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
Never an easy one to master but according to many well worth the attention.
Before I say anything here is Starbucks Mission Statement, might as well start with a multi-national:
- Provide a great work environment and treat each other with respect and dignity.
- Embrace diversity as an essential component in the way we do business.
- Apply the highest standards of excellence to the purchasing, roasting and fresh delivery of our coffee.
- Develop enthusiastically satisfied customers all of the time.
- Contribute positively to our communities and our environment.
- Recognize that profitability is essential to our future success.
I personally would not write a mission statement like that, it seems in my opinion too much like ‘yes we will do this *enter giving phrase* this *second nice thing to say* and this *more kindness* but to do that we will have to *play down the mercyless profit chase*.
I mean its a good mission statement, its to the point and no doubt its had a lot of work put into creating it, after all its a huge corporate thing the mission statement. However I would still write one if I was a one man show - the mission statement is a concatenated version of all the big plans, its the short, to the point intention behind the company. Writing it well and keeping it in the for-front of your business thinking will allow you to focus on your goals while operating on a day to day basis.
Here’s a few tips on writing your mission statement:
- Keep it short - avoid floundering, be blunt but eloquent.
- Sugar coat it - for the public if its to be published - but don’t lie
- Make sure all employees know it - and understand it
- Let employees change it - partaking in its refinement will help you get everyone on board the same boat
- Change it as often as you need too - almost no expense should be spared because essentially it is the core of your business - once a day is too often once a fortnight/month is sustainable
- Do it first, Now - don’t start a whole business trade for 4 years then realise you didn’t actually intend to sell plant pots.
There are numerous writers, business theorists and planners that swear by mission statements, as do I. Personally I originally invested in the concept after reading seven habits by Steven Covey, he suggests going to the level where by you have a family mission statement and a personal mission statement also. So if you haven’t already - bare in mind your mission statement is a great way to focus your business!
How did that taste? Fancy some more? :
- We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
- Using Google Alerts - Watch for your business name or name online - monitor your presence!
- Yahoo Answers - People seeking advice - have you got time?
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
Someone the other day asked me how easy it is to set up a business legitimately in the UK, to which I responded easier than most things and it is. It’s incredibly easy to start - its the continued effort or the ‘fake it till you make it’ that people have problems with.
Anyway for anyone wondering how to go about starting a company in the UK one of the main things you will start with is opening a business bank account. This can be done simply and I would recommend doing it as soon as you start work on a new business because when you go to apply for credit card processing or similar (you will likely need if working online - cheaper than paypal) then the longer the account has been running for the more chance you will get credit card processing easily. If you run a business bank account well for 6 months then it will be easy to do so.
So to get a business bank account:
- Make some headed paper - You will need 1 sheet so you can literally print your own from an inkjet printer - unless you are sure enough to order a few thousand pages (but you don’t need to for this.) - Make sure the headed paper has your address, contact details and a logo as well as your Company Name. With company names if you are just starting a little company with intentions to trade a bit before investing then use your company name at the top, and at the bottom write: “yourname T/A COMPANY NAME” (T/A means Trading As - in the UK a person can trade as a company name until they earn a certain amount - this is legal.)
- Choose a bank - You might want to shop around, I would recommend HSBC and not Barclay’s - but that’s my choice - they are all fairly similar if they are on a highstreet. Things to consider are interest rates, services they offer, business bank managers etc.
- Get an appointment - Easy to do, either phone your local branch (if they allow you too) or go in and ask for an appointment to set up a business bank account - this is because you may need to speak to a business specific banker. You MIGHT be able to walk strait in without one if its a big branch…
- Walk in with headed paper and tell them - ..Your details - they will ask you whether you are seeking finance, business address, your name, what your trading in, as and expected sales cash, offer you all sorts of crap (if your small start up its probably not cost effective to take an expensive option)
- Walk out with a business bank account - Its that easy - you’ll get a business debit card in 5-7 days along with a cheque book and paying in book and probably online business banking info. Done.
It’s that easy - the key is doing it early to start building a record of your company up - don’t hesitate or it might slow things down later.
Interested in starting a business? check out a few of my other business posts:
- Ebusiness Hyperlocal - How local should you operate your business? National or Hyperlocal?
- Good Business Books - Books helping you to make it in the modern business world
- 3 Tips for blogging in business - 3 Tips to keep your business blogging top notch!
Depending on your niche market which is the best to target - the world, your country, your county(state) or your town? Is there much point in creating a website just for your town - or is that essentially just riding the long tail? I have read economic reports that hint at progression for the internet market down the long tail, further into the realms of mass customisation - but will it happen? to what extent - and should we be building noahs ark like boats capable of holding extreme niche’s two by two?
As I said the current buzz word around the business net (I refer to the 50 odd sources of reading I have across economist blogs, bloggers making money, business and ebusiness) was niche - it has been for the last half a year. The niche flame doesn’t seem to be fading and a few people have become fairly rich by sticking with their niche long tails. But how far can this go? Half the money that was once in HMV’s pocket now lies in independent resellers pockets (the rest is probably in apples pockets but that’s a different story) - and that’s not a bad thing. But if it continues further down the tail does that mean half of the independent retailers cash will be handed out to home sellers with just 5 tracks available?
How niche is niche? Its a tough one to know how far to go when planning your next business or venture. Hyperlocal is in my opinion going to be nearly as bigger phrase as niche has become - except perhaps will have less people saying it wrong! The idea being that you don’t get more niche than a website that isn’t designed to be international - not even national - hell it is quite often aimed soley at one town - but would you go down to street level? Could a website relevant to your street work?
I like the concept of hyperlocal, I like the idea that the internet has come full circle - originally allowing us to contact anyone , anywhere in the world at any time for next to nothing, and now it lets your kids spend all of the evening on there chatting to their friend from down the street. It was an open sea of choice, and still is - more than ever. But it would seem people like the odd bit of familiar land in their sea. Out of infinite choice the things that stick are those aimed most at the users personality.
Based on your personality largely consisting of randoms - 50% of your personality is looking in the sea - your hobbies could be anything from hunting to hairdressing. But the other 50%, the parts of you that are similar to 80% of western civilisation are the simple things - home (shelter), transport (cars, trucks, bikes), relationships (wife, lover, girlfriend, boyfriend, son, daughter, grandma, grandad) and food (dining, breakfast, coffee, tea etc.) These are habitual, repeated things that we all (broadly speaking) do on a day to day basis.
So perhaps in a vane to target the stable online these are the things I would bother hyperlocalising, because hobbies, I expect are already pretty niche - or the long tail already exists. This is what I believe the thinking behind the american newspapers progressing to hyperlocal situations online is about. Because whatever you do in any given town, you probably know the newspaper. So by starting a hyper local website - just for the town, county or area the paper is stably expanding into the niche of locality.
The ability to progress into hyperlocal aspirations comes from the ability to efficiently provide online services. As the internet has evolved, progressed and carried the business’s using it along with it, it has created an extremely easy, open and cheap platform. Anyone can get hosting and a domain name now - easily for less money than they spend on shoe polish. So by the tools of the internet trade becoming cheaper and easier (mysql and php are a prime coupled example) it means that effectively creating a hyperlocal online scenario is cost effective. Before if you wanted to run a website you would have needed to cover your costs and so aiming at such a long tail niche as hyperlocal situations would never have covered its outlay (e.g. not enough people to visit to pay the bills.) But using templates, freely available data, free databases and a little web knowledge your could simply provide a seriously targeted level of attention.
In this way Hyperlocal is Niche, its an extreme geographical niche, but the way things are going it might not even be the end of the long tail!
If you liked this - then maybe try some recent posts I have written on business, economics, long tails and hyperlocal:
- Business Books - I give a quick review on my four current favourite reads to help you progress in life and business
- Entrepreneurship is for life not just for christmas - I dealve into enthusiasm and keeping your business going!
- Real World Optimising - Apply SEO to real life business