photo by pt 

I’m doing different workshops on Online Marketing and using Online Social Networks to grow your business and one of the consistent questions I get is “What can I do with an Online Social Network for my business?”

It’s a great question, and generally my response is another question – “What are you trying to do with your business…what is it that you need?  Customers? Partners? Employees?”

The deal with Online Social Networking sites, at least for business purposes, is that they are simply a tool.  If you use them in the right way, they can be a great asset to your marketing, sales or even customer service efforts (depending on your business).

But like that weed whip that hangs in my garage untouched because I don’t have a long enough cord for it, a online social network by itself doesn’t really do anything for you.  You have to have something you’re trying to achieve and then a way to use that tool to help deliver on that goal…if you’ve got that stuff in place, then you’ve got a tool that can really help you grow your business.

Having said that, let’s take a look at the types of things you could do with a tool like LinkedIn. Read More…

Ben Franklin was an amazing man – most people are familiar with several of his more famous inventions.  As an outcome of his studies of electricity he invented the lightning rod.  He also invented the bi-focal glasses that he’s often pictured with (he was both near and far sighted and got frustrated with having to switch glasses while he was working).

Beyond that, he’s also credited with creating the first Fire Insurance Company, he came up with the idea behind Daylight Savings Time and he helped form the first Library (as their known today) in 1731.

However, in addition to all of those great accomplishments, Franklin is also arguably the father of Social Networking (at least as it pertains to business). 

One of the better definitions of Networking that I’ve seen comes from Bob Burg – author of Endless Referrals:

Networking is the cultivating of mutually beneficial, give and take, win-win relationships.

Old Ben certainly knew a thing or two about the power of relationships and networking – even back in the 1700s!  He drove a lot of the ideas that make networking what it is today.

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photo by Katiew

Networking is all about establishing mutually beneficial win-win relationships with people that you know, like and trust (and vice versa). 

Unfortunately it can be really difficult to develop those kinds of relationships in traditional professional networking environments.

Enter the opportunity of the dinner party.

In his book on networking and relationships “Never Eat Alone” Keith Ferrazzi outlines his recommended approach for regular dinner parties as a key networking strategy.  I don’t know that everyone is going to have access to big name celebrities as the ‘anchor tenant’ for your get together as recommended by the book, but an occasional informal get together with people that you’d like to get to know better can be a big help to making connections.

If you’re like me, there are a lot of people you know informally – well enough to wave to them across a parking lot, but you’ve never really had an in-depth discussion with them.  Find a good mix of those people that seem like they would be fun and/or worthwhile to get to know and pull together a dinner party to break the ice.

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photo by PPDIGITAL 

Have you ever had a situation where you learned something and you thought you knew it – maybe you even passed it along to other people, and then you saw the same idea with a slight variation and it suddenly made a lot more sense?  Where it’s like suddenly getting hit with the Hammer of Clarity (catchy eh?  I just made that up…)

Yeah – me neither…! 

Actually that happened to me yesterday when I was reading the excellent eZine / Blog from Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. 

Think back to the last networking event you went to – maybe it was a chamber meeting, or just some sort of after hours social event.

Did you happen to run into someone that just started rattling on about their business?  (The odds are pretty good that you did).  Did you start coming up with creative escape plans that involved Batman’s utility belt or a ninja smoke bomb? Read More…

Photo by Flyfshrmn98 

One of the key things that can make the networking process much easier is developing and getting extremely comfortable with your elevator pitch.

An elevator pitch is a concise, focused and interesting description of who you are and what you do, imagine if you were riding on an elevator with your perfect business prospect and you had just a few seconds to get your most important points across.

The intention – just like a 30 second commercial on radio or TV is to pique interest, give them just enough to get a glimmer of something interesting…and nothing more. You want to engage your audience, give them an interesting overview of what you can do – and then promptly move on to talking about them.

You’re not trying to sell, you’re networking and the primary focus of networking is to establish a connection by focusing on the other person. However, even if you get the ball rolling by asking them questions, at some point they will ask you what you do. By having a response that you’re comfortable with and that is intriguing / not boring you can convey the important up front stuff, make an impression and go back to focusing on making a connection.

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