Active Rain shares some key valuable features with The Value Pages Group. Like any other business networking group or referral group, you get out what you put in. With Active Rain and The Value Pages Group, it's a little bit different though, because you can't measure your activity by the number of hands you shake, or the amount of business cards you pass out. Here, activity is measured by the amount of information you put out about yourself and your business.
There are several advantages to this business model. The first is that there's tremendous flexibility. We don't have to be at a certain place at a certain time to put out information about ourselves and our businesses. We can do this whenever our individual schedules permit us to do it. That's why we're all here, for the flexibility.
Another big advantage is that the information that we compile on ourselves and our business is able to be put on the internet and live on forever as advertisements of our expertise and abilities. This information becomes searchable and available to anyone who may be interested in what we have to offer. In short, the time we spend composing this information is invaluable because the information itself continues to work for us indefinitely.
The final big advantage of this business model is the act of writing itself. We all carry around a business plan in our heads. Every day we have an agenda and we execute it. That agenda may be based on a very detailed business plan, or a loose direction for our business that we are carrying in our minds. As anyone who has taken the time to transition an idea from their head to a piece of paper can attest, the writing process purifies ideas. When we write things out, inevitably weaknesses will appear and questions will be raised. Addressing those weaknesses and answering those questions galvanizes our ideas, sharpens our focus, and energizes our direction.
With these things in mind, I'm announcing a Writing Contest! The goal is to educate your readers. These articles should be educational. They should not be blatant commercials for your business. There are two categories.
In the first I'm asking members to write on the topic of growing maintaining or improving your business. What important lessons has your business taught you that can be cross-applied by business owners in other professions? Please see the rules at the bottom of this message.
In the second I'm asking members to educate their readers about their profession. Choose a topic, pull back the curtain. What do your customers not understand about what you do? What do your business partners not understand about what you do? How can you describe your job or a portion of it so that your reader has a greater understanding and appreciation for your products or services? Please see the rules at the bottom of this message.
By now I'm sure you're wondering what the prizes are. The winner for each category will be featured on the home page of the website for 1 month and the overall winner will have their blog featured on our organizational pages on both Facebook and LinkedIn for a month, which are available to view by millions of readers. Remember all participants will win because all articles will be included in our soon to be rolled out "Articles" page on http://www.TheValuePagesGroup.com.
Rules:
You must join The Value Pages Group as a Basic Member in order to participate. Basic Membership is FREE.
Helpful: The idea here is that all articles will be rated on a helpfulness scale. It will have to pass a basic test of helpfulness before it is approved for publication. You should be able to read the article and think, "yeah, that would be helpful to me as an independent business owner."
Not overly self-promotional: There is a fine line here - you will write on topics you know, which will raise your profile, and make you more likely to be hired or consulted. That's fine and encouraged. But you can't use an article to sell your service directly - that's what member promotions are for. We don't allow direct links back to the author's website within the article. Blatant self-promotion is frowned on; indirect self-promotion is encouraged!
Articles must be between 500-1,500 words in length. Longer articles can be broken into multiple parts, but that is strongly discouraged (rating such articles is difficult). We recommend re-writing longer articles to fit within the length limit, or creating two stand-alone articles from one longer piece.
The deadline for entries is Feb 28, 2009.
Jason Sanders
President
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