Clever Marketing Idea: Build a Timeline

Do you have a timeline for your thought leadership and its development? Consider the following:

Our History

Networlding’s origins evolved out of the parent company Melissa founded and grew, Service Showcase, Inc. in 1987

Networlding was based on her 7th book by the same name, Networlding, published by Jossey Bass, a subsidiary of Wiley, and co-authored with the first Chief Marketing Officer of Motorola.

The book was brought out in 2000. It preceded the book The Tipping Point (2002) and shared a comprehensive system for creating, building, and leveraging leadership networks when delivered as training inside mid-sized and Fortune 500 companies and later, implemented as a very successful social networking-social media marketing strategy.

What follows is a history of both Service Showcase and Networlding to date:

• 1987 Melissa Giovagnoli (G) Wilson starts Service Showcase, Inc.–a marketing and management consulting firm with a unique focus–helping consumers and businesses find trusted service providers. The company was an early “Angie’s List.”
• 1988 Melissa brought on an angel investor and grew the company to about 8 employees, starting in the Chicagoland suburbs.
• 1989 Service Showcase grows to more than 100 services represented on the consumer side and, after getting some major national press, Melissa decides to expand to also market business services.
• 1992 Melissa starts teaching entrepreneurial courses on marketing and management of small businesses and decides she wants to write a book. She secures a publishing contract with Dearborn Publishing (now Kaplan) and comes out with her first book, The Chicago Entrepreneurs Sourcebook, which creates many requests from top banks and accounting firms to work with them to help them market to small businesses. This book is also promoted by the State of Illinois and becomes one of the top ten business books in Chicago as a great resource for entrepreneurs.
• 1993 Melissa decides to downsize her business and re-invent herself as a speaker, consultant, and trainer on the subject of marketing for entrepreneurs. She also sells a number of people, nationwide, her process for starting her service-based referral network.
• 1994 Melissa gets another book contract, this time to write about her newly-found passion–networking. Her book, Make Your Connections Count: Six Steps to Build Your MegaNetwork is published again by Dearborn and, this time, Melissa is asked to work at a major accounting firm and teach accountants around the country the science of networking.
• 1997 Melissa partners with a colleague, Dick Whitney, to bring out a book that, to this day, still sells very well called 75 Cage Rattling Questions to Change the Way You Work: Shake-Em-Up Questions to Open Meetings, Ignite Discussion, and Spark Creativity.
• 1998 Melissa’s book The Power of Two: How Companies of All Sizes Can Build Alliance Networks that Create Business Opportunities is published by Jossey Bass. Here, Melissa has co-authored with John Conlan, at that time head of Internal Alliances for Accenture.
• 1998 Another book Melissa writes Angels in the Workplace: Stories and Inspirations for Creating a New World of Work, is published by Jossey Bass.
• 1999 Melissa collaborates with Jocelyn Carter Miller to write “Networlding: Building Relationships and Opportunities for Success” picked up by Jossey Bass.
• 2006 The Wisdom Network: An 8-Step Process for Identifying, Sharing and Leveraging Individual Expertise comes out published by the American Management Association. This is a book co-authored by Melissa with the Chief Knowledge Officer of UBS at the time, Stee Benton. The book is a model for building successful collaborative networks within organizations.
• 2008 The Nanosecond Networlding: Changing Lives in An Instant Forever -A Modern Business Fairytale comes out by Melissa’s publishing division, Networlding Publishing, set in the form of a powerful business fable that takes place from New York to Spain to Paris. Melissa wanted to further help people understand the power of networking in the new digital age.
• 2009 The guidebook for Networlding, Networlding Guidebook: Building Strategic Relationships Through Networking is published by Networlding Publishing, a division Melissa created to publish additional books that would support the thought leadership she was creating around the science of networks.
• 2010 Wrote and published Graduate to LinkedIn: Jumpstart Your Career Support Network Now with John Fowler, a talented young professional who was also a college grad with lots of experience on LinkedIn. The purpose of writing the book was to help young professionals get better starts in their careers.
• 2011 Melissa partners with Larry Mohl and secures a book contract to write Networking is Dead: Creating Relationships that Matter by BenBella books.
• 2012 Networking is Dead is released November 6th, 2012.