Community over competition

Welcome to the seventh edition of Ignite Confidence coming to you from a very wet Northampton, with flood warnings! Welcome to my new subscribers.

I'm a BIG fan of consistency so here's a reminder of what you signed up for each month:

1. Tips, insights and strategies to help boost YOUR confidence
2. Changes to LinkedIn and what they mean for YOU
3. Q&As: Answers to questions you've asked (either through the DMs, via comments or from coaching or training sessions) and real-life stories
4. A bit about what I've been up to

Tips, insights and strategies to help boost YOUR confidence

At the 5th SMM Meet up Event earlier this month I was thinking about community over competition. In the room there were a number of people who do the same thing, and do you know what they did. They got together and had a photo and chatted openly about their work, their successes and challenges and built each other up!

Yes there is competition in almost everything we do, and competition is how running a business works. But as a small business owner, by choosing community over competition we choose to put our friendship with others over competing with them.

I was struck by a post from Judith Rafferty after the event in which she said that the event's commonality is relationship marketing:

💫 In-person camaraderie

💫 Authenticity

💫 Shared values

What is Community Over Competition?

Community over competition is putting relationships before an opportunity. It’s understanding that the best businesses serve others.

Life is about relationships.

When we focus on what others are doing and we compare ourselves with others it's easy to become preoccupied with everyone else’s work and social media feed and loose focus on ourselves and what we are doing.

It's important to remember that no two businesses are the same and that we are all at different stages of our business journeys, with different goals.

If we take a moment to stop and think about our achievements, whether academically, in sport, or in our careers we will easily come up with a list of people who helped us gain those achievements. Parents, teachers, coaches, partner, family etc.

It's simple.

Life is about people, relationships, and community.

It’s about supporting others and this is what we try to achieve with the SMM Meet Up.

“The creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.” - Ayn Rand

A way to really bring community over competition to life is to practice gratitude.

Take a moment and think of 3 people you are grateful for and who helped you get to where you are today. Send them a message to thank them for their support.

I promose you will feel good and you will be helping someone else feel good too.

Changes to LinkedIn and what they mean for YOU

• Video - the new video button has started to roll out. It's a new video feed, those of you who use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook will be familiar with the look and feel of it. It's portrait-sized video and some users are already repurposing their video content on LinkedIn. It's a good time to start introducing video into your content. Why not start by telling people what you do or sharing a testimonial?
• Yellow Badges on collaborative articles - not to be confused with the official top voice blue badges, these are being removed from 8th October. Users can "earn" these by contributing to collaborative articles around certain topics.
• Edit your scheduled posts - LinkedIn had in app scheduling, you click on the clock icon to the left of post and you can also click on this to review and amend any scheduled content. If you had previously been worried about scheduling content and not being able to edit it - well now you can!

Q&As: Answers to questions you've asked (either via DMs, comments or from coaching or training sessions) and real-life stories

In a meeting last week I was sitting with a friend and we were both sending DMs on LinkedIn and I was asked how come you can send a message and use return and keep typing a message without it sending the message.

It is a feature you can turn on and off.

If you click on the 3 dots to the right of the Send button you bring up a sub menu that allows you to turn on/off enter to send. A game changer for you!

Hopefully this will make sending messages in the DMs easier for you.

A bit about what I've been up to:

• The big news this month is that I had a birthday, not a BIG one. But I celebrated by trying out Axe Throwing. Here's me Kelly Costello Cox and Jo Palmer having a go! Thanks to Damian Rees for looking after us all so well!

• I've started to work with a PT at the Gym and Kudos to Clare Ferguson for inspiring to get started, I really can't thank you enough.
• My regular networking events - Business Buzz - Local Business Networking which fell on my actual birthday and Your Business Matters Ltd and 121s, this month with Sharon Handley through my Espresso+ membership. I love getting to know people that little bit better.
• I co-hosted the fifth SMM Meet Up event in Birmingham last Friday (20th September) at the Cosy Club with my good friend Gus Bhandal.

• It is a very informal get-together, it's more like a group of friends, it was a really quick break where we thanked everyone for coming and shared the date of our next get-together - Friday 14th March 2025 - booking link here if you fancy joining us.

Marianne x

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