Five Easy Steps to Successful Networking
Has it ever crossed your mind, folks, why some people achieve success while others languish and get left behind? Why did the “teacher’s pet” fail to make the grade later in life? By contrast, why did the dunce at the back of the class–who fell asleep after he was done drooling over the pretty girls–get to drive the BMW, own a private jet and a Hollywood Bungalow? My Dear Watson, the key to success or failure has to do with networking.
The best sort of networking is when you use it to gather information in order to help you make a decision about your career. The conversations you have, and the contacts you make, should lead to potential opportunities. Networking brings you into contact with people in the companies or industries you are targeting.
These people will be able to give advice about–and help you shape–your career plans and other related ideas. This will make it much easier to evaluate them. Furthermore, many of these contacts will know other people, who will be able to give you advice. Many of the people you meet will work for prospective employers too.
Through systematic exposure to these people, you can get closer to possible employment. As your network of contacts widens, more and more people will keep you in mind when possible opportunities arise. Most networking is initiated with existing contacts. Generally, this is the most effective way to network as you are likely to get more committed help.
However, sometimes you don’t know anyone with connections to industries or companies you are exploring. In that case, you may need to network speculatively. Rather than initiating the process by contacting somebody you know, you first need to identify potential network contacts who you don’t know. You can do this through research.
Networking works because it is collegiate. The person you are talking to knows that when they need to, they can also get in touch with you: to get advice, information or contacts who will be able to help them with their career. Networking also works because it is empowering and a bit subversive. Companies may be in competition with each other, but you are talking to people at a human level.
Networking gives both parties an opportunity to break out of the formal constraints of being a company employee, and to talk openly and honestly.Your network comprises not just business contacts, but also friends, family and anyone else you know. A good career consultant will also connect you to their client network. A good way of building your contact list is to draw up category headings and list the people you know in each.
Five Easy Steps to Successful Networking
So, what are the networking steps:
Initiate Contact
E-mail can be both direct and immediate, provided it is read. Don’t expect to always receive a reply, though. If you haven’t heard in a week, follow up with a phone call. Telephone risks getting blocked by a gatekeeper–for example, a PA, receptionist or secretary. The best way around this is to have an introduction, so the person is already expecting the call. Make your call or email brief; outline your situation and what you want in about 20 minutes of their time.
Don’t send a CV
Even if it might help them to understand the situation, it may cause them to assume you want a job and could make them feel uncomfortable. Or they may simply tell you that the expertise you have picked up in your earlier career is not something they can help you build on.
Plan
Before you go to the networking meeting, it is essential to plan thoroughly. Remember, you may not get a second chance with this contact. After all, this contact may turn out to be the most important person you have met in your working life. So, don’t waste the opportunity.
Identify the Objective
What do you want to achieve from the meeting? Information about the industry, work and further contacts are all positive outcomes. Moreover, think about the possible contacts your contact will have. Maybe they have colleagues or clients who work in the sector you are exploring? Prepare for the meeting. Do your research about the organization. Think in detail about the questions you want to ask. How are you going to present your situation? What messages are you going to project?
At the Meeting
Remember, this is your meeting. After all, you initiated it and the agenda is yours too. So, feel free to take the lead. Start with a very brief presentation of yourself.
Outline your strengths and try to establish how well your contact feels these fit the needs of the industry. Try to find out what other skills are important and what training or formal education you might need. Ask for names of other people who would be worth meeting. You may have particular companies in mind but no names. Do they know anyone in these companies you can contact? Leave your own contact details in case they have any other ideas. Do not leave a CV unless they ask for it. Above all, be persistent in your efforts.
About the Author: Archan Mehta is a professional writer and hobbyist. Feel free to contact Archan at archanm@hotmail.com at your own convenience.
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Why do Small Businesses #Fail at Using Social Media?
When you were a kid, do you recall standing on a dock overlooking a lake and wanting to dive in but you were afraid to, for fear the water would be too cold? You were faced with a dilemma: jump in, absorb the shock, and get used to it, or slip into the drink slowly one body part at a time. The experience for small businesses eager to get a handle on using social software is similar.
And it’s a sink or swim scenario. Diving headlong into using social tools and networks has its benefits and risks but preparation is essential. In a nutshell, social media involves engaging people via online social networks to generate exposure, improve customer satisfaction, and grow sales.
Managing Resources
Rob Enderle, principal analyst, The Enderle Group, says like anything else when one is starting from scratch, the problem initially is making good decisions with regard to resources.
“However you can, use social networking to find others like yourself that have already gone through the process in your industry and you can see what they have done and the success they have achieved,” he said. “From that you can determine what will work for you . . . social networking requires some study and work to both determine what works best for your industry and what works best for you.”
To that end, Enderle recommends reading “Engage: the Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success on the New Web” by Brian Solis. The book is focused on social networking and it is a great starting point, he added.
Which Network is Right for You?
Michelle Warren, principal, MW Consulting & Research, advised carefully choosing which social networks to utilize. Because many social media tools are ‘free’ there is a misconception that a strategy isn’t required; that the value is guaranteed because the cost is minimal and that’s untrue.
“A plan is important. Think of it as a map — if you are unsure about your destination, how will you get there?” she asked. “Partnerpedia.com is worth checking out for a B2B network. Otherwise, Twitter and LinkedIn are worth investigating. And since these can be linked together, they are worth considering.”
Use it or Lose It
Warren stressed getting involved though. Small businesses have much to gain from using social tools in a concentrated fashion.
“Using some social media tools for marketing and business opportunities is wise, but have a grasp of what to expect and know how to measure the results,” she advised. “Like any initiative, it takes some planning in order to achieve desired goals.”
Ultimately, strategy requires goals. Without a goal, your business is rudderless and diving into social media might do more damage to your brand and image than good.
“The first step is to learn a bit about social media. The second is to set a strategy. Then you can best determine the tools and resources you need to achieve that strategy,” Enderle said.
About the Author:Liam has been a journalist for more than 12 years. His media career began in the late 1990s as a beat reporter for the North Shore News in Vancouver. Since then, he’s written for ComputerWorld Canada, Computing Canada, eChannelLine.com, ConnectITnews.com, Computer Dealer News, and several others. A man of many interests, Liam is easily wowed by new technologies, retro video games, and the multiple positions his cat can fall asleep in.
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7 Secrets to Keeping Your Start-Up Supercharged
When you start a new business, there is a certain “energy” in the air. Although there is a lot to get done, you and your team are excited about the work. How do you keep that energy going?
Here are the 7 secrets to keep your start-up supercharged through team collaboration and business organization best practices, so you and your team can focus on moving forward and increasing your business success.
1. Work Hard
With a start-up, you know you will have to work your tail off to build your business, brand and success. Know that the blood, sweat and tears that you put into your new business will be well worth it in the end. That’s enough to keep you energized and working toward your goals.
2. Have Fun
Never stop having fun. This is the best way to keep that energy up. Learn how to mix business with pleasure. If playing pranks on your teammates gives your office that lighthearted feeling, go for it. Maybe even take an afternoon off every once in a while and go on an all team activity or dinner. Find ways to inject some fun and excitement into your business, and the energy will skyrocket.
3. Stay Organized
One main benefit of keeping your business organized is that you won’t be distracted by the chaos and mess of disorganization. Store your business documents securely, manage projects and tasks with an online project management system and keep communications and collaborations in the same place as the work that is being done. You will save yourself a lot of searching time if you organize everything well right off the bat.
4. Collaborate
Work together. Talk to each other. Include all hands on each project. Find ways that bring team members together and listen to everyone’s suggestions on how to make the business better and more successful. This way everyone has a hand in the success of the business, and the pride they feel will keep them working hard toward future success.
5. Keep Learning
Business techniques, strategies and best practices are changing all the time. Continue learning – either through additional business classes or hands-on trial and error – to keep your mind active and the better ideas flowing. Offer continued education opportunities to your employees as well, to make sure you have the cutting edge of business knowledge on your team.
6. Hire Good People
Don’t be afraid to invest in the right talent. Having good, dedicated and intelligent people on your team will only better the organization as a whole. Along with almost guaranteeing great business success, the right team members will encourage and excite others to reach their greatest business potential as well.
7. Celebrate Success
Excellent – you’ve achieved a goal! Good for you! Don’t forget to celebrate that success by honoring the team lead or those who worked hard on the project with recognition or a small token of appreciation. And here is another great opportunity for a team event to celebrate that success, and inject a bit of fun and energy in your day, to keep your team working hard toward even greater success.
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With continued high energy in your office, your people will have fun while working hard toward increasing your business’s success. Whether your company is still in start-up mode or has been going strong for 20 years, following these steps will inject some productive energy into your team and you’ll love the outcome you see!
About the Author: Dana Larson is the Marketing and Community Manager at OnePlace, an online collaboration and business organization solution that increases the effectiveness of business communications and team productivity. A smart and outgoing gal, Dana and the rest of the OnePlace team blog regularly about team collaboration, project management, business techniques and productivity solutions at http://blog.oneplacehome.com
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Expand Your Business in These Hard Times: Start an Online Business
In the current economic scenario almost every one of us is into budgeting and cost cutting. Most people are not thinking about investments or expansions, all they want is to safeguard their current assets.
But statistics show that online sales are steadily increasing despite the slow economy. There could not have been a better time to either expand your business online or start a new internet business.
Brick and Mortar Vs. Online
The Wall Street Journal tells us that there is not much movement in the retail business, but that is to be expected in the slow economy. With people facing financial crunch due to bank problems and lost jobs, things could not have been different. It is a natural instinct to spend less and save more.
It is a pleasant surprise to see that online sales have actually increased during the last year or so. Web simply doesn’t conform to the traditional scenario. Retail sales have been suffering, but the online sales are showing a steady growth of 4% by the time the holiday season arrived.
So if you are determined to make money in these hard times and are prepared for something new, then internet business is a great option to try out.
An Attractive Option
Let’s see why the internet business option is so attractive, and let’s compare it to off-line business options.
Say, one of the off-line options for business expansion is opening a new branch location. But this is a pretty expensive option when you consider the amounts of cash you need for real estate, insurance etc. On the other hand if you decide to start an online business, it is going to be quite easy on the pocket.
A new business location will mean more staff. Employees are a big expense. Again an online website selling your goods seems more advantageous, as the only staff you need for it is yourself. And some software, e.g. autoresponder, is an inexpensive addition to your online business.
But Isn’t It Too Late?
You may have this nagging feeling that you have missed the boom or that you are way behind the thousands who are already on the internet with their online businesses. You couldn’t be more wrong. Just look at the figures: more than 50% of America’s small businesses are still offline while the trade pundits predict that internet sales are projected at $334 billion by the year 2012!
So if you are already running a small business in the brick and mortar world, it is high time you started selling online too. The proposition does not require too much of investment and the advantages are great, thus you are exposing your limited resources to minimum risks.
There are plenty of services available that make it easy for a small business to go online. You can set up a great website and create a data customer base, all with the help of these services. They are very affordable, too!
About the Authors:
Lena Morrish & Dima Nikolayenko, publishers, InternetBusinessBTS.com If you consider starting an online business but don’t know how to host website our FREE email course will help you to find your low cost web hosting. Moreover, other issues of internet business such as autoresponder software, keyword tools and many others won’t be gobbledygook to you anymore!
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5 Ways to Save Money on Your Small Business Website
If you have a website of your own, chance are you are paying fees out every month or year to have the site.
While conducting research recently for reseller hosting company 34SP.com, I discovered that website fees can force site owners to abandon their sites. Often, the burden of paying monthly fees takes a toll on the webmaster. Sometimes the webmaster simply closes down the site rather than sustain the loss of money every month.
If you have a website, and if you pay fees to maintain it – you may want to consider these 5 easy steps to save money on your website right now.
1. Pay less for your domain name – While you definitely need to have a distinctive domain name and brand, you don’t need to pay top dollar for the privilege. Here’s a good example – if you have your domain name registered with Register.com you’ll pay $35.00 per year for a .com domain name. That same domain name if registered at a discount registrar like GoDaddy.com will cost just $10.69. That’s a price reduction and savings of nearly 70 percent. Imagine the savings if you have multiple domain names for your websites.
2. Pay less for your website hosting – You will absolutely need great web hosting as well. However, why pay for what you don’t need? If you run a straightforward WordPress website, then you shouldn’t need a hosting plan that charges $89.95 per month (I found this plan doing a bit of research into pricing). Great web hosting is available for less than $15 per month. Shop around and start saving – especially if your paying anything over $50 per month for a basic hosting setup.
3. Get an advertiser (or two) – No matter what the topic or content on your website, it is very likely that there is an advertiser willing to pay real money to get in front of your audience. If you are sales-minded you can likely figure out which niche you serve and approach a few companies about becoming an advertiser. Don’t be discouraged by hearing the word ”no”. This is simply necessary to get to the ”yes” that the ideal advertiser will say. You could also consider getting paid by a third party to advertise on your website. For example both Pay per post and reviewme will pay anywhere from a few dollars up to hundreds for a site review or blog post on the subject of their paying advertisers. See their websites for details.
4. Put AdSense ads on your website – Another great option to get paid ads on your website is to use Google’s AdSense program for publishers. The system is ubiquitous around the Internet and requires no selling at all by the website owner. If fact, Google will even figure out which ads perform best on your site. You simply sign up for the program and then put some AdSense code on your website. The ads appear automatically. You can find all the details here: http://www.google.com/services/adsense_tour/index.html.
5. Ask for donations – Depending on your audience and site content, it may be appropriate for you to ask for donations to keep your website operating. Large scale sites like Wikipedia operate this way, as do smaller non-profit sites. PayPal has made the process very easy with their pre-configured donation buttons. Similar to AdWords, to get the donate button on your site you simply cut and paste html provided by PayPal into your website. Once set up, you can accept donations made with credit cards, debit cards, or PayPal. There are no set up fees with the donate button – but you will pay a transaction fee for each donation. See the PayPal website for details.
Good luck with your website, and don’t forget that a penny saved on your website is a penny earned.
About the Author:Derek Vaughan is a web hosting industry veteran, marketing consultant and writer. Mr. Vaughan has architected the marketing growth of several prominent web hosting success stories leading to acquisition including Affinity Internet, Inc., Aplus.Net and HostMySite.com. Prior to his entry into the web hosting industry, Mr. Vaughan was responsible for online marketing at The Walt Disney Company where he marketed ecommerce for the ESPN.com and NASCAR.com brands. Mr. Vaughan received his M.B.A. from Vanderbilt University and currently serves on the HostingCon Advisory Board.
Photo Credit:Alan Cleaver
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Making an Impact With Your Trade Show Marketing
Are your trade show appearances a success? Do you come away from each one feeling as though your money was well spent, that you made a positive impression on potential clients and everyone else who attended the show?
If you can’t answer that last sentence with a resounding ‘Yes’ then perhaps you need to start thinking outside of the box when it comes to the way that you market yourself and your company through your trade show displays, your content marketing, and the promotional items that you give away.
Do You Stand Out?
In a marketplace crowded with competing voices, all striving to drown each other out, you’ve got to make your company stand out in the boldest way possible. What are you going to do? You might consider live streaming from your booth at the trade show, interspersed with slick, funny, prerecorded content so you can have a 24/7 web presence during the trade show. That’s a great idea, but that should be only one of the weapons in your quiver.
Another great way to make an impact with your trade show marketing is hand out some kind of promotional item that becomes the talk of the trade show, the one cool item that everyone there wants to bring home. The kinds of things that almost everyone will use include things like 2 GB thumb drives on key chains imprinted with your company’s logo or name (preloaded with a small amount of marketing content for your company, perhaps a game or two). That’s something that everyone will want to take with them. A thumb drive will be used, and every time someone pulls it out, there will be your corporate logo to jog their memory about what your company does.
You can have a similar memory-jogging impact on people with the pens you choose to pass out. Just about everybody will take a pen (who doesn’t love free spare pens?), but if you’re going that route, be sure to pass out something extra special that makes people know that your company is different, edgier, smarter, more innovative. Something that will make your company memorable and stand out from the rest. For instance, if you’re giving out pens, why not give away ones with recorders and enough memory built in to make them truly useful? Pens like that are getting cheaper and cheaper to make, which puts them within reach of even company’s with very modest marketing budgets. You could even give away pens that are preloaded with a cheery message from the company CEO personally thanking the recipient for visiting your booth.
Think Bang for Your Buck
But whether you give out fancy pens or thumb drives or sticky notes, or even clever fridge magnets imprinted with the company’s logo, be sure that you are spending your money wisely to get the greatest bang for your buck. If you’re having trouble establishing your company’s unique brand, don’t just throw money at the problem, take the time to learn why your company is being overlooked or undervalued. Then, if your in-house marketing department isn’t up to the task, bring in some consultants like a brand advocate or specialized marketing company to help get your brand noticed. Think about all of the great marketing campaigns of the last decade, most of the best ones were remembered because they were funny, or really clever, or visually stunning. These days irony and satire are very in. It’s good to have a sense of humor in your advertising because ultimately, people will remember things that make them laugh, like Burger King’s “Where’s the Beef?” campaign, or Taco Bell’s hilarious ads with the little Chihuahua. The important thing is to be remembered. That’s the secret to forging a successful brand, and can be the difference between a successful trade show or a failed one.
About the Author
Dennis Nixon is the Sales Manager at Smash Hit Displays, a company known for their banner stands and displays. You’ve likely seen their work at a tradeshow you’ve attended, and their behind the scenes efforts make the difference.
Photo Credit: ncase Designs
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