When I think of networking, the first thing that comes to mind is attending a leads group or some kind of networking event where you smile, pass out your business card and introduce yourself over and over. It's always seemed like something I should do to market myself and get new clients but when I've tried it, it's felt awkward, artificial and 'em painful. So I decided a few years ago that networking events weren't my thing.
But, now I know about the small world phenomenon and I want to get all the goodies at the end of the six degrees of separation rainbow. And I suspect that activating my field of dreams has something to do with building up my network - or networking - the N word. Do I really have to go to those awful events to get all the goodies? Let's look.
Nope. You don't have to be physically present with someone to network with them. Phew! That was a close call for a second there. Even in the "old" days you could always write a letter to someone to acknowledge their work or to introduce yourself. Or you could pick up the phone and call - we call this "cold calling". Letter writing to network - maybe. But "cold calling" sounds as bad or worse than going to a live networking event for the first time. Letter-writing and then calling is warmer, but how much fun is it, really?
The modern equivalent to writing a letter to network-at-a-distance would be writing an email. Emails are instantaneous. They are less formal - sometimes that's a plus, sometimes not. You can send a bunch of them at once - and that might possibly work as long as you have an angle that makes your email not seem like spam. Without getting stuck on the spam question, we can just note that if you already have some relationship to the person you are writing to and you aren't making a blatant commercial proposal, you'll probably make it past the spam police and your email will arrive without tremendous stigma and will perhaps be read. Minus a previous relationship, you may not have a high "response rate" as they say in the direct marketing world. Bottom line: email is incredibly convenient, can't live without it, but there are more ways to network-at-a-distance and some of them should at least augment your email networking campaign should you undertake one.
With all this fancy internet stuff, isn't there a better [read easier] way? I've got one for you. Remember, the gated online community called Ryze that I referred to a while back, well I think it's a better and easier way. Oops, we are running out of room in this post - blog posts need to be bite-sized chunks, you know. I'm sorry. Come back soon for part 2.