We wish all the readers of The Networking Blog a happy new year in 2010. May you all network your way to success. Although we are rather new on the scene, here are our favorite posts for 2010:
Well, the first place to look for money is your bank account. If there isn’t much there, and you have a great idea, you’ll have to search for funding and investors. In this post we will try looking at the subject with a different perspective.
Picture credit: stuartpilbrow on Flickr.
Part of my work with start-up companies includes finding investors and funds. With time you find that somethings works for you better than others. Of course, these are just my impressions. Hope you’ll find them useful:
As said here before, networking happens everywhere. As a proud owner of a new dog, I found a community I wasn’t aware of at all. Except for the fun of having a dog, and especially a young and energetic one, in the past few weeks I met a lot of people with dogs, and some great connections.
There is always an exception, dogs who prefer different things to do with their leisure time-
We have discussed LinkedIn here before, and pointed out the groups as one of its advantages. In this post I will elaborate on the groups feature, which can be very useful for business and networking.
How do you join groups? First thing, decide what are your fields of interests are. What does your business do? Real-estate, law, consulting? In almost any subject you’ll find groups and subgroups with many professionals in them. People (like you) on each group are looking to hire, talk and write on the selected topic. In other words, people are looking to connect – to network.
Groups Search on LinkedIn
As we wrote here before about networking in unexpected places, Even a taxi ride can turn into a connection. Some opportunities are good for business and some of the networking is fun. If you network enough, you will meet new and interesting people constantly. Here is an example with cultural benefits.
About a week ago I met and old colleague for a beer after work. While having our beer, I heard someone ordering a beer in Spanish two seats away from us on the bar. Being curious about the spanish, I introduced myself, and so did my colleague. The person we met turned out to be ‘Gale Talk‘, A Madrid based techno artist, who came to town for a concert. We had a fun talk about music and a few more rounds of beer.
Gale Talk
From here on, networking went on using MySpace, where you can find information and more importantly a few tracks. So I could listen to his music, which I really liked. Hope you will enjoy it too. I couldn’t make it to the concert, hope to see it next time in town.
In a previous post named Where to Network, we have covered in which circles to connect and how to network online. It occurred to me, that we still haven’t given any tools on how to ACTUALLY network with people when the opportunity occurs, even if you are not a people person. In this post we will explore one classic example, which is attending a convention. I gathered my opinion on the subject from attending, organizing and networking in a few events, and organized my thoughts in 5 practical steps easy to follow:
1. What to wear? If you are a man, don’t laugh at this point, this is not a fashion tip! It’s important to wear something suitable for the occasion, but try to wear something comfortable for you. If you usually don’t wear a suit, don’t start now, people will notice you are uncomfortable, and it can be interpreted as unreliable. If you are not sure, and there isn’t a clear dress code, try asking a colleague on similar events. Remember, dress code is important, but feeling comfortable around others is crucial.
Sometimes, dressing wrong for the occasion is serving a purpose…
Do you have any friends working in sales? Is any of your friends a blogger? Count the amount of people you know who work with anything to do with technology. If you answered ‘YES’ to these questions or most of them, potentially you have a successful new company in your hands. More on connecting your connections in this post.
In this blog we dealt with how to built your network, and how to make it grow. Assuming you already have a network of considerable size, it’s time to make it work for you, and for your connections. A non-active network, won’t bring any value to your business. Connection won’t last – the next time you’ll need someone from your network you will have to start rebuilding your relationship from scratch.
The web is rich with ‘How To’ guides. I also read some of these articles and posts every now and then. You can probably find endless blog posts on ‘how to network ‘ online. I chose to publish here the first official ‘how to’ post to be on 5 things you should try NOT to do regarding your network. Remember, we all learn from mistakes, why not learn from others’ mistakes?
Don’t miss opportunities – When does that big opportunity come? You could never know. In order to avoid missing opportunities, there’s only one thing to do. Take part in activities related to your business and personal life as mentioned here before. Any occasion or person you meet, could easily become a great opportunity for a big client or a new contract, or finding the perfect candidate for a job your hiring for.
Then again, some meetings just bring up too many bad memories
Don’t force your business – Your product is great, I’m sure of that. But try to understand the event you’re participating in. Timing is everything (along with a good product,creative marketing and some luck…). Sometimes you might just have one opportunity to introduce yourself to someone relevant to you - don’t blow it. If you speak about your business in the wrong place, you might be considered rude and maybe even boring. From my experience, always introduce yourself first as a person, an individual. Don’t talk about your business straight away. People like to connect with people, not companies. Start by a short introduction about yourself. People will remember you but they will seldom remember a company name. If people will remember you it doesn’t matter which business it is, They would be interested in YOU.
After reviewing LinkedIn connections options and groups, and getting to know how to grow your network of business connections through LinkedIn, in this post I would like to review and recommend a few more useful features.
One of the most useful and effective tools on LinkedIn is recommendations.
LinkedIn recommendation link
Birthday parties are excellent for networking since you usually get to know new people on familiar ground. We take this one step further, by offering shared birthday parties.
A birthday party can be an excellent ground for networking. For example, you might be a colleague of the birthday boy (or girl), and other guests can be relatives, college friends, co-workers from another place or from a totally different background.
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