The Tag Economy

Written by Nicole Meloche

At the peak of the Great Recession, our family decided to move back to Michigan to be closer to the rest of our relatives. What we found when we moved back was surprising.

Not only were the economics worse than we had prepared for but harder to overcome was the negative attitude toward how and where Michigan should move itself to get out of the recession. 

We’d come from the rapidly changing environment of Southern California, which was not a mirror image of Silicon Valley but a reflection. Technology influenced networking, connecting, growing. Nothing stayed still for long and when it did, you knew there would be trouble.

It was surprising to me to see the AMAZING, powerful, natural beauty of Michigan contrasted by an attitude that big corporations, government and universities that had come to dominate the state through its industrial peak were somehow going to change the economy again. A wait and see attitude seemed to dominate. People seemed to think some outside force: the federal government, a big corporation or some new program was going to change things.

Regardless of the attitude, I quickly realized I needed to find ways to network, connect and grow my business in Michigan. As I looked to connect, I wanted to make connections that would not only grow my business today but allow me to do bigger things in Michigan, bigger than I could hope to do by myself.

Where to start? It was a clean landscape. Even though I had grown up in Michigan and went to college there, I had come of age in my professional career in California and my connections in Michigan were largely limited to family and a small group of friends. I did the natural thing and first reached out to the friends I knew, but before I did, I looked at the big picture of Michigan and created a plan. 

I tried to figure out who were the connections I needed to reach my goal of doing something bigger than myself and connect the dots to family and friends. To further my diagram of connecting, I set up Google alerts based on keywords related to the successes of Michigan, growing businesses, geographic leaders and specific company happenings. Then I looked at the web sites that helped push movement in Michigan and signed up for their newsletters or weekly blog posts. Once I had this information, I was able to start connecting.

Connecting became easy with my plan and my connections grew fast. But where was this getting me? How was it growing my business or tying into my bigger goal of doing something bigger than myself? All that work and little return was more frustrating than not doing anything. I needed to come up with a new strategy that would enhance my current connections and accelerate my new connects. This is when the outline of the Tag Economy began to emerge. 

The Tag Economy: The connections between two or more who are “tagged,” with each tag passing from one to the next to be viewed/shared by many. Tagging photos is common on Facebook, which grew from an idea in 2004 to 20 million users by 2007 and 850 million users in 2012 (basically from people sharing and tagging information and photos and passing them on).

Tagging is also a part of Apple’s iPhoto program and note, Apple became the world’s most valuable company in 2011. The process is similar to tagging someone in a photo (so it can be more quickly identified and viewed) or to the traditional game of tag (sharing, passing forward).

The Tag Economy process, I realized, fit well into my “bigger than myself” goals. Because the quicker we can change the attitude of entrepreneurs in Michigan the quicker they can stop worrying about big business, government and universities. The big players can will help certainly, but we (entrepreneurs) need to help each other. Entrepreneurs will change Michigan. Together we can do great things. 

“I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.” ― Mother Teresa

To make any movement in my business I quickly realized I needed to start tagging my connections. Not what they could do for me or what I could do for them but what we could do together.

Making connections created a chance help to other entrepreneurs and small businesses. Networking and connecting has been around for years, but it hasn’t followed the thought process of learning about each other’s business to really help not just the two at the table, but who else could use their products or services, how could one help others by putting together two businesses? 

The typical networking of traditional entrepreneurs:
The majority of business owners and entrepreneurs are looking at end of the month, week or day sales goals. Their heads are filled with excel spreadsheets, looking at getting from A to B in their days. They might attend the local chamber or association monthly speaker event and add the contacts to LinkedIn as a connection. To them, they have done the quota of connecting. The process starts over the next day and they wonder at the end of year why profits have not increased. 

The Tag Economy Entrepreneurs:
Tag Economy entrepreneurs have all the same daily tasks of other business owners, but they go about their day differently. They take time to look at the connections they’ve made that day and find who could use the connections products or services, be influencers and connections that could benefit from that company, people they know that might connect them to a larger opportunity. 
People want to be remembered and respected. They want to feel valued. When making a Tag connection, you’re consciously connecting the dots to helping others. It might not come overnight, finding the connection is important.

To some, this might seem like a waste of time. It will take too long to see the benefits. Not true.

Being part of the Tag Economy is really being connected to the world around you and only a part of your daily tasks, but in the ultimate end will gain you and your business momentum you wouldn’t have remaining isolated from the rest of the world. Being well-connected to a powerful and helpful network has been the secret of successful entrepreneurs for hundreds of years.

But as the world gets more and more inter-connected, it becomes even more important to become part of a bigger, ever growing network. At the end of the day, you know you have done something bigger than yourself and you will enjoy doing it. And yes, you can have fun doing it too!

At the end of the year, your business has grown because you are a part of the Tag Economy. Referrals and business growth will come from areas you NEVER could have imagined.

Nicole Meloche is co-author of the upcoming book, The Tag Economy and president of Organik Consulting.  Organik is a full service Michigan-based marketing and strategic communications firm generating change conversations to move the needle via a host of tools including campaigns, social media, advocacy, digital marketing, video, engagement sites, media relations, marketing events and public relations. Learn more at Organikconsulting.com.