In the five months since our launch, Handshake 2.0 has experienced the perpetual beta of being a creator of online information.

Even the terms for what we’re doing and how we're doing it keep evolving.

I facetiously wrote this company description:

“Handshake 2.0 is a business news site and online public relations firm offering companies and organizations blogging, social networking, social media, new media, and/or Web 2.0 strategies and services.”

The “and/or” still makes me smile.

Even if the term for the “what” and “how” of Handshake 2.0 evolves in an amusing way, the “why” is serious and unchanging:

“It’s who you know,” a.k.a. contact conversion rate.

How many contacts does it take to make a sale?  Or to get the business results one seeks:  sales for products, clients for services, signed employee contracts, funding, tenants, vendors, or partners?

10 to 1?  For every 10 people we know - 10 contacts - can we convert to 1 sale?

If so, all we have to do is shake hands with 10 new people each day to have 1 new sale per day. 

Hmm.  In the physical world, I’ve already shaken hands with pretty much everyone in my network.  From those contacts, those “who you knows,” conversion has resulted in great clients.  Cool.

But tomorrow, how will I make new contacts so I can have more conversions?

I need to use a new kind of handshake – a Handshake 2.0.  I've got to reach out online - through blogging, social networking, social media, new media, and/or Web 2.0 – to increase my contacts and the likelihood of conversions.

The paramount importance of contacts and conversions is a perpetual business principle never in beta.