As a business owner, one of your primary goals is to continue to fill your pipeline with new business. One of the most cost-effective ways to do this – particularly for a smaller business – is through networking.
One of the biggest roadblocks to networking is the fear that being more of an “introvert” impedes any successful attempts at trying to network. In fact, it’s a question I get quite frequently: “How do I network if I’m not a naturally outgoing person?”
Go ahead and breathe a sigh of relief—because you don’t have to become Mr. Public Speaker, Person About Town, to be a successful networker. Most business people, given a little real-world experience, naturally develop a certain level of comfort in dealing with customers, vendors, and others in their day-to-day transactions. Even people who are not gregarious or outgoing can form meaningful relationships and communicate.
Online Networking: Building Your Social Capital at Your Desk
If it is taking you a bit longer to get used to face-to-face networking, remember that thanks to technology’s continuing advances, you can also network without ever leaving your desk – online networking is a very effective way to connect with potential clients and referral sources.It’s usually better to use online networking with people only after you’ve established a relationship with them by traditional means. To develop trust, respect, and true friendship, it’s hard to beat in-person conversation and the occasional handshake or pat on the shoulder.
Offering Advice to Break the Ice
So we’re back to the challenge of doing some face-to-face networking when you haven’t had much practice at it, or are not sure how to “break the ice.” To get you started, you might want to try offering some free professional advice. If you’re a marketing consultant, give your prospects a couple of ideas on how they can increase the exposure of their business. Don’t go overboard; maybe a technique you read in a magazine or tried with one of your clients. Just give them something they can “try on” to see if it works.
Not only will this open up a good conversation with the person (while you’re out networking), but if you play your cards right, who do you think they’ll go to when they’re in need of your kind of service? When it comes to building rapport and creating trust, nothing does it better than solid, helpful information provided out of a genuine concern for the other person.
Become a Trusted Source for Quality Referrals and Contacts
Another way to ease into networking is to provide a referral or contact. This could be a direct referral (someone you know who’s in the market for this person’s services) or a solid contact (someone who could help in other ways down the road). Being new to networking does not have to be a barrier to building and maintaining relationships that will help grow your business. Simply identify your professional skill set and make it work for you: Volunteer to be a presenter or host at a local chamber, civic, or networking event; offer professional advice as a way to develop a new relationship; and be willing to share your valuable relationships with others so they will identify you as a go-to person for trusted referral sources. Before you know it, you won’t remember a time when you were anything but a solid, professional networker.
Called the “Father of Modern Networking” by CNN and the “Networking Guru” by Entrepreneur magazine, Dr. Misner is considered one of the world’s leading experts on business networking and has been a keynote speaker for major corporations and associations throughout the world.
Right now you can learn the tips and techniques networking leaders use themselves and have proven to bring results. It’s all about working smarter, not harder.
About the Author:
Dr. Ivan Misner: When you buy Networking Like a Pro from Amazon via our special offer: http://ivanmisner.com/amazonbookbonus.html our exclusive bonus offer includes a 6-month free Premium Subscription to Networking Pro, the leading online networking resource that contains free training, e-books, audio podcasts and more! Offer good Feb 1-4 in honor of International Networking Week.
Category: Networking
When you are building your brand and your business online, one of the most important elements to monitor is your online reputation. If you know anything about online reputation management, you know, essentially, that it’s the process of monitoring and managing what people are saying about you and your company.
Online, as in real life, word of mouth is one of the most potent methods for spreading good news (and bad).
While there are many paid services to help you monitor your online reputation, there are several free tools you can (and should be!) using to keep track of your mentions on the web.
The first is using Google alerts. You can set these up at http://www.google.com/alerts. You would set these up for your name, your business name, and any key terms or initiatives you might also be monitoring. Using this free service enables you to be notified whenever there is a new Google listing for any of your keyword terms. You can set how often you should be notified (I have mine set to daily), and you can set up as many alerts as you would like. It’s wise to use your desired keyword term in quotes (as in “red cars” rather than red cars), as this increases the specificity of your alerts. Google alerts are a good first line listening tool to monitor your online reputation.
A second tool you can use to monitor your online reputation is a site such as Keotag, which is located at http://www.keotag.com. When you visit this site, you’ll be able to enter a keyword to research. You could start with your name, for instance. When you submit your query, you’ll be given a list of sites you’d like to search. When you select a site, you’ll be given a set of listings where your keyword terms appear. Sometimes Keotag returns results that the other tools miss, so I like to have it in my arsenal.
A third tool you can use to monitor your online reputation is Addictomatic, which is located at http://www.addictomatic.com. This site is great because it pulls from many content sources, and you can get a one page listing of your keyword as it appears on various sites. You can remove or switch around the order of results. What I like to do with this site is set up some custom keyword searches and then bookmark them in my browser. This way, I can easily return, at a glance, whenever I’d like to be updated on new information on my keyword.
I’ll be covering other tools in future blog posts, but these three will get you started. If you don’t have these set up and running for your name, business, and main business terms, set these up right away.
It’s always good to know what people are talking about- especially if it’s you!
Dr. Rachna Jain is Chief Social Marketer at The Mindshare Corporation. Rachna works with speakers, consultants, authors, and small business owners to develop and execute effective social media marketing strategies. Her proprietary persuasive social media process (sm) focuses on building influence, credibility and visibility online. This translates into greater recognition, increased website traffic, faster lead generation, a shorter sales cycle, and more opportunity for her expert clientele. She blogs regularly at The Mindshare Blog
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Social Media Rejection
Rejection always hurts, no doubt. In fact, when I worked as a psychologist, rejection (fear of it, or getting over it) was, perhaps, at the root of many of the issues which brought my patients to my therapy practice. I heard so much conversation about this topic that I actually wrote a book on strategies for overcoming rejection.
Now, working as a social marketer and online business consultant, I see that rejection continues to be an issue- but not in quite the same way as I’ve seen before. Now, people are experiencing social media rejection, and wondering what to do about it.
Social media rejection can occur in several ways:
One way is that your request to connect is either denied (harsh!) or ignored (vague.). You might reach out to someone that you know, or would like to know, and get a strong negative reaction or response back. In most cases, you’ll be wondering what happened- what you did to set this person off. Similarly, you might reach out to someone, and they just never seem to get back to you on your connection request.
A second way social media rejection occurs is when you find that you’ve been culled from a list- whether it be taken out of Top Friends on Facebook, or unfollowed on Twitter, or similar. The thing about this is that it might not always be clear what happened. I know, for instance, that sometimes my Twitter account behaves strangely, and my account unfollows people I actually still want to be connected to. I believe, sometimes, that this might be due to some kind of technical glitch, or just a ‘drop’ by the Twitter servers. Anyway, the point is that sometimes people get unfollowed- and then contact me, wondering what happened. Likewise, I know there are times where I’ve been unfollowed, and I’m not sure why.
The third way (more subtle) that social media rejection occurs is when you try to take part in a conversation or make a connection and it is directly rebuffed or ignored, in real time. Again, the challenge with this is you can’t always know if the rebuff or ignore was intentional or accidental.
As with any technologically based method of communication, glitches do happen.
That being said, what about when you are sure that you’ve been rejected? When there is no doubt that you’ve been unfriended or unfollowed on purpose?
Even though it’s virtual, rejection still hurts. Research says that social rejection can actually cause physical pain– a holdover, anthropologists believe, from evolutionary times, where we needed to be part of the ‘tribe’ in order to survive.
Today, while rejection may not impact our survival, it doesn’t make it easier to deal with.
So how to deal with social media rejection? Here are some ideas:
1) If you were unfriended or unfollowed by someone and you’re very surprised, why not reach out and ask what happened? If appropriate, call the person. It might be a technical glitch (as outlined above), or it might be an indication of something that needs to be discussed. While it can seem a bit awkward, at first, to call and say, “Hey, I noticed you stopped following me on Twitter.”- (I mean, who wants to be a social media narcissist, right?), you have to consider whether the relationship is worth the awkwardness. If it’s an important connection, I think the little bit of awkwardness is worth it.
2) If you aren’t close enough to the person to contact them offline, but you are still wondering what happened, try to reach out to them directly. @ message them on Twitter or leave a comment on their Wall- something nonconfrontational, like “hey, just wanted to connect/reach out/get in touch.” This may show them that you do care about them and want to connect or communicate.
3) You can ignore it or just move on. Not all situations are going to warrant follow up or follow through. It’s also wise not to spend a lot of time brooding over people who step out of your social stream. In the same way you can’t focus too much when people unsubscribe from your email list, you can’t focus too much when people unsubscribe from your networks. You never know how or why people make the choices they do, and so it’s not worth being too upset over. You’ve heard this before, but don’t take it personally.
Of course, though, the goal here is moderation and balance. If you find that significant people are unfollowing you or unfriending you, there may be something in your approach that needs adjustment (or maybe your account got hacked.)
But like any other kind of relationship in real life, your online social connections will evolve- with people moving out, and, hopefully, new people moving in.
Dr. Rachna Jain is Chief Social Marketer at The Mindshare Corporation. Rachna works with speakers, consultants, authors, and small business owners to develop and execute effective social media marketing strategies. Her proprietary persuasive social media process (sm) focuses on building influence, credibility and visibility online. This translates into greater recognition, increased website traffic, faster lead generation, a shorter sales cycle, and more opportunity for her expert clientele. She blogs regularly at The Mindshare Blog
When you look at your Facebook friends, or your LinkedIn network, or your Twitter follower list, do you see only people you know? Or, like me, do you have a mix of people you know well, some you don’t know that well (yet), and maybe even a few people who reached out to you, and you’ve never met or talked with them?
As easy as it ease to connect on the social networks (usually just a click and a quick message of Hello!), more and more people are wondering how open they should be with their social network acceptances. Some people are locking down, and only accepting people online that they know in real life. Others are accepting everyone who meets a certain standard of engagement or professionalism. And still others are accepting everyone who asks.
With the site-wide roll out of new privacy settings on Facebook, the questions of how open to be on your social networks is becoming more and more relevant.
While I certainly don’t have all the answers, let me give you a few areas to consider.
How open you should be on your social networks is based on what you’re using your social networks for.
For example, if you are using your Facebook account primarily to stay in touch with friends, family, and neighbors, you can set the most stringent privacy settings- the ones where only friends can see your details. This is also a smart move, perhaps, if you share a lot of details about your life, and want to retain some amount of control over how this information is distributed. Of course, remember that anything that goes online is never really private, or undiscoverable, so keep that in mind when you share.
If you are using Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn to build your professional network, I would suggest being a little more open about who you accept. My rule of thumb, generally, is to accept most people who approach me, after I’ve checked out their profiles, and recent updates, and satisfied myself that I’m comfortable with being associated with them. I call this approach the “giving people the benefit of the doubt” stance- I will connect on the social networks unless or until you give me a reason not to do so.
The third way to approach your social networks is to accept everyone indiscriminately- just to boost your follower ratio, or just because you’re lazy. I definitely do not recommend this, for several reasons. First, it can damage your reputation or standing. Let’s say, for example, that you accept a bunch of people who are porn spammers on Twitter- wouldn’t that negatively impact your brand? (Of course, right, unless you’re a porn spammer yourself, in which case you’re probably not reading this anyway…). The second reason not to accept just everyone is because now that the content of Twitter and Facebook updates are now searchable, you don’t want any ill considered tweets or updates to show up in your stream or on your Wall and be associated with you. Not saying this is exactly how it will work, but better safe than sorry, especially with new technology, right?
If you do any directed promotion online, such as a teleseminar or webinar, be sure you are careful about how you manage your social network additions in the days and weeks after. I have had people who were in my classes or trainings approach me to connect, and you want to encourage this as much as possible in order to build your positioning online. If I were too stringent and denied everyone who wanted to connect with me that I didn’t yet know, I would have pissed some people off, and kind of cut off new potential business relationships before they really began. This is why, for business, I recommend the “give people the benefit of the doubt” approach as a general rule.
Part of the value of social networks is that you can engage with and connect with more people than you might otherwise be able to reach. The value of this is diminished if you are too stringent in your networking, or, conversely, too open with it.
Like the fairy tale of Goldilocks, the goal with social networking is to not be too stringent, nor too open, but instead, just right.
Dr. Rachna Jain is Chief Social Marketer at The Mindshare Corporation. Rachna works with speakers, consultants, authors, and small business owners to develop and execute effective social media marketing strategies. Her proprietary persuasive social media process (sm) focuses on building influence, credibility and visibility online. This translates into greater recognition, increased website traffic, faster lead generation, a shorter sales cycle, and more opportunity for her expert clientele. She blogs regularly at The Mindshare Blog
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Twables.com
One of the hallmarks of good social networking strategy is to overlap your social networks. This means that when you connect with someone through one social network, you want to try and connect with them also on the other social networks.
There are several reasons this is important. First, it enables you to leverage multiple platforms at once, so if your account on one platform (or the platform itself) goes down, you haven’t lost touch with your network. The second reason you want to overlap your social networks is psychological. The more familiar you are to people, the more they will like you. Seeing your name and profile again and again on multiple networks will automatically make you more familiar to those in your network. You can assist this process by offering good insight and relevant information.
The great thing about technology is that there are more and more services which can aid you in overlapping your social networks. If you use Facebook connect on Plaxo, for instance, your Plaxo network grows when you connect with someone on Facebook, if both you and the other person have this feature enabled.
A similar type of interconnectivity is promised by Twables.com, which is a service that connects your Facebook friends with your Twitter friends. You can access the service by going to http://www.twables.com/fb140
I didn’t find it extremely straightforward to set up, this probably could be slightly improved. However, once it was set up, I started getting @ messages on Twitter telling me which of my Facebook friends were on Twitter. I then have to login manually to my Twables account to accept or confirm the connection.
I think the idea of this service is very good, and it will be one to watch in the coming months. More and more, we will be seeing technology to help us connect in as many networks as possible, which will help us better navigate the flow of new social media connections and relationships.
Dr. Rachna Jain is Chief Social Marketer at The Mindshare Corporation. Rachna works with speakers, consultants, authors, and small business owners to develop and execute effective social media marketing strategies. Her proprietary persuasive social media process (sm) focuses on building influence, credibility and visibility online. This translates into greater recognition, increased website traffic, faster lead generation, a shorter sales cycle, and more opportunity for her expert clientele. She blogs regularly at The Mindshare Blog