Tired of self-promotion? Would you like to make work and life easier, more productive and fun – with others? Here’s four ways others accomplish more together than you can on your own – and sometimes forge friendships.

1. Co-create Products, Cause Support and More

• From clothing design to science experiments, the right crowd can get more done together.

• Collaborate online for a cause or faster innovation - and to become more well-known.

• Crowdsource a contest; take it public.

2. Swap and Share

• Enjoy more travel  by house swapping or other shared hospitality.

• Swap books, lightly-used clothes and more.

• Moms share everything from recipes to medical advice.

3. Get More Out of Meetings

• Organize meetings for those who share your interest and perhaps make money.

• Capture the benefits of twittering at conferences.

• Create conference formats that will excite and involve attendees.

• Start a mutual growth, support or mastermind group.

• Share ideas in a fast and fun way for everyone. Try Ignite and Pecha Kucha.

• Make conferences more popular by harnessing the right technology.

4. Attract Customers With the Right Partners and Methods

• Even and especially in a bad economy partnering can be profitable.

• Train others to teach your methods – even sell your stuff.

• Forge an alliance with a bigger business or other organization.

• Recruit an unlikely ally to attract more interest.

Now, what Me2We methods have you used to accomplish more with others?

“Presidential candidate George Bush will be active in making pronouncements in the coming weeks… He wants to define himself before his opponents do it for him,” intoned a radio commentator when the previous Bush became president. Yes, nicknames stick. “To name a thing is not the same as to know a thing,” Richard Feynman wrote, yet naming is a potent persuasion tool.

In fact, your ability to successfully label a person, product or political campaign is probably the most powerful way to influence others’ perceptions of their choices.  (Too many choices frustrate us.) Consequently, be armed to argue well. As hot opinions swirl around our presidential campaign and economic troubles, here are some nuggets from Anthony Weston’s pithy Rulebook for Arguments:

1. “If you can’t imagine how anyone could hold the view you are attacking, you just don’t understand it yet.”In seeking possible explanations, solutions or causes, Weston suggests that we keep looking for more options, rather than immediately narrowing them. That way, we can state our case more fairly, and possibly head off objections more effectively.

2. Find out what other sides consider the strongest arguments for their position.   Also, I suggest that you find the best evidence and most vivid examples they use or could use to support their positions.

3. Preemptively raise possible counter-arguments. Develop them in sufficient detail that your readers will fully appreciate the position you are disarming.

4. Avoid using two “great fallacies”:

- Generalizing from incomplete information.

- Overlooking alternative explanations.

5. In writing your view:

• Use definite, specific, concrete language.

• Develop one idea per paragraph. Don’t “fence more land than you can plow. One argument well-developed is better than three only sketched.” Attempting otherwise is akin to offering “ten very leaky buckets to one well-sealed one.”

• Get to the point quickly. Avoid redundancy and unnecessary details. (See, also the Heaths’ warning regarding “semantic stretch”).

• State your conclusion clearly, directly and briefly.

6. Emotionally loaded or prejudicial language “preaches only to the converted.”

• Careful presentation of the facts can itself convert.” Moreover,

• “It is not a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else.”

7. Stay open to changing your mind or improving your approach by incorporating others’ ideas, giving them fulsome credit for their insights.  (Lincoln would be proud of you.)

Here’s an extraordinary, recent example of two ambitious leaders arguing agreeably about a BIG issue.

Ready for more on decisionmaking traps? T o better understand yourself in relationship to others – and for more ideas to move from me to we – read about Nudge, Sway, Multiplicity, On Being Certain, The Starfish and the Spider and Here Comes Everybody.

From cinema to cities to sports, from places to people, hear how words and names are pronounced in their native tongue. In other words, “avoid the faux pas of mispronouncing the phrase ‘faux pas’” advises Finding Dulcinea.

Also help others hear words in your language by participating in this ambitious Me2We-style start-up project called Forvo. For yourself, type out a word you want to hear.  For others, answer their query and pronounce words in your native tongue.   So far Forvo has 104,429 words in 190 languages. About half of them already have audio pronunciations for us to hear.  Thank you ever-fascinating VSL for this tip.  If you are a word-lover then you’ll enjoy visiting these magnificent resources for us: Truespel, idioMeanings, The Rosetta Project and LingWiki.

While PostSecret provides us with vicarious and often poignant peeks into actions people choose to divulge, Sidetaker takes private disagreements public. 

One aggrieved party posts her or his side, then offers their lover the chance to respond. Providing just a few details in defending oneself can lead to recognition, at least among friends, family and others.

Summer fling?  Tightwad? This is akin to setting the stage for fights on tawdry reality shows. Watch people at their worst.

Few can take their eyes off an “overheard” lovers’ quarrel. Like gossip, people acting their worst attract an audience. 

It’s unlikely that Sidetaker will bring couples closer but it will attract a crowd.

The crowd gets to vote on who is right.  This may not be what James Surowiecki had in mind in The Wisdom of the Crowds – or the advocates of crowdsourcing want to see as a success story.  As Deborah Tannen suggested in The Argument Culture, traditional TV, radio and other setting are trending towards offering two opposing “experts” as a black or white way to see a situation.  What next?

… a good guide. Now here’s a new company I’ll use and hope will succeed.  GoodGuide has recruited scientists and other “trusted advisors” and gathered facts from a wide range of resources to enable you to make wiser choices about the consumer products you buy.

It rates products three ways: health, social and environmental.

At home or on your mobile, standing in the store, get the facts that are most important to you about the kind of product you are contemplating buying.

UC Berkeley professor and GoodGuide CEO Dara O’Rourke’s lofty aim?  To be “the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of products and companies.”

He sure has impressive partners.

They are in start-up mode so there will be bugs in the system. Make suggestions about how you want it to operate or the products you want them to rate. 

See and vote on others’ suggestions too.  (Ah, the Wisdom of the Crowd at work.)

Tell me if you find it helpful.

Like Augie Ray, he can help you decide whether to join or build a community.Now, would you like to launch and manage a lively online forum for people who share your favorite interest?  And perhaps make money? Or become more adept at most any type of social interaction online? Then listen in as O’Keefe, the author of Managing Online Forums, describes how to jumpstart and care for a lively, growing community online.

•Work from anywhere.

• Host a popular place for people who share your interest to gather.

From mothering to scuba diving, managers of some of the largest online forums rave about O’Keefe’s advice. Hear how powerful a community can become, ways to set up a community and a content site, mediate squabbling members, develop guidelines and promote your community.

Here are more resources to get you started. As you can tell I am a fan of this generous community-building expert and his book. As both O’Keefe and Peter Block suggest, what makes communities work online is the same as in face-to-face time - –it is the sense of belonging.

Instead of staying in a hotel, rent a room from a local. Travel cheap.  Discover more.  Try the “temporary bed and breakfast” peer-to-peer sites, AirBed & Breakfast or Roomorama where a night’s stay can range from $45 to $100 or so.   Anyone with a bed, airbed or couch can rent it out for the night.   Reserve your night online, paying with a credit card or via PayPal.

AB & B charges guests a 5 to 12 percent service fee and Roomorama charges 8.  

Live in a hotly-contested state for the upcoming presidential election?  Then AirBed & Breakfast suggests you host at your home a visiting, get-out-the vote volunteer.

Want to sidestep the service fee oh brave one? See house swaps or vacation rentals at the venerable Craigslist.

Braver still?  Get a free room through couchsurfing. While you’re laughing at this approach know that it has nearly 470,000 users.

Find the cheapest gas near you plus change how you use and care for your car. Try these easy-to-use sites: GasBuddy, MSN Auto and Mapquest Gas Prices.   On a cell phone? Try GetMobio. In true Me2We fashion, some of these sites ask for your input.

We can also alter our driving habits to reduce costs. Buy regular unleaded fuel mid-week at independent gas stations away from expensive neighborhoods or highway exits.

Conserve gas by avoiding idling, clearing out your car and trunk, using cruise control and keeping tires full and balanced annually. (Steel-belted radial tires can increase gas mileage up to 10% per year.)

A poorly tuned car uses between 25% and 33% more gasoline each year so change the oil and oil filter every 3,000 miles.

Keep the air filter changed, engine tuned and the windows closed.

Check fluid levels regularly including coolant, battery, automatic transmission, brake and clutch. Drive your fuel-efficient car for 5 - 7 years.

Of course we can all use our cars less by combining errands, carpooling, sharing cars and walking or biking to some places– perhaps in the company of friends.

As Yammer’s chief executive David Sacks boasts, “because it spreads virally like a consumer service, but earns revenue like a business service.

Anyone with a company e-mail address can use Yammer free. When that company officially joins — which gives the administrator more control over security and how employees use the service — it pays $1 a month for each user. In Yammer’s first six weeks, 10,000 companies with 60,000 users signed up.”  (Of course the service has to work.)

Next year Twitter will create profit centers.  Ironically, one under consideration is emulating Yammer by charging companies. Twitter founder, Evan Williams promotes a “growth-first approach” to demonstrate a track record before monetizing yet attracting customers is a credible record.  My preferred “stay in touch” tool is Socialcast, what Rafe Needleman calls a “Friendfeed for business.”

One lesson from these startups: A hybrid approach of either “free + fee version” or “ free + advertising” seems best for many us, both as social media business owners and as sought-after “customers.”  Hybrids have proven to be popular and profitable, for example at Flickr, Ning and wikiHow. There are glorious exceptions (craigslist and PostSecret) where free is forever for a legion of fans – but that’s part of the unfolding wonder of social media.