- Image via Wikipedia
You hear the term “network” a lot and I thought it would be a good idea to share a recent post I found specifically on this topic: Business Networking 101
I think one of the strongest ideas in the post is to go out and create your social identity and your blog. The rationale for this may not seem obvious to those people who do not want to spend the time learning how to use social networks, learn how to blog, or really spend any time away from building their business. These folks are wrong because spending time in these environments will directly help their business – at a later time. The time\value principle of working on business tasks vs. business networking are strong, but there are some valid reasons to start now.
Many people will tell you to start a blog – I am here to tell you what it will do once you have one setup;
1. A digital home for yourself
People will be at their computer at any hour and find the need to lookup information about you. Since you have no control over where\how\why they are doing this – you can at least create a digital presence for yourself and do a little personal SEO (more on this later) that will have some controllable content at the top of search results
2. Personal SEO
I have been talking about Personal SEO on this blog for awhile – and it is still very important. “Vanity searching” or Googling yourself on a search engine is the reason to spend some cycles thinking about personal SEO. Go Google yourself right now and then decide whether or not you want a potential client, employer, friend, or anyone else to see what is there – or more importantly – NOT THERE.
3. Contact Information
This is a seldom overlooked example of why it is so important. Many people may say Facebook solves this problem by posting your contact information in your profile – but what if you are not my friend? What if my profile is limited? What if you are not on Facebook? You get the idea… Folks like Robert Scoble post their cell phone number right on their page. While the amount of information you share with others is up to you – certainly having a phone number, email, and address is helpful to others.
Each of these topics probably deserve their own blog post – doable because I have a blog – but that is for another day. The point is that networking has become just as important online as it is offline because of the follow and actions that happen after the meeting.
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October 2, 2008
Marketing, Marketing.fm, Social Networking, Technology