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“Crowdsourcing is the process by which the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the province of a specialized few.” And a lot more will change, very quickly.

In Europe, equity-based crowdfunding allows people buy an ownership stake in your business. That practice is illegal in the U.S., but will likely gain steam in a global marketplace where individuals can use platforms like Symbid to help propel an interesting new business into the marketplace. Social lending sites like LendingClub or Prosper permit you to legally crowdfund your for-profit startup in the U.S., but you’ll have to start paying it back immediately, and you could be left liable for the loan if the business fails.

Crowdsourcing will only grow, and it’s up to you to weigh the risks and benefits of using it to extend your enterprise. It may serve a single, specific purpose, or support a key component of your operating blueprint across your organization, or it may not be the right choice--at least not yet.

As a rule of thumb, a couple of posts before noon and another couple of posts in the afternoon is a good place to start. If you only update your Facebook (or any social media status) every week or two, people will lose interest and nobody will follow you. Give your customers a reason to keep in touch with you by providing information that they will find interesting, will be helpful, or is fun.

Lendio online marketing via pay-per-click drives a lot more leads than this blog, our social media, or any of our content marketing, but it’s an important part of what we do everyday to share information and build relationships with our customers and future customers.

This incredibly strong “it’s not my fault” mentality creates a huge challenge for energy conservation behavior change.  According to social scientist J.B. Rotter, perceived locus of control strongly influences whether behaviors are thought to be “instrumental for goal attainment.”

An applicable psychological concept for this situation is called learned helplessness, which develops when people take actions to address a problem that ultimately fail, thereby solidifying the conclusion that they have no control.

Learned helplessness often translates into a serious motivation problem. Those who have failed at previous tasks are more apt to conclude that they can’t succeed in the future. According to pioneering researchers Steven Maier and Martin Seligman, “Exposure to uncontrollable events interferes with our ability to perceive contingent relationships between our behavior and outcomes.” 

says he has never been to an official networking event. Instead, he advises, join organizations that focus on the events and activities you love.

We think a lot of great real relationships are being built through the platform, something that we always hoped would happen, and now we’re actually seeing it happen.

You get to choose directly where your money goes.

I think other people are starting to have the same feeling that they want to have more autonomy about their community or about the businesses they support or just about most things.

Place Capital can be defined as the shared wealth (built and natural) of the public realm – and it is increasingly becoming society’s most important means of generating sustainable economic growth for communities.

Where Place Capital is strongest people actually compete to contribute to this shared wealth, often changing their behavior in ways that ultimately support the value the place gives to others.

Public markets, town commons, and communal wells are early examples of human efforts to create these ‘shared value generators’ in physical places. Today, public places receive relatively little focus and investment above the necessary infrastructure and facilities to support production and distribution.

I realized the Internet does a great job at connecting us with our friends and family, but a terrible job at introducing us to new people and getting us offline.

It’s incredibly difficult and frustrating trying to find like-minded people nearby.

When you look at what people are searching for, they’re searching for people close by who share their interests.