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September 14, 2009
Who Can Best Use Your Creativity?
As you continue to refine the focus for your new small business, think of broad issues within our economic and political system which are important to you.
What skill, experience or insight do you have that is valuable to those who are presently working within those sectors which, you believe, need reform?
Honest answers to that question will help you identify a demand for what you can offer as well as an issue that will truly motivate you and propel you to success.
You can identify that demand and confirm your motivation by actively participating in social media networks. Social media networks are your "playground" for doing some serious secondary research about what your small business should offer before you commit to your venture's complete game plan.
You can integrate our society's need, your personal skill and your self-motivation into a social network research project that you can conduct for yourself.
Here are six examples of how to do that.
Education
- Society's Need
- How do we help children (and adults) jump from the sequential learning patterns of the past to a synergy in learning that is more appropriate in a world that is exploding with knowledge in unpredictable ways?
- Personal Skill
- Do you have teaching experience? Have you transferred those skills to online eLearning?
- Self-motivation
- Do you enjoy helping others learn new things and improve themselves?
- Use of Social Networking
- Join, listen and participate in a LinkedIn group about educational issues. That will help you learn about 21st. Century educational methods and how you can build a business around the needs of those in the forefront of educational reform.
Political Campaigns
- Society's Need
- How do we develop a framework for political campaigns in the U.S. that is not based on the financial contributions of those who want to influence legislative outcomes?
- Personal Skill
- Do you have blogging experience? Have you volunteered to work on a political campaign?
- Self-motivation
- Do you enjoy working with others on a public policy issue? Is campaign finance reform important to you?
- Use of Social Networking
- Use Facebook to identify neighborhood groups in your area that you can join in person to work on this issue. That could help you identify needs that could develop into a small business for yourself.
Health Care
- Society's Need
- How do we use what we have learned in building teams and maintaining effective communications between shifts in manufacturing operations and use those same skills to improve patient care involving multiple shifts of caregivers?
- Personal Skill
- Do you have a medical background? Do you have team building and supervisory skills gained from business or volunteer experience which called for effective interpersonal communication? Can you teach or coach others to use those skills in a medical setting?
- Self-motivation
- Are you excited about showing medical personnel how effective communication can improve patient care?
- Use of Social Networking
- Use LinkedIn to form relationships with nurses and others directly involved in patient care to discover where they think the major stumbling blocks to excellent patient care lie. Use that insight to build your consulting/training business.
Energy
- Society's Need
- How can we reduce our carbon footprint fast enough to avoid the natural and economic calamities that global warming, if unchecked, will cause?
- Personal Skill
- Do you have the scientific background to understand and explain the issues involved in developing clean energy?
- Self-motivation
- Do you believe developing clean energy is a priority for our time? Does the prospect of helping people find ways to reduce their carbon footprint really raise your interest?
- Use of Social Networking
- Build a following of like-minded folks about clean energy by using StumbleUpon to share interesting sites and articles about reducing the carbon foot print of humankind.
Use your following to identify information needs that you can fulfill through a monetized blog or web site about global warming issues.
Finance
- Society's Need
- How can we devise a workable system of checks and balances within our world-wide financial system so that it will continue to spur innovation and, at the same time, discourages self-destructive behavior that eventually harms everyone in every nation?
- Personal Skill
- Do you have financial experience or an educational background in finance? Do you understand how individuals in most financial sectors view the issue of regulation?
- Self-motivation
- Do you enjoy helping others understand financial issues?
- Use of Social Networking
- Join, listen and participate in a LinkedIn group about financial regulation issues. If you don't find such a group, form one of your own. You might find a need for a paid online newsletter about financial regulation that you can develop.
Journalism
- Society's Need
- How can we save the probing, investigative journalism that is so essential to self-governance when it is rapidly collapsing in the U.S. due to outmoded business models for supporting the function within the major corporate media?
- Personal Skill
- Do you have a background in journalism? Do you write well? Do you know how to help an organization gain online visibility through social networking?
- Self-motivation
- Do you believe saving journalism as a craft is going to be one of the most important issues for our society during the next five years?
- Use of Social Networking
- Use Twitter Search to identify journalists who are involved in finding a workable business model for journalism. Listen to them. Identify associations (including non-profits) which are working on this issue. Evaluate the potential of becoming a core independent contractor for one of these organizations, working as a "social networking facilitator."
Note that each of these six small business concepts (and the online research to initially test their viability) are "visually impaired friendly." Most of the work involved can be done from your keyboard.
What other small business ideas would benefit from "social networking" research?
Add your comments to this posting
Posted by Liz Seger at September 14, 2009 06:48 PM
Comments
an interesting social network study would be one where we ask others about their knowledge and understanding of accessible technologies. does their company or work environment support equal access for those dependent upon and reliant on adaptive software and adaptive technologies? are there any visually impaired individuals working within their respective career sector? if no, why not? is it possible to haness the social network sites to poll others about their knowledge of a d a legislation as the same relates to accessibility issues? if so, one way to use the power of this umnipotent tool would be to invite techies, human resource directors, corporate ceo's and well placed decision makers to an open forum discussion aboutt howe to proactively put an end to systemic discrimination and marginalization of those who would otherwise be productive and tremendous assets to any work environment if sites, internal and external met the wc3 compliance regulations and best practices for computer and internet access. in addition, there might be opportunity of polling educators and academics on the same topic. perhaps through the power of social networking we could inform and educate the educators on the possibilities that technologies allow for equal access to education, thereby allowing for improvement in the unemployment rate amongst the visually impaired and blind community thereby making social networking and employment networking a practical application in their lives. so much needs to shift from a social perspective about the misperceptions and antiquated myths about the abilities of the blind and how technology, including the advent of social networking sites which are accessible open the world to people who were once locked in darkness but can now see the light and possibillities in all things great and small.
Posted by: albert at September 16, 2009 03:44 PM