updated May 2021 In Networking in the 21st Century, I spend a lot of time looking at the importance of follow up. The key to powerful networking is relationship-building. And relationships aren’t transactional, so your networking has to be more than just one-time encounters. To ensure that this happens, it’s important to create processes and systems that allow you to touch base with your networking contacts on a regular basis. This is where technology can really help. Social media and digital tools can give you an easy way to maintain you connections over time. Technology Tips to Become a Relational Networker 1. Capture contact … [Read more...]
Create a 19,900% Advertising Bump in 67 Seconds
A few months ago, I went to a birthday dinner for a friend at an Italian restaurant in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. It was a fun night - great conversation, delicious food, and pretty tasty wine. I'd never been to Saporia Trattoria before, but I had a good experience and I said to my girlfriend as we were leaving, "Hey, we should come back here sometime." Now, Chicago has a lot of great restaurants. So even though we enjoyed ourselves, it wasn't necessarily on the top of our list to get back. But I had signed up for their mailing list when we were paying the bill (I get excited when small businesses do marketing right so it's … [Read more...]
Quickly Boost Your Networking Results with This Simple Checklist
Over the past 15 years, I’ve found that people either love the idea of business networking or they think it’s a complete waste of time. How is it that some people build flourishing businesses based on the power of their network, while others fail to build any sort of connections at all? After helping hundreds of professionals leverage business networking to build their careers, I’ve found that most struggle for a few simple reasons. If your networking isn’t as effective as you would like it to be, it's important to figure out where the block is. The 3 Networking Questions to Ask Yourself If you are struggling to build a network that … [Read more...]