I won’t quote you a zillion studies – let’s just accept it as fact that for most businesses, referrals are both the least expensive and most effective source of new business. Referrals are also the best source of leads for job seekers and employers. There are customers and jobs and employees out there – referrals dramatically accelerate the matching process.

With that in mind, last year my friend John Jantsch created Make A Referral Week, a week-long event designed to educate people on making and encouraging effective referrals, and to drive people to action by making 1,000 referrals during the week.

There are several ways you can participate:

1. Free webinar Wednesday, 3/10, at 1pm EST with John Jantsch hosting a panel with Ivan Misner, founder of BNI and author Masters of Networking, Bob Burg, author ofEndless Referrals and the Go-Givers Sell More, Ben McConnell, author of Creating Customer Evangelists. Register here.
2. Make a referral (or two or three) and post it on the MARW Referral Counter.
3. Read guest posts from a long list of referral/networking/word-of-mouth experts all week at the Duct Tape Marketing Blog. Posts are already up by David Meerman Scott on The Referral Multiplier Effect and a podcast with Andy Sernovitz on Word-of-Mouth Marketing.
4. Join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #marw.
5. Keep up with the goings-on at the MARW blog.

I’ve contributed a guest post for later in the week on “selfish networking” – I’ll link when it’s up.

Let’s make our own economic stimulus package!

As part of Vertical Response’s Social Media Webinar Series. I’ll be presenting Opening Doors and Closing Deals on LinkedIn on Friday, December 4, at 10am PST / 1pm EST. This will be focused entirely on using LinkedIn to grow your business, not for recruiting or job search, so all you entrepreneurs and sales & marketing professionals, this is for you! The webinar is free, but registration is required. A free playback will be available afterwards.

You can view the first few webinars…

• Making More Money with Your Business Blog – John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing
• Get Business Exposure by Hosting or Speaking on Podcasts & Radio – Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends
• Twitter for Your Business – Chris Brogan, New Marketing Labs

or register for the rest of the series…

• Why & How to Use Social Bookmarking for Your Business – Danielle Strle, StumbleUpon
• How to Easily Use Web Video to Get More Customers – Andrew Lock, Help! My Business Sucks!
• How to Make Social Media & Email Work Together – Janine Popick, CEO of Vertical Response

There’s something really cool happening every day this week – 2 are in Austin, 2 are virtual. I’m going to write more about each of them individually, but I wanted to go ahead and get the whole list out while it’s still Monday.

Monday – My client Sharpenz is launching today, offering engaging, effective and affordable sales training that sales managers can deliver in just half an hour. You can download a free sales booster and try it with your team. You can also get a second free sales booster by helping spread the word. More in a separate post later today.

Tuesday – The incredibly awesome Donna Fox is speaking at AIMEN (Austin Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs Network). This is one of the best monthly events in Austin and Donna is truly a rock star of internet marketing, credit repair, business credit building and real estate investment. It’s free, but you have to register in advance.

Wednesday – My friend Sharon Drew Morgen has an awesome new book called Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. It actually comes out on Thursday, but on Wednesday she’s doing a free webinar entitled “What’s Stopping You From Closing All the Sales You Should Be Closing?” (a question I’ve asked myself often). The webinar is part of Maestro Month, a month of free teleseminars from world-class thought leaders – definitely worth checking out. You can also follow Sharon Drew on Twitter.

Thursday – Game On Austin is “A fun-packed night featuring video-game tournaments, demos, and raffles from some of the most creative independent video-game studios and developers in Austin, Texas.” It’s for all ages, so break your teenager away from their Xbox or PS3 and come on out.

This Wednesday, 9/23, I’ll be conducting a 90-minute webinar on how to use social networking and social media to grow your business.

Most of my recent webinars have focused on a particular tool (e.g., LinkedIn) or a particular business function (e.g., recruiting). The primary focus of this program will be how to do more with less, i.e., how to get the highest returns from your virtual social interaction with the least (or at least a manageable) amount of effort.

As much fun as Twitter, Facebook, blogging and so on are, it’s easy sometimes to get lost in all that activity and lose sight of the fact that if you’re devoting all that time, you’re hoping for some kind of results!

As we put it in The Virtual Handshake:

People who know how to leverage their networks are called successful. People who just know a lot of people are called socialites. Do you want to be a successful person or a socialite?

All cocktail parties come to an end, but on the Internet there is always another person with whom you can connect. This can be both healthy and hazardous; it’s very tempting to spend far too much time chatting with far too many people. We recommend focusing only on building your network to the extent that your marginal benefit equals your marginal cost. Otherwise, you will be so busy maintaining your relationships that you will have no time to leverage those you have formed.

So if you find yourself spending a lot of time in social media, but are still wondering when the payoff is going to come, you’ll want to be sure to attend this webinar.

Your investment is 90 minutes and $99, which includes a few cool bonus items and comes with a risk-free money-back guarantee if for any reason you’re not completely satisfied.

Register now

Tomorrow (Tuesday, June 16) at 1pm Eastern I’ll be presenting a webinar in partnership with American Management Assocation (they published my first book, The Virtual Handshake) entitled How to Use LinkedIn to Excel in Your Current Position and Plan for Your Next.

This is not a webinar on the mechanics of how to use LinkedIn – this is focused entirely on the business strategy of using LinkedIn – how to create value for your business and career and how to be most productive with the time you spend on LinkedIn. Some of the specific topics include:

• The latest “dos and don’ts” for building an effective profile that gains maximum exposure in search engines
• Tips for direct one-to-one outreach—the right way to find and connect with others
• Ways to create value from the networks of others
• Effective use of the Q&A function: how to find the nuggets, what and when to answer, as well as potential legal liabilities
• How to use the answers section to be recognized as—or to find—an expert in your field
• Understanding and utilizing the power of LinkedIn groups
• How LinkedIn can be used as a tool for competitive research and product launches
• Stealth strategies for seeding conversations
• How to maximize productivity—profiles and routines (how often to check it, avoiding e-mail overload, etc.)
• Ways to merge blog feeds into your profile
• Understand how and why a paid LinkedIn membership can be of value to you

This is a 90-minute webinar with plenty of time for live Q&A. Registration is $149 and includes an activity guide to maximize your learning experience.

Saturday night, March 14th, I’ll be at Red Eyed Fly for the StandardAnswer launch party. danah boyd will be there too, along with the fun folks from Aquarium Drunkard.

If you want to attend, you have to register at StandardAnswer (click on the RSVP Here button). You even get to help pick what songs the bands will play. Be sure to also check out the SXSW category for some fun and informative Q&A.

In case you’re wondering why the world needs another social networking service, check out my Standard Answer open beta announcement on The Virtual Handshake Blog.