Remember the days where you would go to business networking meetings. There, you would exchange business cards, enjoy some free food, give a brief two minute summation speech about what it is you did for a living and then mingle some more before calling it a day? Well, those still exist, but now these meetings have been enhanced by the fact that online social networking is so incredibly popular.
With things such as ‘Tweetups,” people are finding ways to make connections on line and then taking it a step further to set up actual in-person meetings with other like-minded individuals, and guess what? It’s working! Now, you can check your local online social networking communities to find out what meetings are taking place where. With just the click of a button, you can instantly RSVP to a gathering or set up your own gathering. Besides this, if you can’t make it to a meeting, you can do video conferencing via Skype or set up mobile alerts to your phone to help you stay connected.
If anything, the abundance of on line social networking has spawned a whole new kind of face to face networking. Now, you can reach out to more people in different areas around the country or around the block. What’s more is that every day that goes by, there are new technologies and applications that are being created for the sole purpose of enhancing the on line social medium. Social networking isn’t just about throwing up a random 140 character rant about how much you can’t stand the government. Rather, social networking with other people is getting others to respond to what you have to say- having healthy discussions, criticisms and trading ideas back and forth. It’s as if we are trying to rethink the way that we approach communication.
There is no doubt that networking is great for business. If you look at something like law, most attorneys and private investigative companies acquire their clients through word-of-mouth referrals. Well, now, those word of mouth referrals are beginning to come more quickly into focus with the dawn of a whole new on-line era of Internet users and social networks. If you use a lawyer and you like what they have done for you, you might tweet about it. Then, because you have a giant following or because someone has looked up the word ‘lawyer’ in the Twitter system, suddenly, and perhaps without knowing it, you’ve contributed to that lawyer’s credibility and given them a free marketing plug to the world. There is no doubt that on-line Internet social networking is extremely effective. The key is knowing who is using what networks and what sorts of information people are putting out there to garner huge followings. Once you figure this out and put a little work into a few social networking profiles, you should begin to see results almost immediately.