The Networking Blog

Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. If you aren’t using one of these social media platforms, now is a good time to start, even if you aren’t big on online socializing. Using social media can help with keeping in touch with your customers and associates. This post explains how.

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!

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There’s no official ethic code for any social network. But some things aren’t done. Befriending someone one Facebook just to send him a link to your blog is problematic, but it happens too often. Let’s identify the networking issue and suggest a better way to do it.

Facebook Networking Done Wrong

When a person you don’t know befriends me on Facebook, I politely ask the obvious question: Do I know you? When I have the patience, I also add a few more words, such as: We have mutual friends, but I don’t seem to recall you.

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Naymz is a fast growing professional networking site. Many features are similar to LinkedIn. Here is a list of 4 advantages and 4 disadvantages of Naymz, with many comparisons to LinkedIn.

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Chester French is a talented two-man show. Let’s hear some of their rock music, and then talk about how they network their way to the fans:

The song you’ve just heard is titled “She loves everybody”. While this song helped them reach out to a larger audience, it wasn’t a huge hit, and wasn’t enough to promote their debut album “Love the Future”.

Traditional musicians rely on their record company to promote their act by using Public Relations offices, posters in record stores, etc.

But D.A. Wallach and Max Drummey took a different path: they’re promoting their music through networking.

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Everybody heard about Twitter, the ultra-viral micro blogging service. In future posts we’ll show how to use Twitter for networking. Today we’re going to focus on a by-product of Twitter – Tweetups, or Twitter meet-ups in human language.

Twitter is young: it aired only in 2006, when other social networks were already strong in the market. In the last year or so, it’s popularity leaped worldwide.

The short 140 format makes it easy to use and easy to follow. Naturally, you follow and get followed by people you know. Later you become exposed to more people that share a common interest.

After reaching a critical mass, communities began evolving around the “Twittersphere”. This critical mass means that not only geeks use it, but the general public. So, people that get to know each other via very short messages want to get together in real life. So, tweetups were born.

A Tweetup is a Networking Event

Tweetups are usually held once a month during the evening at a bar. This allows for a relaxed and not to formal atmosphere. But the attendants of this event didn’t solely to drink a beer before going home.

Attendants of tweetups are usually people who want to connect. They come also for meeting their virtual friends in real life, but they usually come with an agenda. The name tags with the @TwitterUser mean that a tweetup is a networking event, not a geek get-together.

Many times, the audience of tweetups has a tendency towards the internet sector, and internet marketing in particular, but it’s not a bunch of programmers…

So, tweetups are significant networking events, and especially important for those of you who want to connect to people in the internet sector.

How can I find out about upcoming Tweetups?

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