The company can be stronger and even more successful if you make a
strong community around, and then for, it. Prosperous business owners
know that producing a business community or network will help their
business prosper. As a business proprietor or manager, you need to
acknowledge that you need to be part of the right network of people,
otherwise you are wasting your time. Develop business social networks
with individuals who want to hook up, share, and who have specific
business goals.
In today's business environment, creating a network has never been
easier since it is enabled by a growing volume of online community
groups; and among the better online communities (such as Facebook,
LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Forums, Flickr and Google+). These
online sociable networks have great value in building your business
relationships, if you evidently understand how to do it.
The power of business networking originates from building
relationships and from gaining access to rare information, contacts or
resources. The very best online communities also allow you to create
your brand and communicate your communications; usually at no instant
cost to you.
To get face-to-face or mobile network, consider industry or investment
associations.
Attending meetings is the first thing, but to get the biggest value
for your dollar of time, you need to engage in affiliation meetings.
Ensure that you engage in associations that your customers are part
of; you'll be able to hook up with these questions in a much more
meaningful way if you work with them over a committee or attend an
exercise session or program and spend time speaking about the program
with them.
Before you create your business group or business social networks, you
need to define your stakeholder model: Specify who has contact with
your business (suppliers, employees, customers, bankers, investors,
your business partners or associates, and so on), rank their
importance to your business, and define the parts of contact you want
to have with them.
Once you've developed your stakeholder model, evaluate both the online
and offline community groups. Many businesses still feel that
networking is a soft activity and they don't want to spend their time
in building a network. That's simply wrong thinking that these causes
loss of opportunities and higher costs for marketing and sales
efforts.
You need to be real and genuine in your relationship building. It can
not be only to make a sale. You need to spend money on your network in
front of large audiences in the group. This sounds somewhat trite but
the reality is that building a business community is similar to
building any long-term relationship; you need to put time and
sincerity into it and it may not be all about you.
Participate in at least five or six networks or communities. A few of
them are right here:
1. Your industry trade association and your customers' trade or
industry association.
2. Business owners sometimes miss to include employees in their
network building. A great internal committee formed to address
specific tasks or solve specific problems can be a powerful inner
network.
3. Build or join a tiny business exhortatory group. This is a
non-competing group of small businesses proprietors who meet regularly
to go over business issues and concerns and look to the group for
input.
4. Build or sign up for a little business peer-to-peer network. This
works best if the participants in the group come from non-competing
geographical regions.
5. Build a network of two - you and your business mentor. Work with a
business mentor or a business coach that is highly skilled and
successful in your industry.
6. Participate in online business internet sites. Today's top three
online neighborhoods: LinkedIn has favorable feedback for professional
networking. Other folks such as Facebook and Twitter are gaining
reliability as community groups for business, on top of the high
profile kudos they have social groups.
To get the the majority of networking, determine social networks and
their target audiences first and then closely align to your business
objectives and stakeholder model. The network you build for your
business needs to obtain common goals that can be obtained through the
building of relationships with others.
Your business social support systems will be most effective if you
relate your business strategy and objectives to your stakeholder
model.
