How to connect to unfamiliar people: LinkedIn is a great and fast way to connect to people you would like to do business with, but haven’t met before. Here are a few ways on how to do it.

First of all, I recommend as a prior step to get connected to all your existing connections as described in my last post: LinkedIn – Increase Your Networking. After doing so, the LinkedIn system will automaticly suggest people you might know, and can be used to connect to people you might want to know. This appears on the upper right side of your screen titled “People you may know”.

LinkedIn - People you may know feature

By clicking the ‘See more’ link below the ‘People you may Know’ box a long list of possible connections will appear. You can approach these connections through a third party, who will be a connection of both of you. You can also approach directly and it would be acceptable if you have a mutual work place or school or any kind of organization.

A good example would be approaching someone you don’t know personally, but heard him speak at a convention, and you might think could help your business. You could start by sending a message on LinkedIn, telling a few words about yourself and your business, write what in the speech was relevant to you, and ask politely to meet in person, talk over the phone, or maybe send some additional information. This way you might just grow your network of connections faster and beyond your current familiar friends and colleagues.

In our next post we will review the recommendations feature on LinkedIn.

Well, luck isn’t really the key for success here. A good idea is important, timing people will say is crucial, and of-course L-O-C-A-T-I-O-N (usually said three times). But is that all?

We think not.

As a partner in more than one business I think one of the most important things is to let people know you have a business. It’s not that obvious: most people would think that they need to talk (or write for that matter) about their business only with customers and suppliers. This attitude could be the downside of your business, Let’s review this:

Costumers – whether it’s customers, clients or users you need, they are practically every way you look. Don’t judge the people you meet. Anyone of your friends, family or community could become a costumer (even a paying one). As mentioned in previous posts, most of the people in your surroundings are part of your network, and in this case part of your business’s network. If your business is a store or a user related online website, it means anyone and everyone are your customers.

Make sure to be enthusiastic about your business and tell the story behind your store/company/website to your bar-tender (before the fourth round of drinks), to your friends, their friends, former work colleagues, family and even to the annoying neighbor from across the hall. If you show enough motivation about your business to enough people, be sure, the word will get around.

Suppliers – With a new business comes great responsibility and even greater costs. You will probably need a place to rent, buy office supplies, online or offline storage, pay consultants and maybe even experts. Experts are the same as consultants but cost more . Except for getting a competitive price from your suppliers, you need them to be reliable and supply quality products.

Try to always find  suppliers inside your network, if they meet your standards of course. Suppliers within your network will probably be more convenient about terms of payment and credit, be more loyal to you, and most importantly might speak highly of you to potential costumers or even becomes costumers themselves.

All this shouldn’t be instead of marketing and advertising, but it will make it much more effective, and its really cost-effective.

One last thing, looking for a job isn’t so different from starting up a new business from the networking point of view. We’ll discuss it in one of our the next posts.

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.

The band has set up a website that features various information about the band, news about shows, etc. The added value comes from their activity on the site. They update their blog quite frequently: they release a post approximately every two to three days.

They’re also active on MySpace, Facebook and and other social networks. All these sites give samples of their music, and ask you to further engage with the band. With a unique name as Chester French, it’ll be easy to find them online. In some cases it isn’t that simple to search people on social sites.

They offer the visitors to join their VIP service. These VIP members get free copies of their music so that they will be “ambassadors” of Chester French, and spread their music. They use SalesForce to manage their network of fans. Also here, up to date tools are utilized…

The most fascinating part of their networking is their personal responses to emails from fans. In this article in the Gadgetwise blog (under NY Times), Wallach describes how he personally networks with the fans:

“We respond to every single email we get,” he said. “I do an hour in the morning and an hour at night. A lot of them are just, ‘I wish you’d come to my city,’ and we’ll write back, ‘Us, too.’ We try to keep it personal and intimate. So it’s not just ‘Dear Friend.’ It’ll be, ‘Dear Paul, thank you for coming to see us in Baton Rouge. We’d really like your ideas for how we can spread our music around in Baton Rouge.’”

This way of promoting music via social networks and personal communication with fans is gaining traction, and it’s an excellent example of how networking is used in the entertainment industry. Networking isn’t exclusive to business