About a decade ago, a friend bragged about a new phone he just bought, that can hold up to 300 contacts in his address book. This sounds funny when thinking about it in 2009. He then showed me that except for name and phone number you can type in additional details such as city, birthday and mail. To demonstrate the abilities of the new gadget (I remind the readers this is 1999 we are talking about) he showed me a memo the phone just made about one of his customers. The customer’s daughter just turned 16, and my friend called to congratulate his customer for the sweet sixteen birthday party they are holding. We can learn 2 things from this ‘ancient’ story:

1. Know your customers – they will return a favor by doing business with you again.
2. In 2009 there is no need to input your phone manually, we have technology for that!

Before reviewing the possibilities with advanced mobile devices such as Iphone and Blackberry, lets take a closer look at Facebook and LinkedIn and their immediate business added value. Befriending online with business associates and customers, but not too soon, can let you take part in their lives. Choose to use it wisely, and you will enjoy a constant and fruitful relationship with your clients. Instead of relating to your business alone, you can connect to your clients about their personal interests, hobbies and important events such as birthdays, anniversaries and other social gatherings.

In the past, you would keep logs or lists of customers, birthday details and addresses that would consume a lot of time to manage. Today, Facebook has an application for almost every smartphone: Blackberry,Iphone, HTC, etc. that will notify you with important dates related to your connections. The new Facebook app for Blackberry, can connect automatically to your calendar and address book.  Twitter has also hundreds of applications for almost every existing phone. LinkedIn can also be used from most phones.

We are not always near a desktop, or a notebook, but if we can see what our business connections are up to, or what they are celebrating, we can choose to use it. We can make a call to congratulate an associate on receiving an award, text a client on his birthday and send an email with an article that would interest a customer that just tweeted on the subject. All these options are easy to use today, and were not available 3-4 years ago. All the examples I’ve mentioned can be available using notifications on Facebook mobile applications, and any Twitter app such as the popular Tweetdeck (on Iphone also). The Tweetdeck, by the way, has a new version that includes feeds not only from twitter as before, but also facebook, myspace and linkedin, which means you can enjoy your feeds and text from all those applications in one place. An advantage for all those having a hard time following Facebook, Twitter and linkedin togather.

Even if social media doesn’t interest you that much, you should still consider it as a working tool for you. LinkedIn can be your professional database, Facebook can be your clients’ event notifier and Twitter even just for short and immediate direct messaging to clients.

For a kick start:

facebook latest app for Blackberry

Tweetdeck for Iphone

Linkedin on mobile

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.

These people from different backgrounds get to know each other at the birthday, and this offers networking opportunities.  There might be a business opportunity with another attendant of this event. You already have some basic common ground – you know the birthday boy.

This common acquaintance is the first possible topic of conversation, that can lead to other topics, and perhaps some business opportunities. The conversation may lead to talking about further meetings and the exchange of business cards.

At such event, the mingling continues, and you might miss out on exchanging business cards. Well, if you’re interested in connecting, you can still reach out via your mutual friend. This mutual friend can also supply more information about the person you talked to. It naturally goes both ways…

After being friends with someone for a long time, you already get to know his friends which you meet at his birthday, or his other events. Sometimes the guest list repeats itself. While seeing familiar faces is nice, the networking opportunities decrease.

Shared Events

Your birthday is coming up, and you feel like throwing a party for your friends. You’ll feel very comfortable with your close friends. That’s great! But maybe you don’t wish to repeat the same ritual year after year. Sometimes you’ll prefer to skip the party. How about a party with a wider set of people?

I have a friend who was born a week after me. Last year we had the idea of making one party for the both of us. The first advantage is that the burden of organizing the party was shared between the both of us. This made things easier.

And what we’re here to talk about is networking. My friend and myself have common friends. I also have friends that aren’t his friends or acquaintances, and the other way around.

The party that we threw together last year was and opportunity for many people to get to know new people. I’m glad to say that it was also very fun, so we hope to repeat the success this year. We already know each other’s close friends, but we aren’t familiar with all the acquaintances.

So, also this year’s party is a chance for our guests and also for ourselves to meet new people and to network, apart from having fun of course…