Buddy's Marketing Forum

Anna-Marie · Wed Sep 13, 2006 4:49 pm Business Networking The Right Way

Business Networking The Right Way
Copyright 2006 By Anna-Marie Stewart

To do business successfully, you need to learn to network well with others. There’s lots of great info to be had for both online and offline networking, and there’s quite a few useful networking sites.

A few places to go for networking and contacts are:

http://www.ryze.com/
http://www.ecademy.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/
http://www.adlandpro.com/

Sites like these can be great for gaining contacts, business partners, joint venture partners, customers and friends etc., if you use them correctly.

I've joined just about all of them at one point or another (including more than I've listed here). Not all of them suit my needs, a few of them are even annoying but some of them are really good at the point in time when I need them.

The worst thing about places like these is that people seem to think of them as shortcuts. It's as if they think 'Ooooh! Tons of business people, I can promote EVERYTHING to them!'In reality that's not the way it works.

Take for example one that I joined a year or 2 ago, I won't name it, but it IS a good place apart from all the spam. I never actually used my membership until recently and as soon as I started using it I was bombarded with people requesting to be my friend.

While some of them are truly like-minded individuals, most of the requests were purely pitches for businesses of one type or another (mostly affiliate programs), and it's easy to see that a lot of the users haven't been doing business online very long.

What happens to the friend-requests that do nothing but pitch to me? They are either ignored or deleted. I haven't joined the program just to be spammed to death, I've joined purely to network with as many people as possible!

Networking is exactly what it says: Networking. Working together towards a common goal, and not bombarding each other with sales pitches in the very first contact.

If you're going to use networking sites it's really important to understand that you HAVE to build and nurture relationships to reap any rewards. If you're lucky you might make some sales or get some new recruits further down the line, but like everything else it's about creating relationships, mutual respect and gaining trust.

To all who are thinking about using networking sites like these: Stop! Think about what you want from the site, think about what you need. Think LONG TERM. Get to know the people you contact, post to their forums, their blogs or whatever other options the site gives you.

Always make meaningful contact and never, ever pitch in your first contact. Build up a rapport with your contacts. They may eventually feel comfortable enough to do business with you or sign up under you in programs etc. If you spam them, I'm sure most of them will be like me and either ignore you, block you or just plain and simple ignore you.

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Buddy · Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:00 pm

Another great article. It is something that I try to stress here at this forum "CONNECTION'" So many people breeze in and out without so much as a hello. My goal is to get people to slow down enough to make that one on one connection. Thank you for posting. - Buddy -

Anna-Marie · Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:05 pm

I just hope some people find my articles informative enough to take note Buddy, and only too glad to post ;)

You're right about people breezine in and out though. It really is important to create relationships no matter what biz route one decides to go.

Anna