Indirect Networking- how and why?

One of the key questions you ask yourself when networking (either online or off) is "Who do I want to connect to?" Now, I would wager that's a pretty important question as how do you market yourself, network your business and connect with others if you don't know who you're looking for.

This is not just because of having the right client list prepared- it's also about the right media and materials which you are going to use to network. As noted before, each event/site has different expectations and rules and a simple one size fits all approach is a failure unto itself. So, it's best to know who you want to connect with before you start.
Sounds pretty easy, huh?
But how about if you could connect with people you would never have expected just because you indirectly network your sites? Indirect networking is, as the name suggests, where you network your organisation with people that know the kind of people you want to deal with.

This has many kinds of benefits:

• Most of the time these users who have the users you want are publications. They have a lot of users who are interested in a particular industry and can reveal possibilities you never knew existed. Plus, they are great places to find people who might be able to provide you with services you don't usually use- guest blogging for instance or published articles.
• Secondly there are many great people out there who are not connected with big companies or the top names in the industry. Most of these will be start-up organisations who have learned a lot, perhaps even things you won't have done while in the industry. Any experience is good experience.
• There's also the friends of friends ideology where you follow them, so they follow you, and then one of their clients follows you and you follow one of their clients etc. until you have half a million possible contacts to connect with. This is because if you're following them because they do something you like and they are doing likewise- you're both mutually beneficial to each other.
• Never be afraid to get your name out there with a guest post or article on a website. Often these are informal, not too long and they won't take much time out of your day. But what they will do is show the world the strength of your ideas. It makes sense to take free advertising, doesn't it?
• And while social media advertising is never a numbers game it does help sometimes to be connected with people who have good statistics. Mostly because they're like a resource library, they have so many contacts that there's lots to do and many people to connect with.

These are all things that you may do well to remember if the days are long and there's no-one taking the bait with your direct networking.
As it is, these days, with the internet growing as it has, there's so many ways to show your organisation that everyone has their little corner of land. Connecting with these people has the opportunity to provide you with unique insights into things you would never consider, or information you would never research.
It just makes sense to be connected to a wide-range of organisations.

And that's all for now.
We have had a few information heavy posts recently and this should make a nice brief, informative and nicely spaced change. Also, for those that were looking to enquire about the event Carkean will be attending tomorrow- the seats are all taken. Thank you for your interest (and for reading).

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an individual not the corporation