People do business with those they like and trust, and networking is a great way to develop business relationships. However, professional communities are large, vast, and diverse, so it is important to strategize your relationship building initiatives effectively.

Here's a few considerations to enhance your networking efforts:

1) Plan effectively: Who are you trying to reach? Think about it carefully, and choose events you will attend that will likely have that type of person you are trying to target. Are you trying to target professionals that work in a certain company size or a certain industry? 

2) Brand Yourself: What sets you apart from your competition? Whether you represent yourself as a job seeker or you represent a company in your networking efforts, you should be ready to articulate this in a moment's notice. In addition, your branding should be reflected on your business card. 

Boost your success in your business today through using videos in your marketing.

Why should you invest in video marketing? Videos allow you to add more personalization to your message. Unlike print advertising, you are able to add more expression in your campaigns and demonstrate how your product works. Video marketing is also a great way to educate customers about a new product. Also, it is a great medium to improve your customers' perceptions of what you offer if your offering is complex.

How do I get started?

If you pay attention when you walk into a company when applying for employment, perhaps on your second walk through interview, within minutes you'll be able to tell if the employees are happy and well treated, at least on an elementary level. It's all about how the employee's engage together, their warmth, the comfortable sense of a shared purpose, a general feeling of teamwork. What does this work atmosphere represent? Studies have shown that happy employees equal high performance and higher profits.

Today, employee engagement is a major priority for business leaders who understand that having a high performing workforce is crucial for growth and even survival. These executives are aware that highly engaged employees increase productivity and innovation and at the same time reduce costs relating to hiring and retention in competitive talent market segments.

Behaviors and Attitudes Matter
Successful companies and executives instinctively recognize that employee behaviors and attitudes matter. Unfortunately, most of the efforts to gauge these vital organizational characteristics aren't up to par. There are innovative strategies that can help companies extensively assess employee mindsets which are essential to high performance. Top performing companies recognize that a highly engaged workforce can increase innovation, productivity, and bottom-line performance while reducing costs related to hiring and retention in highly competitive talent markets. While the majority of executives see a need to strengthen employee engagement, most haven't developed a tangible way to tackle this goal. On the other hand, a growing number of the corporate leaders worldwide are saying that they are gaining a competitive advantage over others by establishing metrics and strategies to successfully quantify and enhance the impact of their workforce's engagement.

Social Support 
Strong social support correlates with a surprising level of exceptional outcomes. As an example, studies carried out by Timothy Smith, Julianne Holt Lusted, Timothy and Bradley Layton reveals that high levels of social support foresee longevity as efficiently as regular exercise, and minimal social support is as destructive as heart disease. The benefits of social support aren't just physical. It was also found to be one of the best predictors for elevated levels of happiness during times of high stress.

Positive Teams are Productive Teams
Sure, perks like flexible schedules, free day care, gyms, insurance and a company car are attractive draws, but research has shown that a company built on positive attitudes and interaction excelled when it came to production. A report published in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science found that a positive workplace means happy productive employees and profits for all. In such a workplace, employees and executive's alike inspire each other to work, treat each other with respect and gratitude, maintain responsibility for each other and understand the purpose of the work they're doing. They also skip the blame game and forgive mistakes.

None of the information above is rocket science, as a matter of fact, it comes down to simple common sense. And yet, like all simple truths, it's worth repeating because it's so important. You can't expect to retain talent if the work atmosphere is stifling, cold and repressive. Nurturing happy employees is what 21st century leadership is all about.

As a Managing Director of Health Innovators, Michael prides himself in sparking innovation through collaboration and education. Health Innovators currently offers networking events for healthcare professionals in the Greater Boston area, as well as change management and small business consulting services for companies throughout the US. Please find more information about Health Innovators at http://www.healthinno.com.

Currently, Michael is also looking for collaboration opportunities to advance his career. Michael likes to help companies with their finance, operations, and marketing challenges. Michael can be reached at [email protected].

Currently, poor diets are the result of 14% of deaths and about $ healthcare costs in the US. Furthermore, poor eating habits result in considerable expenses not related to healthcare, including lost productivity at work.

How can this all be changed? Healthy eating needs to be relevant to consumers. Currently, many supermarkets do very little to reduce healthcare costs.

Benefits must be communicated of why someone should buy a healthier alternative. How can this be accomplished? Stores can offer samples of healthy recipes and nutritious store brand products. I'm sure many of you enjoy going to warehouse clubs such as Sam's Club or Costco, but what if they only offered healthy foods and recipes on their sample carts? This simple practice can be copied to all supermarkets. In turn, employees providing these samples can market an in-store nutritionist service if available, and hopefully engage people in the benefits of routinely eating the sample they are providing. Engaging signage nothing health benefits can also yield results. Running buy an unhealthy product and get a similar healthy product free can encourage people to try certain healthier products, but the benefits of buying the better quality free item should be clearly communicated.

Having a strong lineup store brand of natural and organic foods. Not only supermarkets have an opportunity to engage their customers in choosing healthier foods through store brands, they have the opportunity to improve their margins and customer loyalty dramatically. Trader Joe's continually grows their business by offering store brands that are superior to many national and store brands at other stores. Furthermore, their competitors usually charge far more money for the same products since many of these products are only carried as national brand products at other stores. Since store brands normally carry higher profit margins, it is not far fetched that stores can at least price natural and organic versions of certain products at or slightly below lower quality national brand equivalents.