In our increasingly connected world, everyone must manage “the brand called you” announced Tom Peters years ago. Reluctant to see yourself this way? Your impetus can be to protect your reputation. 

The upside motivation to think of self-branding, however, is to attract the people and opportunities that help make your life the kind of adventure story you want it to become.  That’s my takeaway from the message of two popular authors, Dan Schawbel in Me 2.0 and Rohit Bhargava in Personality Not Included. Why am I talking about this today? Because PR maven Rohit asked women how they came to recognize a distinctive part of their personality and what it has meant in their life.  Get these insights in a gift eBooklet you can download today.  (Confession:

 I am one of the 20 women). 

Diversely distinctive women benefit from honing their brand. Consider Michelle, Heather, Jhumpa, Sarah, Peggy, Doris and Angela.

Or Penelope, Anita, Andrea and Angelina. What warms my heart is when I see someone vividly describe the smart, thoughtful action of another. Naturally, such behavior burnishes the brand of both people. 

Wary of partnering? Collaborated with someone who didn’t do their part? Yet in a sinking economy more people are exploring ways to attract more customers without spending more. Partnering – with the right allies and methods – seems to be the most efficient way. Want to hear what’s worked and the pitfalls to avoid? Hear Anita Campbell’s bluntly titled interview of me earlier this week, “Business Partnering: Earn Money Without Wasting Time.”

In case you may want to hear it, here’s her list of questions we covered:

(3:27) Can you tell us a bit more about yourself and your background?

(5:14) Why do you think partnering is becoming such a popular way to attract customers during this economy?

(6:42) What is a profitable partnership?

(7:20) What would be an example of a profitable partnership?

(10:30) What are the benefits of this type of an approach?

(10:40) What are some additional ways to partner with other businesses? (20:40) Can small businesses partner with big ones?

(23:00) As small business owners we often get asked to donate to causes. Is there a way we can leverage our support to attract customers?

(26:20) Do you have a “what if” dream partnership you think would be successful?

(28:29) Where can people find out more on the web?

Here’s more ways to successfully partner or otherwise collaborate.

For stay-at-home entrepreneurs, here’s a proven, three-step plan to make money, as Liz Ryan has proven. The key is sticking to the plan. Here it is:

Step One

Craft a niche expertise and a niche market. Choosing both, you get “Double Niche Leverage“:

1. Subject matter + 2. Kind of people you seek to serve.
Reward: you’ll create coveted niche content and find and attract more people faster. You are better able to become one-of-a-kind and top of mind in your market, a huge leg-up to profitability.

For example, I have a client, Jorge. His wife convinced him to focus on serving the kind of people he best understood and with whom he could establish immediate credibility. Jorge, a family man who’d worked in emergency preparedness for towns, chose Hispanic families. In short, he secured a “Double Niche.”Jorge ….

A. (Niche Expertise):

… became an expert on family safety (how to be safer in your home and car and set up procedures throughout your life to have the peace of mind that you are making your family more safe) ….

B. (Niche Market):

… to families with at least one child under five years old. Why? Because that’s, the time when parents are most motivated to adopt safety procedures to keep their family safe. Narrowing his niche by child’s age also enabled Jorge to more easily find partners that served the same niche. Partners included parent publications, pediatricians and makers and retailers of products for the five and under set (food, clothing and toys, etc.).

Step Two

Select your information delivery system(s) and profit center(s). Delivery systems may include a goggle or Yahoo! group, online social network, forum, web site, newsletter, wiki, mobile newsletter delivery, teleclasses, ebooks, blog and audio or video podcasts. For profit centers, who will be eager to pay for what and why?

In most cases you have two kinds of income sources:

1. Customers/community members.

2. Sponsors / advertisers.

Give customers/members enough content for them to recognize the value of it, want more and want to be a part of what you offer (yours and others’ expertise)

Step Three

Dedicate yourself to becoming ever more valuable to those in your niche market.The two most efficient ways to do this, I’ve found are to:

1. Continue to provide additional delivery systems and content (ideas and online products) that you create and that other reputable experts who want access to your niche market create for you to offer.

2. Build in rewards for member participation in the community you create in your niche market. Rewards can be positive visibility in the community, prizes as voted by the community, ability to attract clients or make friends. Your business and profits will grow exponentially:

• As you attract more members and they become more active, you become more attractive to sponsor/advertisers who will spend more with you.

• More experts will want to contribute articles and prizes, be interviewed and otherwise be seen in your community, creating more reasons for new pople to join and current members to stay active. Jorge, for example, now has a circle of 50 experts who submit content and respond to questions in his community. The experts benefit from exposure to his large membership and thus help make it ever larger.

He is now growing special interest groups within his community. Thus members find more reasons and ways to stay active. So far, groups include Single Parents, Apartment Living, Geographically Close MeetUps and Expectant Parents.

Each sub-group gets customized content plus ways they can ask questions, trade ideas, vote for best tips (that Jorge turns into a book which, in turn, attracts more people to his community.) This tight-knit community now has valuable places for a few big sponsors to provide special offers and contest prizes.

In this podcast interview you’ll hear how (a mother if five!) Liz Ryan has grown a business with her version of this approach. her Yahoo! group numbers over 25,000 active members. Perhaps you’ll adapt it to design the work and life you want to live. Liz has:

1. a Niche Expertise (workplace and networking issues, especially job search), and

2. a Niche Market (women at work).

This “Double Header” is a natural next step from her experience as a Fortune 500 recruiter and founder and former ceo of WorldWIT, the world’s largest online community for professional women. Hint: choose the niche that enables you to build on your expertise and connections.

She is an early adopter of distribution systems that her kind of community member enjoys using. So far, they include a popular listserve at Yahoo, two blogs, online social network, branded workshop (get them early), widget and web site. These mutually-reinforcing activities burnish her personal brand, enabling her to be quoted and get paid speaking gigs. To generate additional visibility, value and profits – while attracting people to her communities, she is an author, has a local column in Daily Camera and a national column in Business Week, posts articles in many places, partners with bigger firms and is a member of other’s communities including at LinkedIn.

Diane Danielson, Dan McComb and Lara Eve Feltin and Anita Campbell are also growing businesses, using their versions of this profitable business model. Like Liz, they love their community- building work. They are dedicated to making members proud to be a part of their community. Bragging rights abound. They, too, partner in ways that leverage visibility and value of their members and partners.

When a Seattle couple, self-described indie professionals, couldn’t find the kind of low-key business get-togethers they enjoyed, they decided to host some. 50 events later they’d founded an online community. Members can volunteer to host the kind of comfy, relevant face-to-face gatherings and seminars in which they most wanted to participate.

It’s now called Biznik. In the delicate, ongoing art of managing a lively, sometimes out-spoken community, they walk the tightrope in hewing to their decidedly non-corporate motto, “Business Networking That Doesn’t Suck”. Indies can join, meet and talk with each other online for free or choose from a two-tier, monthly membership level to host or attend gatherings (some like to meet while walking their dogs, others over after-dinner drinks) and to get more deeply involved online.

The more you contribute (writing articles, responding to queries, offering podcasts, teaching a seminar, etc.) the more visibility you earn on the site.Most gatherings are small (20 people or so) and the founders like that because participants are getting better acquainted and able to discuss ways to help each other.

As evident in our interviews with Anita Campbell, Diane Danielson, Dan and his wife, Lara Eve Feltin, are experimenting as they go with their business model. They, too, are trying out ways to attract and keep locally-based, mutually-reinforcing, close-knit, niche-serving and profitable communities where members meet online and off, sell to and serve each other and get special offers from the companies that pay for access to the niche.

In this podcast interview, learn from Dan McComb the “go slow to go fast” methods that are attracting active, paying, active members.

Become a top-of-mind expert in your market by following small business trends guru, Anita Campbell’s successful formula for success. Yes, she’s worked hard to reach the place where others seek to emulate her. A key was her approach to getting “custom sponsorships. She also has a plan in mind that helped her set priorities, each day and over time. Designing my life, my day, my choice of what to do next is often difficult. Too often I avoid doing “first things first” so Anita’s approach has helped me.

Here’s a bare bones summary of her business model.

1. Choose a niche, then

2. Multiply the ways you involve others in helping your kind of “customers,” then

3. Host profitable places where they – and other experts – can share ideas and resources. One example: Anita recruits volunteer moderators who benefit from having links to their site from her busy forum. She’s discovered that, “There was more power in hearing from multiple voices.” Suggest Anita, “One of the paths to creating a vibrant community and in the process increasing your own visibility, is to highlight others and their knowledge. That’s been the secret behind my radio show. And it’s increasingly the direction in my main site, smallbiztrends.com.”

Here are four more tips from Anita:

1. What’s a formula for collaborating with others online?“

Several models for multi-author blogs and sites on the Internet today: anyone/anything goes; hand-selected choices; and a few options in between.”

2. How can you benefit from the “power of us” in hosting podcasts?

“The obvious model is to interview others. The trick is having a format and sticking with it. And letting the guests talk. But keeping it informational, not advertorial.”

3. Is having guest authors on your blog really “collaboration”?

“Yes. Think of the product of the collaboration as an “online community.” It’s not the same as having an article submission site such as EzineArticles.com. On Small Business Trends, it’s about welcoming others as conversation leaders. It’s as if we are creating a central place where the reader knows he or she can go to find solid information, from real-life entrepreneurs and those who deal daily with entrepreneurs. We’re all stronger (as “we” than “me.”)

4. Has a group collaboration led to more opportunities?“

Absolutely! It’s more opportunities for all. More for guest contributors, because it gives them more of a platform for their ideas than many can get on their own. Quite a number have gotten clients, big media interviews, traffic to their websites and other visibility as a result of being a leading voice in the “Small Business Trends community.” More for me as the editor, too, because it makes the site a go-to source of reliable information.

To get concrete ideas about how to become sought-after, make money – and enjoy your work with others along the way, listen to the interview with this modest, generous trendsetter.

Owners of small businesses are usually time-starved. They crave practical methods that have proven success. They want to get news-you-can-use tips quickly, anytime they have a spare moment. That’s what small business expert, Anita Campbell has discovered.

To increase your profits, offer
1. to your chosen niche market
2. the most valuable mix of products and services
3. in the “formats” they find most convenient

For example, Campbell provides
1. the owners of small businesses …
2. with practical methods to grow their businesses …
3. provided almost entirely in online formats that include an Internet radio interview show, calender of small business-related events, several web sites and blogs, newsletter, free subscriptions to others’ magazines and online forums with “over 21,700 small business folks from around the world who support and encourage each other as we grow our businesses.”

As you may have noticed, Campbell succeeds by choosing others’ best advice to share with her niche. Her expertise is in identifying the experts who will interest her clients and the ways the content will be most convenient for entrepreneurs to find and share. Plus she taps the collective intelligence by enabling entrepreneurs (and those who sell to them) to benefit by sharing advice in the forum, as blog comments and elsewhere. This all sounds obvious yet surprisingly few people get specific about these three steps to becoming the top-of-mind choice for their kind of clients (or supporters, members etc.)

If you own a business, are thinking of starting one or are a member of an organization then you could adapt this three-part “Me2We” approach. Also, like Campbell adopt these tools to differentiate your organization in your niche. That’s how she’s been able to make money via advertising from companies she respects.

Even if you chose “only” one or two of these online tools you are likely to become more credible, valued and visible than competitors who do not.

In this interview Campbell describes how she’s collaborated with others to become top-of-mind in her niche market.