You can enhance your personal and corporate image by getting involved in community organizations.  Known as passion branding, personal involvement and corporate contributions allow your employees and customers to understand what you/your company stands for … what types of community programs you support.  Each of these organizations has regular meetings, special events and other highly visible opportunities for networking. 

Political meetings, fundraisers and the political process are great ways to get involved in a different circle of influence in our community.  Not only are you able to understand and track important legislation, but you are also in a position to influence legislation that impacts business in Nevada.  Political allies prove to be very important in many areas including grants, government contracts, and contract negotiation. 

No matter what the product or service you are offering, your company is fulfilling your customer’s dreams.  Remember that point when you feel tentative in a room of political movers and shakers … or a non-profit fundraiser.  Understand your products and services well enough to develop your own Sound-byte … a short phrase that succinctly defines your company.  If your customers are really better off with your products or services, then any professional effort to showcase your company with a prospective client is justified. 

Public relations allow editorial treatment of your products and services.  In many cases, you are personally profiled in the PR Release.  Typically, the successfully placed press release is better read and delivers more results than advertising campaigns.  Public relations campaigns tend to be a fraction of a similarly focused advertising campaign. 

Through corporate and personal sponsorship, you can leverage a small advertising budget into a much larger impact --- look at the Founding Sponsors of the Reno Tahoe PGA Event.  Nearly full page advertisements promote the event itself with careful recognition of the Founding Sponsors in each advertisement plus the television and radio mentions of sponsors.  By sharing a special event, these sponsors have leveraged their marketing platform exponentially, many times receiving high multiples of their investment.  Special Olympics’ Celebrity Winterfest 99 raised over $ 350,000 for the charity but delivered over $ 600,000 in advertising, public relations and promotion reaching several million impressions in California and Nevada.  A $15,000 sponsorship was leveraged into a $ 600,000 marketing campaign.

By the year 2003, it is estimated that over $ 578 Billion will be spent over the Internet in E-Commerce sales of products and services.  If you have not positioned your company over the Internet for this tremendous opportunity, you are missing the largest networking opportunity of all. 

Affiliate programs are being developed by Internet companies to offer E-Commerce opportunities to smaller websites and a method to generate more visitors to your site as well as revenue streams.  For instance, Art.com offers designers a way to sell artwork to your customers and rewards you with commissions on each sale.  Amazon.com offers you the opportunity to assemble a custom library … for instance, a realtor could assemble a library of books on real estate, investment in real estate, architectural design, Northern Nevada, cookbooks, kitchen design, bathroom design … and they pay you 15% commission on those books. 

If you have not addressed your website design, updated the content, laid the groundwork for

E-Commerce, and developed your marketing platform to include Internet solutions, you will be left behind as technology drives the sales of products and services.