Building up a business network isn’t easy, but it is essential if you intend to succeed anywhere in the world of business. This is especially true of small businesses without the track records of larger, more established organizations. Personal connections can mean all the difference between profitability and bankruptcy.
In a previous article, I wrote about ways to reignite your existing network online. In this post, I want to focus on how to use the web to make actual, lasting connections that will help you achieve your goals.
Many businesspeople don’t think of the web as a place to make connections, but rather to communicate with them. This isn’t true anymore, and in fact social media tools can be more effective than in-person meetings, especially when you’re trying to build an international network.
1. Consistently engage people you want to add to your network. If you want to get on somebody’s radar, start @replying to them on Twitter, comment on their Facebook posts, or create discussions around their work on your blog. If you’ve met them before, it’s fine to send a Facebook or LinkedIn request, although everyone has different rules for accepting or rejecting friend requests.
2. Don’t become a pest. There is a fine line between communication and harassment, and once you cross that line, there’s no going back. Don’t bombard your network with an overflow of social media messages. Use your best judgment.
3. Join online communities in your industry. There are a ton of mailing lists, message boards, and social networks dedicated to small business or your chosen field. You just have to find them. For example, many entrepreneurs regularly visit and contribute to Hacker News, a community for hackers, founders, and entrepreneurs. Find niche communities like it that focus on your field of business and get connected.
To get started, here are a few tips for connecting with other entrepreneurs via social media.
4. Don’t limit your online networking to one person or one network. There are a lot of great people to engage, but if you ignore them because you only want to use one network, then you miss out on a lot of potential engagement and potential contacts. Keep an open mind and try out new tools and new networks.
5. Bring it offline… eventually. Online communication is great, but when you have the opportunity, nothing really beats a one-on-one conversation over coffee. If you’ve been consistent in engaging your network online, then you won’t run out of things to talk about in person. Once again, don’t rush an in-person meeting. In most cases, you’ll know when the right time is to take it offline.
Consistent and meaningful contact is key to building a strong network. Be an active member in your network and keep them engaged. The network you build online will deliver huge returns throughout your career, so put in your full effort.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Google Wave Manual Guide
| Chapter 1 | Meet Google Wave |
| Find out what Google Wave is and what problems it solves. | |
| Chapter 2 | Get Started with Wave |
| Set up your Wave account and create your first wave. | |
| Chapter 3 | Manage Your Wave Contacts |
| Find and add people and groups to collaborate with in Wave. | |
| Chapter 4 | Find and Organize Waves |
| Tag, file, search, and filter waves. | |
| Chapter 5 | Dive Deeper into Wave |
| Add rich content to your waves like maps and photo slide shows. | |
| Chapter 6 | Master Wave's Interface |
| Navigate Wave from the keyboard and customize your Wave interface. | |
| Chapter 7 | Wave Gadgets |
| Add interactive content to your waves with gadgets. | |
| Chapter 8 | Wave Bots |
| Automatically update the contents of your waves with bots. | |
| Chapter 9 | Life with Wave |
| Integrate Wave into your daily workflow. |
| Chapter 10 | Wave in Action |
| See real-world case studies of regular people using Wave to get things done. | |
| Appendix A | Frequently Asked Questions |
| Common questions and quick answers about Google Wave. | |
| Appendix B | What Wave Can't Do |
| It's not just you. See what's NOT working in the current version of Wave, and what features the Wave team has promised are coming. | |
| Appendix C | Contribute to The Complete Guide to Google Wave |
| In the spirit of Google Wave, this guide is a collaborative effort. We need you (yes, you) to help revise and expand this guide as Wave evolves. |
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Is Facebook Getting Bigger Than Google? [STATS]
According to the analysts at Hitwise, social networks in general are more popular than search engines in some parts of the world.In fact, networks such as Facebook have been pushing hard against the biggest names in web search, including Google, for several months now. As Hitwise reported recently, Facebook’s overall web traffic pulled ahead of Google’s for the first time in the U.S. in March of this year.
Now, we’ve learned that in the UK, people are visiting social networks more than they’re visiting search engines. Facebook dominates the current crop of social networks, accounting for the majority (55%) of all social site visits. When compared to the wider web, Google gets around 9.3% of all web traffic, while Facebook captures just over 7%.
But when UK stats for all search engines were stacked up with data from all social sites, social networks accounted .55% more traffic than search engines. This is a first-time occurrence, but as you can see from the charts below, it’s a trend that’s likely just starting to take off.
Compare that graph with these long-term stats from Alexa showing global pageviews for Facebook and Google; we can clearly see that at least one social network is on the rise.
While social networks such as Facebook don’t pose an immediate threat to search engines for their core functionality — organizing the web and helping people find content — they do pose a large threat to search engines’ largest revenue source: advertising.
If you were Google, would these kinds of numbers be worrying to you? Do you think that search engines are, in some ways, on the decline? Or is Facebook’s meteoric rise simply changing the paradigm a bit more than we expected?
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
HOW TO: Use Facebook’s @Mentions Status Tagging
As you may know, Facebook rolled out its planned new feature that lets you “tag” other users in your status updates earlier today.
It’s very similar functionality to @replies on Twitter, and most folks will be pretty familiar with how it works and why you’d want to use it. Still, there are some differences to note, and some may appreciate a basic walkthough of how the new feature works.
Facebook’s version of the feature, like Twitter, also uses the @ symbol to invoke. However instead of having to simply know or remember the person’s username you’d like to tag, Facebook will generate an auto-suggest dropdown based on what you’ve typed after the @ symbol:
Once the item you’re wanting to tag appears in the list, all you have to do is click on it to select it and include a linked version of that entity in your status update:
Apparently we’re not the only ones who have griped about this already, because Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg mentioned in a spot on CNN today that a lot of folks had been requesting tagging within comments. She said Facebook is now considering that, and “it may happen.” We’ll be keeping a close eye on it of course, and will let you know if and when we hear about tagging coming to comments as well.
Otherwise, as you can see, the new status tagging feature is fairly easy to use, and could help direct you and your friends more easily to other content around Facebook () they might also like. However, we don’t see too many of our friends making use of it quite yet — have you been making any use of the new status tagging feature yet? Have you noticed your friends making use of it? Share your experience so far in the comments.
It’s very similar functionality to @replies on Twitter, and most folks will be pretty familiar with how it works and why you’d want to use it. Still, there are some differences to note, and some may appreciate a basic walkthough of how the new feature works.
Facebook’s version of the feature, like Twitter, also uses the @ symbol to invoke. However instead of having to simply know or remember the person’s username you’d like to tag, Facebook will generate an auto-suggest dropdown based on what you’ve typed after the @ symbol:
Once the item you’re wanting to tag appears in the list, all you have to do is click on it to select it and include a linked version of that entity in your status update:
Apparently we’re not the only ones who have griped about this already, because Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg mentioned in a spot on CNN today that a lot of folks had been requesting tagging within comments. She said Facebook is now considering that, and “it may happen.” We’ll be keeping a close eye on it of course, and will let you know if and when we hear about tagging coming to comments as well.
Otherwise, as you can see, the new status tagging feature is fairly easy to use, and could help direct you and your friends more easily to other content around Facebook () they might also like. However, we don’t see too many of our friends making use of it quite yet — have you been making any use of the new status tagging feature yet? Have you noticed your friends making use of it? Share your experience so far in the comments.
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