelerators, multi-touch support, and taskbar management as well as developing with SilverLight. SocialGrow users running WIndows 7 will be able to send an invitation to connect with someone simply by highlighting their e-mail address. Having the opportunity to work side-by-side with the very same software architects and developers who support Microsoft’s biggest enterprise customers enabled us to achieve unthinkable results in just a few days’ (and nights’!) time.”



Marsh’s take (Marsh is SocialGrow’s President):


“My expectation going into Microsoft BizSpark Incubation Week for Windows 7 was that we would have a few hours on the first day with a Microsoft advisor to help us architect the SocialGrow software to take advantage of Windows 7’s new features, who would then check in on our progress over the remainder of the week. I had no idea that our “advisor” would be one of Microsoft’s premier enterprise software architects, Rich Crane. Not only did Rich code our product alongside Charbel until one in the morning two nights in a row, but he also brought in two additional Microsoft software architects to do the same! Add in the Proteans offshore development team who coded around the clock, and it was an amazing team effort. I want to thank Rich and the MTC’s incredibly generous architects, developers, staff, and of course Microsoft itself for giving SocialGrow such an incredible jump start with our application development effort. And yes, my inner geek loved Silverlight’s cool-front end, just wait till you see it!”



Sign up now to receive SocialGrow’s blog updates via RSS and to follow SocialGrow on Twitter. Follow our story as we develop and roll out the first release of SocialGrow’s web and mobile phone software application to help you grow your professional and personal connections — faster and easier — on your online social networks.