On Words and Business

Online business networking at it’s finest. If you haven’t checked out LinkedIn yet, and you’re serious about networking with professionals and business owners, this is the place to be.

It’s a networking tool, so the most benefit comes when users share their connections. You never know who the people you know know.

I use LinkedIn to identify and connect with people in organizations I’m trying to target. I just took a class in how to best use LinkedIn as a networking tool (this probably gives you a hint about which generation I am not part of!). It really opened my eyes to how online networking can be successful, and how it supplements networking in person.

See if we are connected:

Anyone in a business with customers knows they have to listen to what their customers want or need. This is, as with many things, easier said than done. The MarketingProfs Daily Fix has some hints about the art of listening. A few of the good traits include being prepared to take notes, repeating what you hear and asking for clarification, being present, and being interested. All of these work when you are sitting next to or across the table from someone.

Listening to customers in other ways takes different forms, but is effectively the same–being interested in what the other person has to say. A blog, for example, is supposed to be a two-way conversation. But in many cases, it is really a one way communications tool. That can be by the choice of the blogger–to disallow comments–or simply that the blogger hasn’t said anything worth commeting on. The article ends with this:

However, most of us continue to use it as a talking tool (one-way communications), evidenced by our blog posts, podcasts and vlogs. We need to do better. But two-way and 360-degree communication only happens if our readers and listeners choose to participate. That is our challenge, not theirs.

So, how do we create a communications environment, where listening takes place? I think that is the key question surrounding the use of Social Media and that dreaded acronym, ROI.

This is a question I struggle with every day I write a post. What can I do to let you know I’m here to listen?

If you’ve never done this, try networking in a room full of marketing professionals. It’s fun and you can learn a lot about how to network. Especially if marketing is not your thing. Think about it, enumerating and/or clarifying the features and benefits of a product or service is what marketers do. And that’s what people do when they are networking. But since we are talking about ourselves, it’s hard to think of it as marketing.

It is really a combination of both. Netketing has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?