Today is the second day of International Work Out Loud Week.  Yesterday I shared my purpose for this week and that was to:

Understand the value and benefit of working out loud to people outside organisations who are in their own business, freelancing or looking for employment.

After all, we hear and read so much about working out loud for people who are employees in organisations – working for someone else – but the question always arises from others whether this practice is of any value especially if you derive business (that is, an income) from your knowledge.

As I was sharing these questions on Snapchat and in a Facebook community, I’ve had some conversations already with various people who are of the belief that working out loud DOES make a positive impact to building trust with their clients.  Some of the responses they mentioned were:

“I get a lot of people who say that I’m oversharing my knowledge but I think about the long term because we are seeing people in business use it more and more. In the future, when more people begin to realise that by being open and genuine is a new way to do business in a connected world, I’ll already be there.”

“Clients have told me that they wanted me to help them out in their business because they saw how I worked and how I did things – they seemed to relate to me.”

“I don’t share anything I do with my clients because of non-disclosure agreements however, I do like to use social media or my blog to communicate and share what I learned through the work but no mention of the project, client names or details at all. ” 

Sarah Stahl (@MrsDStahl) is a Marketing Strategist who decided to pick up on her own Work Out Loud Challenge this week.  You can see her website here.  Sarah uses Snapchat to share her reflections around her marketing work, the perception of marketing and how she helps her clients understand marketing and social media.  Here’s what she said about working out loud in Snapchat.  (If you’re a Snapchat user, I recommend you follow here snaps!)

Day 2 Make a New Connection

For Day 2 we are to make a new connection and introduce ourselves to people who may also be interested in our work in order to fulfill that purpose above.  You can read more about some ideas to make new connections in the post 7 Days of Working Out Loud.

In Snapchat, I get a notification on every person who has added me as well as how they’ve added me.  A screenshot is shown here.  Usually, when there is some form of cross-promotion or takeovers, this list grows because people have snapped my code and have chosen to follow me.  It is now up to me to decide whether I want to follow them back.

(My usual practice is to Add a few people at a time who have photos in their profile – or have full names in their Snapchat usernames – then send them an introduction – that is, a video intro – the ones who respond to me personally to explain who they are; what they do; what they share are kept.  The others who do not respond to my introduction, are unfollowed).  This way, everyone I follow on Snapchat is someone whom I’ve personally connected with).

What I will do today is to go through some of these requests and provide a video introduction of myself, what I do and encourage them to share an introduction of themselves.  (Of course, I will not mention working out loud because it is without context – especially as the first introduction! I don’t want to come across as spammy or spruiking the concept. The whole idea is to weave in working out loud through my snaps consistently – not just during International Work Out Loud Week).

Let’s see who responds to help me with my purpose to understand the value and purpose of working out loud in your own business.

Here’s What Happened Yesterday on Snapchat for WOLWEEK