Does Good Old Fashion Networking Still Work?

Networking has always been the number one way for businesses to grow and increase revenue. Whether you are a B2B or B2C company, networking has never been more important than it is today for business growth. You are in one of two camps in what you view as networking – 1) face to face, shaking hands, group networking or 2) social media networking.

The first, face to face, shaking hands, group networking is the way it has been done for a long time. It works great for local businesses and B2B business owners will tell you this is still the strongest way to network. There are groups of professionals being formed in all areas that are networking to help each other in generating leads. Some groups are open and allow as many people as can attend and some groups are closed to just one individual per industry. The open groups allow you to meet a lot of people. The closed groups have more success generating leads. Typically you are not allowed to remain in the closed group unless you are providing leads to others in the group.  Both have their pros and cons and you must choose which is the best for you and your business.

The second, social media networking is taking the previous view of networking and multiplying it times 1,000,000. LinkedIn is the social media network for professionals that has done the best job in creating a place and environment for business networking. On LinkedIn I have a connection (individuals that you have a contact in common) to almost 2,000,000 individuals. All of my contacts (contacts are like friends on Facebook) are people I know and so I had these connections prior to LinkedIn. The big difference now is that I can see those connections. You can identify an individual you would like to meet for business, determine if you have a common contact, send a message to the contact in common and ask to be introduced. This is an incredible database that shows you how to meet other business leaders that will help your business grow.

B2B businesses have more success on LinkedIn than B2C companies. B2C companies have more success on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and others. These social sites are for the general population and are where individuals communicate about where they are and what they are doing. The numbers are larger on these sites for B2C companies to network with their potential customers. It works the same way as it did many years ago; you just have access to a much larger number of people. Communicate information and interact on your social media pages just like you would if networking face to face.

So, things have really not changed in how we do business, just where we do business.

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