The Human Highlighter mission centers around highlighting the businesses, expertise, & skillsets of the wonderful people I meet. Be it through testimonials or posts. Maybe even articles, interviews, videos, or other mediums. This way I make valuable connections for myself and for others.
If you do something well, or have a great idea, then I want to help you share it with others. I want anyone in my network who’s in need of your services to know about you. I want you and your good work to be recognized and highlighted. So, I’ve made it my mission.
I hope you’ll join me in making it a reality!
The Story Behind HUMAN HIGHLIGHTER
Do you find it’s a challenge to know how to follow up with networking connections?
For quite some time I have been wanting to find a title for myself than (boring) Founder/CEO. Something more MEANINGFUL, something that represents who I am and that I enjoy doing. Yet, it didn’t happen until recently. And there is a story behind that. I attended an event few weeks ago that triggered a series of events.But what I did not know, that by attending this event would help me to find my mission!
Let me begin…
It all started when I saw a post at the TEPP Facebook page. Toronto Entrepreneurs for Passion & Purpose is a great group to be part of, especially if you run a business in GTA. Bobby Umar had posted about the LinkedIn Local Toronto event to the feed and I spotted it. I thought that it looked interesting for two reasons; It had an element of LinkedIn, a platform I have found useful for B2B business owners. But also because it was about Storytelling. And I love stories.
My favorite question in networking events, instead the boring ‘so what do you do’ is either ‘what’s your story’ or ‘how did you end up doing what you do / becoming an entrepreneur’. Because this way I get to hear what people are actually passionate about, and they have a freedom to talk about themselves.
Back to the story…
On the evening itself, because I had connected the host, panelists, and the moderator beforehand when we arrived to the venue, Jan Keck, one of the panelists was immediately there to greet us. He introduced us with his card deck – #AskDeepQuestions. Asked to pick one and go networking. Little I knew that he would be the key person of the story.
The event itself was well organized and I brought home some great learnings. I posted about it to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. I summarized what I had learned during the event and tagged the facilitator, panelists, and moderator. I started to get a lot of feedback from them, thanking for my participation and feedback. So I continued, and I gave each of them a separate private testimonial on what they had done well. And something happened.
They started to ask if they could use those as testimonials for their services. One of them wanted to use it for a speaking engagements. The other one was pitching the next day, and the testimonial I gave was a perfect match to support she was selling. And my answer was ‘My absolute pleasure, feel free to use it. Happy to hear you find it useful.’ The positive feedback that I got of providing that testimonial was inspiring.
Not only I was helping them to feel moment of happiness, good about themselves and what they can offer but also a tool that they can use to promote their services further and also helped myself to feel joy being able to help others.
Inspired by this, I continued this by leaving reviews and recommendations for people and businesses I had dealt with before. But this was only part of the story. One of the panelists was Jan Keck. He has started a movement called Ask Deep Questions. I joined his Facebook page right after that. Towards the end of the week, he invited all new members of the group to introduce themselves within the post he created. He asked us to answer a question “If you were to meet a new person who was wearing a name tag or something written on their t-shirt, what would it say that would spark your interest to get to know them?“. Then it really hit me! I would like to be known as Human Highlighter. I finally figured why I have put on this planet. I have been given all the knowledge, experience, and I am also supported by a team of experts that can help me on this mission.
Now I am on a mission to highlight as many people as I can and want to inspire others to do that same. If you know an awesome person, have experienced great service or bought an excellent product, let other’s know about it – and the same time make that person feel great about themselves. Together we can spread happiness – one review at the time.
A Few Networking Tips:
Importance of strategic networking.
You don’t have to say ‘yes’ to every event & network you get invited to. Study if that group is somehow supporting your personal growth or your business goals.
Make sure you have as many touch points with people as possible. This is easily be done online. Connect via multiple of social channels, like, share & comment their posts etc. If possible connect with the people beforehand via social. If your business is B2B, then LinkedIn is the channel, if it’s B2C, then some other social channels like Facebook and Instagram maybe more suitable.
At the event go to talk to those people.
Use conversation sparkers, not boring ‘so what do you do’…
Follow-up after event.
If you can summarize your key takeways on a social post, do it. Tag the people to the post, this way they get free publicity & recommendation. Also mention to whom would you recommend this event in the future, if this group/person have upcoming events.
Give them a good feedback.
And last but not least, if you learned something meaningful from them, send them a testimonial via email, leave them a recommendation to LinkedIn or review to Facebook, Google My Business, Yelp or other online business directory or profile.
Did you know that?
Human Highlighter Trivia
- 95% of people read online reviews before making a purchase
- 93% of people say online reviews do impact their purchasing decisions
- 85% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendation
- 68% of consumers are willing to pay up to 15% more of the same product or service if they are assured they will have a better experience
Testimonials
What people say about Marika’s testimonials
