Syn-er-gy – The combined effort being greater than the parts.  The working together of two or more people, organizations, or things, especially when the result is greater than the sum of their individual effects or capabilities. A mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct business participants or elements (as resources or efforts).

Let’s look at this in terms of social media for minute.  Stores start a social media campaign to better communicate with their customers.  They let their customers know that they are on Twitter or Facebook or wherever.  Their customers choose to follow because they want to know what’s going on with your business.  That’s all good but, the only people that follow you are those that know about you and choose to follow you.  What about reaching potential customers?  What do you do to reach people that have never been to your store and maybe don’t even know of your existence?

This is where synergy comes in.  Let’s say your shop is in a plaza where there are several shops.  They could all be clothing stores or they could all be different kinds of shops – it doesn’t really matter.  Each of the shops individually attract 200-300 followers on social media.  If the group of shops combined their efforts and created a platform to reach out to all of their individual customers, think about the number of people each shop could then be reaching.  For example, let’s say there are 10 shops in the plaza.  Each shop has 200-300 followers.  Combining that group of shops would yield a following of 2,000 to 3,000 people.  That’s a huge difference.

Let’s look at one more thing.  By definition, synergy is the combined effort being greater than the parts, especially when the result is greater than the sum of the individual effects or capabilities.  This would lead you to believe that the following of the group then could be more than 2,000 to 3,000 people.  Is that possible?

Absolutely.  You’ve heard the old saying that two heads are better than one, right?  Well, it’s true.  By getting those 10 shop owners together and brain-storming, bouncing different ideas off of each other, the end result has the potential to be amazing.

We’ll talk more about this in posts going forward but I’d like you to really think about the possibilities of synergy in your community.  Let us know what you think?  We’d love to talk about it.

Photo credit:  kln2119