Networking is a key business skill, a way that many of the top success stories of our time have played out and highlighted in the saying “its not what you know, its Who you know”. Now I put a fair amount of belief in that saying, primarily because it shows a clear definition between skills and people, that is you could know php in and out, maybe you even know a good place online to sell it, but sooner or later if you completely lack people skills your business will come a cropper.
As with all things it depends on your intention, but if you intend to succeed in business - then in 90% of cases you will need to master at least the basics of networking and people skills. From phoning up a sales lead or calling back an old customer the phone is part of the skill, politeness, charm and a positive distraction from the day are all skills of telephony that will allow you to lure people into maintaining a phone based business relationship. Furthermore public events, promotions, the hard sell are all good skills that you would expect a sales person to have done to the tee, but as an entrepreneur you have to act as a jack of all trades, learning enough of all areas of your business - in this case dealing with potential customers is key. Its worth noting that I have noticed that the people who are good with crowds, the loud ones begging for attention are not always the victors of the social war either. They may appear to be the life of the party, but resist joining in - be a clever people person - learn when to play and when to hold your hand!
Anyway people know about networking in real life - I find it fairly awkward and just have to throw myself in the deep end, and when I am there I am usually more than fine, but what about networking online? How do you develop friendships, business relations and find useful contacts online?
There are both good and bad ways to do it, as well as good and bad reasons for doing it. Finding helpful people sitting on the other end of a laptop or pc somewhere else in the world can be great for support work, online work etc. but the downside is you have to compete with spam and I find that the anonymity of net tends to mean that online workers can take longer to do things, drop projects more, scam you easier, be less answerable (e.g. if abroad.) With this in mind I would advise that if you need work done and you are going to look online for a solution, or if you want to find someone to mutually help you and themselves online then first know where too look:
Forums - A great source of information, connections, discussions, reviews, opinions. The great thing about forums for finding useful people is that good forums (e.g. digital point) have well established rep systems and its easy to find out if most people on there are trustworthy.
Advertise - Don’t forget sometimes the person you are looking for might find you - if you advertise on your site or on an appropriate niche website you will find your man. Key here is detail - lay down exactly what you are looking for - then you will either be able to choose from a list of lots or wont get the man you want because he doesn’t exist (or you are advertising in the wrong place!)
Blog Comments - Comment on peoples blogs you like - and don’t. Its often said this is a good idea - but the dislike is underplayed. Be honest, constructive criticism is 100% better than ass kissing, if the person is real then they will see your comment as what it is, if they just flame back they aren’t worth your time.
Manage your Time without mercy. Its always tempting to burn into the night commenting, posting, emailing - but the best way to build good relations is under reasonable sustainable situations.
What you think about that then? Tell me what you think or read something else from my Archives!
- 5 Startup Points - Don’t let your business be a failure from the start
- Subscribe the Masses - Great ways to get people subscribed to your blog
How often do you use forums? PHPbb lover? Myself I am registered at Digital-Point, Site-Point and a handful of niche forums. But is the day of the forum still relevant? Do we still have time for forums?
With the global hype of the blog system and the development of wordpress, blogger and the whole blog ideology perhaps forums will fade away and become another fall out software that worked well in its time. I doubt that will happen completely but I see numerous business’s placing more belief in blogging than in forum administration.
I suppose if you compare the two, blogging is a more self centered approach to the same issue. Blogging says ‘I am an expert and I am more interested in what I have to say’ or ‘I have something to give - come see’ whereas forums are intended to be more communal. So perhaps its in that, that we choose our preference. If we seek communal chatter we hit forums and if we seek expert advice we seek blog articles? This isn’t right - we don’t. But perhaps blogging allows bigger stars to be made, with a fine line between people that read and comment and bloggers the roles are emphasised?
I would say that forums are a mine of useful tips, they allow networking and communal discussion in a way that no blog system/blog network I have seen can do.
So I suppose we blog and forum post for differing reasons and results, and personally I will continue to do both. But if the whole world has a blog - who’s going to read them all?
Fancy a little more reading?
- Subscribing people to your blog - conquer the email blogosphere
- Organise your online Reading - tips and tricks to spending no longer than nescessary reading
- Ditch the coffee - get me some lemon Juice!!!
I get through a fair amount of online reading, whether the format is blogs, ebooks, general webfodder or books relating to the net. I tend to primarily read about business on the internet, how the big players made their money and how people are making ends meet using essentially 1 huge network. So a mixed bag covering business, technology, buying online, selling online, entrepreneurship and eVentures.
- SEO for wordpress - Great plugin that will re-write your titles in a more google friendly manner
- W Revenue - Sound advice from someone who knows what they are talking about in business and the net
- Johnathon Volk - Another business blog worth a look
- Dosh Dosh’s Link attack - similar to this but a great list of online business and blogging advice
- Wired does Alex Roy - The crazy gumballer drives across america - fast - worth a read if you watched gumball
That’s it for this week folks!
Stuck and wanting a quick good email subscription manager I turned to forums - and found Feedblitz, after going through the long setup I am fairly happy with the results.
By simply sticking your email in the box to the top left (on homepage) you will be able to subscribe to my blog - Great or what? No more rss readers or bookmark finding - just subscribe and your done - a great way to get a good interesting post a day!
I would recommend Feedblitz too, definately does what it says on the tin, as I get a less modest number of subscribers I might even insert their little widget 
The internet is huge and is absolutely easy to get lost in, you find yourself typing something into google like ‘used audi’ and leaving your desk 3 hours later after reading the history of audi rallying. More so with blogs and business reading, I could spend every waking moment of my life reading things written about business online, business blogs, economist reviews archive statistics, whatever. So to combat this I have developed a little system that works for me, and I thought I would share it with you..
I am using firefox and googlereader - two things I would suggest everyone uses.
Firstly I have a folder in my bookmarks toolbar (creating folders is a great way to organise links), and in this folder I have two other folders entitled ‘new‘ and ‘good‘ - these are fairly self explanatory.
Secondly I also have google reader set up and ready to add feeds to subscribe too.
I also then stick a google reader bookmark in the reading folder for quick access.
In essence as you browse the internet for whatever you usually read, if you bookmark pages you think may be good to read later - save the bookmark in this new ‘reading->new’ folder. Doing this rather than reading the page then when you should be doing something else will help you prioritise your time.
Then when you actually do have a spare moment to do some reading (or in the evenings) you can go to the new folder and do a bit of reading, saving the good sites into the good folder and adding their rss feeds to your google reader. Mercilessly delete bookmarks to sites that are not hard to find or don’t have something good and uniquely interesting to you on.
This system helps me to not spend my working time reading and to spend my time reading rather than surfing.
Hope it works for you!
Like this post? Maybe you would fancy reading one of my other posts on business time management and efficiency!:
- Blogging for business - how to blog more effectively for business
- Pagex - A great little bolt on seo cms that will save you loads of time running a website
- 10 Steps to submitting your site - Startup websites are easily launched by following these steps