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Does business networking work for you? 10 top tips

Next Tuesday I'm hosting my first evening networking event, Business Boost Lewes, so not surprisingly my mind has been on business networking lately. I'm definitely not a networking 'natural' and can feel as shy as anyone. But I think it's like most things - the more you do it the easier and more enjoyable it gets.

I asked three friends of mine who I know to be successful networkers, what three quick tips they could offer to anyone looking to get better results from networking.

Jo Munro is a super-organised freelance VA and runs the networking group Sussex Big Fish. She had these tips:

1.  It takes time to build a relationship - when you're at an event it's better to try to get to know a few people, then keep in touch via Twitter, rather than try to meet a lot of people in one go.

2. After a meeting, enter the details of those you've met into a contact list as soon as possible, with a note of where you met them, what you spoke about. Write on their business card as well.

3.  Rather than just giving your job title, tell people what you can do to help them. Explain the benefits and tell them the kind of clients you have.

Tony Murrell runs Chauffeur Monkey, a Sussex-based service that 'drives you home in your own car'. Tony is a regular at networking groups and I love his four succinct top tips:

1. Always arrive early

2. Pay attention to what other people say

3. Never do a hard sell

4. Be yourself!

I've known Julia Chanteray for many years - she's a business adviser and President of the Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce, and a champion of networking, with many great resources on her site. Three tips from Julia:

1. If you work for a firm, don't send someone in your place - relationships are built on face-to-face contact between individuals.

2. Build your reputation within a group for being reliable and 'a person who can'. Or in other words, 'reap and ye shall sow'.

3. Sit with strangers - it's tempting to stick with the familiar faces but try to seek out and talk to those you don't know.

So there you go - all excellent advice. Networking is more popular than ever these days - when the economic going gets tough, it seems we all want to work with people we can trust or who have been recommended. Positive word of mouth is the marketer's holy grail, and networking is a cost-effective (and enjoyable) way to generate it.

PS if you're within travelling distance of Lewes, do come to Business Boost next Tuesday - very relaxed and informal and lots of great networking to be had...you can buy tickets online. Maybe see you there!

 

 

Business networking boost for 2011

OK this is a shameless plug for an event I'm hosting on Tuesday 18th January here in Lewes - Business Boost.

It stems from a monthly free networking event I've been running for a while, which just seems to be as popular as ever even after nearly 4 years.

I do think that networking is an essential tool in the 'promotional armoury' (if you'll excuse the war-like metaphor) of any small business in 2011.

Word of mouth recommendation - you just can't beat it. I'm far from a 'natural' when it comes to networking - I can find it a bit daunting to be honest - so the idea of this event is that it's something I would personally enjoy coming to: space to move about and talk to people, a few interesting exhibitors, no speeches, no hard sell, a welcome drink and nibbles, facilitated networking (in other words, people to introduce you to other people, rather than you just being left to your own devices).

Above all, friendly faces and interesting new contacts. If you're within travelling distance of Lewes, do come!

 

 

 

 

Chit chat isn't a waste of (business) time

Every now and then I feel a bit bad about doing too much 'chit chat' with people on Twitter. What if someone visits my tweet stream and sees too many silly comments and LOLs?

I do warn people in my bio that my tweets are a mix of business, social and personal. And I try to mix it up sufficiently. But I do know that some people never indulge in any idle chat when using Twitter for business. For them, the two things are separate.

And yet chit chat plays an important part in getting to know people, establishing commonalities and developing trust. Linguists talk about 'phatic' communication - the stuff we say that is less to do with being informative and more to do with just being friendly. We do it all the time - the 'how's it going?' 'not bad, thanks' 'had a good weekend?' and so forth. And even the (yes) talk about the weather.

This is tricky if you're looking to use a tool like Twitter for business. David Armano in his recent blog post 'Talk isn't cheap' mentions being struck by this quote in an article in AdAge:

"As it turns out, many people in social networks don't want to talk about your product, they just want to talk. We've long known that inserting brands into social-media channels requires a conversational touch, but many are surprised by just how conversational."

It's a theme taken up in an in-depth article by Lisa Hickey in 'Why I'm social media promiscuous' - she talks about Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point and his assertion that 56% of jobs are found through so-called 'weak ties' - connections with people you may not know well enough to call real friends, but who you have an ambient awareness of. In other words, you know enough about them, thanks to having indulged in a certain amount of social chit chat, and having seen how they are with others, to feel able to mention them to others as someone worth talking to.

So I really shouldn't worry about having a laugh with someone on Twitter or packing every tweet with top-notch gems of info. Similarly, companies need to find a way of letting those who do their tweeting to enjoy the moments of chit chat, because it does have a serious function.

UK small business social media case study no 3: Curved Vision

Is it important to have a plan before starting to use social media in your business? The textbook answer of course would be 'yes' ... but the reality for many is that it evolves in a far more organic way. Trial and error, suck it and see, whatever you want to call it.

One UK small business that has adopted an unstructured approach to social media, but is seeing a tangible return on its investment is Curved Vision, a presentation skills training firm based in the North East.

Director Simon Raybould first started embracing the world of online forums some five years ago, joining a business networking group that gave him some good contacts, although he's since moved on. Having joined Twitter in early 2008 he went through the classic stages of Twitter adoption - starting off enthusiastically, then wondering what the point of it all is. "It was really only 6 months ago I started to use Twitter regularly," he explained. "It has definitely resulted in sales, not to our immediate followers necessarily, but to their followers."

Every couple of months, Curved Vision produces a useful article or resource which it gives away for free, and enquiries come off the back of the quality of these pieces and the number of retweets. Sometimes the enquiry simply happens when one of their followers mentions them to others. 

But Raybould doesn't simply use Twitter as a broadcast medium. He estimates his tweets break down into 40% social/fun/conversation/helping people, 40% tips/information and 10 - 20% (max) out-and-out promotional. This wasn't planned, but it's a balance that seems to work well.

A key part of Curved Vision's promotional activity is the company blog where they are currently taking part in a BT Tradespace initiative to post one blog post a day, every day in November. In the two years it's been going, the blog has grown into a vast source of information. Raybould reports an interesting effect: although the number of speculative enquiries has dropped, the conversion rate of those they do get is far higher than is used to be - close to 90%. In other words, the blog acts as a filter to qualify prospects, so saving the firm time on phone calls and proposals that go nowhere.

When it comes to keeping in touch with current and past clients, Raybould turns to Facebook where he has a regular profile page, not publicly viewable. All his tweets show up on there, but Facebook updates are not tweeted. "My contacts on Facebook already know me, and it's not like Twitter where anyone can follow you, so I can be a bit less guarded about what I say." The purpose of the Facebook presence is more about encouraging recommendations and keeping the brand in people's minds, not selling as such.

For those just starting to use social media for business, Raybould has some good advice: take your time to get to know the community - they're all different. It might be couple of weeks of watching and reading before you start to chip in, and when you do, make it something helpful. "It's easy to get people's backs up by asking something of them too soon or not respecting the etiquette of the place."

As for finding the time, one of the typical cries of the small business owner wondering about all this tweeting, posting and blogging...Raybould's attitude is to go for consistency rather than frequency. "Two or three tweets a day isn't a huge commitment - even if you're out of the office you can do it from a mobile phone."

Questioning the idea of 'locking out the competition' in business networking

The other day at First Friday Lewes I was discussing the different kinds of business networking groups with a couple of people. Someone had suggested I visit another local group that meets for a sit-down lunch, and everyone gets a minute to speak about their business. It's a familiar format. Having been a member of a similar organisation some years ago, I still maintain that I got a lot from the experience, but the aspect I really don't think works is the 'lockout' system.

'Lockout' is the practice of only allowing one person per profession to join a group. This is sold to prospective members as a positive benefit - you'll have no competition! Everyone in the group will be getting you business, because you'll be the sole printer/marketer/osteopath or whatever that they'll recommend!

In practice of course it doesn't always work that way. But thinking about it, why should 'locking out the competition' necessarily be a good thing anyway? Personally, my business has benefited from the connections I've made with people in my own industry, and learning from and working with other marketers, copywriters or web-savvy people has contributed significantly to my own professional development.

One of the people in the discussion said that lockout is 'a male way of looking at things - separate and dominate rather than co-operate', which I thought was interesting. Even leaving aside the male/female thing (I'm not sure I want to go there!) does word of mouth recommendation really work better when regulated through the 'lockout' system, or is it better left unfettered?  I wonder if there's a parallel with the idea of shared space on our roads.

Shared space is a concept that some cities are adopting as a way of tackling problems associated with high concentrations of traffic and pedestrians. For example, in Brighton's New Road, the result of its being changed to a shared space over the last few years has resulted in increased pedestrian and cycle usage and a big reduction in car speeds. I've driven along the street myself and I can testify to the fact that it makes you drive very carefully and slowly, but the fact that you still can drive along it is excellent as it reduces the need for long diversions or idling in queues.

Related research has suggested that removing signs and barriers from many of our urban streets can actually make them safer to use. In other words, self-regulation rather than rules imposed from outside leads to better understanding and respect on all sides.

I realise that plenty of business networking organisations worldwide have thrived on the model that says 'if everyone follows the rules exactly, it will work'. And the 'lockout' concept is central to the model. But I suspect that tomorrow's business networkers, the YouTube generation, will be just as comfortable, if not more so, with co-operation rather than 'separation and domination'.