Business networking is the process of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with other business people and potential clients and/or customers. The primary purpose of business networking is to tell others about your business and hopefully turn them into customers.
~ Susan Ward

There are several social networks online, like Facebook and Twitter. However, it might be more practical to do business networking offline, especially for small businesses. Finding out where you can do this is as simple as typing “where to find local business networking opportunities” into Google. You can also check with local municipality offices, Employment Insurance offices, and even local colleges. All of these may have events or workshops you can attend. Some may be free, others may charge a small token which helps them pay for the meeting room, coffee, etc.

A couple of places online that could come in handy are meetup.com and alignable.com.

For meetup.com you would have to do a search for what is close to you. I was in Edmonton, Alberta, so a quick search of meetup.com pulled up the Edmonton Business Network. Its description describes it as:

Each month we host business networking events that give you an opportunity to meet top local business owners, entrepreneurs and business professionals. We also hold inexpensive, high quality seminars and training sessions where you can learn new tactics, tools and techniques. Topics address just about every aspect of owning and growing a business: online marketing, personal development, social media, sales, networking, raising capital, crowd sourcing, branding, search engine optimization, web design and more. Group membership is free.

Alignable describes itself as:

With more than 3 million members and millions of connections across more than 30,000 local communities, Alignable is an online network where small business owners across North America drive leads and prospects, generate referrals, land new business, build trusted relationships, and share great advice.

Once you sign up it’s easy to connect with other small business owners in your town, city or area.

Of course, if you’re new to business, you can learn a lot of information. The first time I went to one of these was sponsored by Employment Insurance in 2003. We met for 6-8 weeks. My little business was already making me a steady income, but I didn’t have a clue how to run a business. This gave me the opportunity to learn about things like registering a business, and deciding what kind of business I wanted to register. It taught me about business taxes and bookkeeping, working with accountants — what I could claim and what I couldn’t — and gave a general overview of marketing.

To attend these meetings you always need to make sure you’re carrying some business cards with you and a Rolodex business card book. As you meet people other participants you can exchange business cards. You can jot notes on the back of them, most of the time, and then slide them into your wallet. You can use them to call some of these people later. Even if it’s likely they won’t become customers, they can certainly save you in other ways.

If your business picks up and you need to hire someone, call some of the people you met and ask them if they know of anyone. There’s a good chance they do. Not only could you get a good recommendation for someone to call, you’ve renewed your acquaintance and your name is once again, fresh in his or her mind.

What if you need work done to your home to accommodate the business? Call some of the people in the network and ask for advice on who to hire. Or, for that matter, there might have been a contractor in your group.

You might feel like you’re alone, but with a network you’ll discover you have people. It’s just not possible to build a business without people. Soon you’ll start to learn the power of relationships and communication. It will make it so much easier when you’re looking for suppliers, vendors, employees, tax advice and almost anything else you might need.

Likewise, by staying in contact, there’s a good chance your name and business will get referred to people they know who could use what you’re selling. You’ll discover that having a professional network is much different than asking your friends and family for advice, and especially so, if they have never operated a business.

This post is also available in the forum if you would like to comment on it there.

You’ve probably noticed, that most of the time when you use Google to search for something online, that very few of the results returned are social media links. It’s true that social media links are a very low priority for Google when they are indexing the web. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother with it. Search engines look at the size of your social communities to add authenticity to your business, and this adds weight to your argument of being listed higher up in the index for your preferred search terms.

Ascend2 is a team of research and marketing professionals providing Research-Based Marketing exclusively for marketing technology companies and digital marketing agencies. They recently released a report titled ‘For Strategies, Tactics and Trends: Organic Search & Social Media’ that says:

There is no question that social shares linked to quality content on your website or blog will improve organic search rankings as well as traffic. SEO benefits from social media, and vice versa.

It is not going to matter if your small business is offering goods or services that can only be sold locally. However, if you have a product you can ship, like custom clothing for pets, then you probably need a larger base of customers to be profitable. With permission from Ascend2, you can download this report here.

Gulzar Asma and Maqbool Misbah write, “Social media encompasses a wide range of online, forums including blogs, company sponsored discussion boards & chartrooms, consumer to consumer e mail, consumer product or service rating websites & forums, internet discussion boards & forums, moblogs, (sites containing digital audio, images, movies, or photographs), and social networking websites, to name a few.” When one thinks about social media, a lot of people think of Facebook and Twitter, but there is more to it than these websites. Basically, wherever you have the opportunity to speak with prospects, customers and any other general audience, you are reaching out to help brand yourself and business, even if the main goal isn’t to make a sale.

One might think, why bother, if the immediate result isn’t a sale? A sale could come later, but answering questions proves a certain transparency and willingness to engage openly. It helps to develop trust. The rule of thumb used to be that a potential customer had to be exposed to your marketing message at least three times before they would make an inquiry. Unfortunately this rule is more applicable to the offline world rather than online; online the equivalency to this rule might be closer to ten times.

It can be hard to discipline yourself to take the time away from more important matters at hand. It’s been suggested that creating a schedule for social media at a specific time of the day can be beneficial. Two of the most important pieces of the puzzle are persistence and consistency. People get used to seeing your posts, and some will look forward to them. Your return on investment won’t be realized until after a sustained effort.

You can count on wasting about ninety percent of your time on social media. For that matter, ninety percent of your posts should be something other than ads. If all you post are ads, you will find it hard to keep followers. The whole idea is to engage people. It could be business related, hobbies, travel, sports, news. It’s best to find topics your target market might be interested in. Perhaps after twenty posts, you could announce a contest winner on your website — something that could trigger readers to follow your link to get another look at what you do.

Gulzar Asma and Maqbool Misbah’s article was written for ‘RESEARCH REVIEW International Journal of Multidisciplinary’, where they wrote, “Social media marketing has become the most powerful mode for companies seeking to reach out to their prospects and customers.” You can establish one-on-one conversations, build relationships, increase sales and drive more traffic to your website. It’s important to do it right. You can download the report (with permission) here.

This post is also available in the forum if you would like to comment on it there.