When developing a purpose, balance rigorous personal thought and analysis with appropriate team feedback and involvement.

Two common blunders:
• The Lone Genius: The leader goes “off to the mountain,” creates a purpose and vision, and announces it to everyone. Result: no commitment, understanding, or buy-in.
• The Opinion Poller: The leader takes no stand, follows the crowd, and over involves people. Result: lack of confidence in the leader and murky purpose.

When it comes to defining a team’s purpose, the time-proven rule applies: No involvement, no commitment.

Really, this just doesn’t apply to defining a team’s purpose, it applies to any decision you are making when leading a team.

Make People Feel Part Of Something
Appeal To Core Members
Offer Exclusive Content
Make Your Fan Page Their Forum

My favorite method listed here is offering exclusive content. If your content on your website is the same as your Facebook fan page, why should they join? You can get really creative with this…coupons, videos, pictures, inside jokes, etc.

The highlights:

29 percent use Facebook
26 percent use LinkedIn
21 percent use MySpace
11 percent search blogs
7 percent follow candidates on Twitter

Job seekers are cautioned to be mindful of the information they post online and how they communicate directly with employers. Thirty-five percent of employers reported they have found content on social networking sites that caused them not to hire the candidate.

At a time when unemployment is almost 10% and hundreds of people are applying for one job opening, don’t let a photo or status update keep you from landing the job!

Full survey here.

Following up on that post, here are a few more sites that can make this daunting task a little easier.

My favorite is Monitter. It lets you track multiple key words in multiple columns. Twendz is interesting because it tracks conversation themes and sentiment. Finally, Twitterfall lets you also view the latest tweets of upcoming trends. Updates fall from the top of the page in near real time, thus the name. All three give you the option to search by key words, i.e. your brand.

Now you have no reason not to know what others are saying.

When you move your mouse over a tweet in your Twitter stream, a little star will appear to the right. When you click the star, that tweet gets added to your favorites tab on the right. As you track what people are saying about your non-profit in Twitter Search, favorite all of the positive tweets. To see the original tweet from Twitter Search, click “view tweet” in the search results. This will allow you to mouse over the tweet and make the star appear. Note, the star will not appear within the search results.

As a non-profit, you can never have enough good testimonials, and the great thing is that they are manageable and easy read due to the 140 character limit of Twitter.

You can also forward your favorites page with the following URL:
http://twitter.com/USERNAME/favorites.

Are we to the point where Facebook/MySpace/Blogs, etc have taken the spot of the corporate website? Are stock photos, jolly ad copy, happy customer testimonials and mission statements all that’s left?

I believe we are at a point in time where the slumbering giant is irrelevant and the true essence of the brand can be found in social networks and consumer rating sites.

So the question is, how do you evolve your corporate site?

I suggest no, keep it. People are going to comment about your brand whether you see it or not, negative comments will always exist with or without you. What really matters is that you are part of the conversation and its happening in your back yard.

You should thank the commenter for taking the time to post a comment and do everything in your power to resolve the issue, all there in public. The only time you should delete a negative comment is if its threatening in nature or uses profanity.

1. An insecure leader has a hard time giving credit to others.
2. An insecure leader keeps information from his/her staff.
3. An insecure leader does not want his/her staff exposed to other leaders.
4. An insecure leader is threatened by the growth of others.
5. An insecure leader is often a micro-manager.

Now that we know why you should use Twitter, what should you tweet about? (A tweet is a post on Twitter).

• Give your customers real-time updates on work your doing in the field.
• Promote recent articles or news about your non-profit.
• Connect with and organize volunteers.
• Upcoming events.
• Unique content for supporters.

As you can see, Twitter has some great applications for non-profits. Hurry, go there now and set up an account. Your followers are there waiting.

You won’t have any trouble at all finding someone who can tell you how to fit in.

They can tell you what to wear to that restaurant or this conference or that funeral. It’s not that difficult to figure out how to fit in. If fitting in is your goal, you should be sure to get great advice on how to do that.

Standing out, of course, is trickier. Stand out too much and you’re a jerk or a fool.

Clothing is not the point. You have this choice to make in everything you do, from your career to the words you use in a sales letter.

The point: choose.

Are you doing this to fit in or stand out?

I would like to expand on this concept a little further. If your a business owner, non-profit, charity, etc. fitting in is dangerous because that is where everyone else is. When you are fitting in, you are competing for existing market space, focused on beating the competition and focused on existing customers.

Standing out is much safer. There you are in an uncontested market space, making the competition irrelevant and focused on non-customers.

Where had you rather be?