We all know (and some of us dread) the idea of business networking. It conjures up an image of stuffing ourselves into a suit or pantyhose, going to events, wearing a sticker with our name scrawled on it, approaching and introducing ourselves to strangers, and trying to remember to keep our cold drinks in the hand we don’t shake with.

Aaaah so fun to be a business owner, isn’t it?

When I tell people offline that I do much of my business networking online, they usually look puzzled. As I explain to the uninitiated, networking online is the same as networking offline, in many ways. You want to make contacts, build relationships, generate leads and meet prospects, and spread the word about your business. Relationship building and networking takes time offline, and it is no different online. So, here are some pointers…

Depending on how you wish to network, you can find networks to join in a number of ways. The most effective would be to ask people you know on or off the web if they recommend any good networks. For example, if you’re a web designer in Manhattan, your colleagues might tell you about the World Wide Web Artists Consortium mailing list – an industry related network that has been in existence for many years, based in NYC. If you know another business person who operates online, they might tell you to check out Ryze.

Get on Google and do some searches for keywords like “online networker” or “discussion boards” and include your industry or interests in the search. For example, if you are a freelance writer, you might search Google for “freelance business forum” or “writers mailing list.” It really depends on what you want to accomplish, who you want to network with (colleagues? prospective clients?).

Now just because you find a network doesn’t mean you will necessarily want to join it. Search the discussion forums, look at participation. How much traffic does the site seem to get? Is it well organized? And how many, and how recent, were the posts? Don’t waste your time joining if it doesn’t seem like anyone ever comes there. Once you join one make sure you fill out the personal profile. The profile is your chance to explain your business or service. It’s a good idea to add a photo of yourself. A photo that looks professional, even if you need to get one professionally done its well worth it. Describe your service in detail and add the most important elements such as blog or website address, contact numbers and email. If using instant messaging services is your choice of contact, add your Messenger ID or IRC Chat name.

Networking online, by its very nature, takes some time. If you decide to pursue this avenue for building your business, you will find that it is easy to become overwhelmed with emails to read, or have difficulty finding time to browse the forums. There are some things you can do to make this simpler and easier to do on a regular basis. I myself like to get a cup of joe, sit down first thing before i start my day and peruse my favorite networking sites. I update info, look at new members, send them a quick introduction, welcome them and introduce my business. Virtual volunteering is also a great way to get your business name out there. Contact the admin of the site and see if they could use your services and volunteer yourself a few hours a week in exchange for advertising or sponsorship. You will be surprised at how many businesses are willing to trade services.

Below are some online business networking sites to check into and remember the best thing about online networking is you can do at your convenience, 24 hours a day, from the comfort of your home and best of all no stuffy suit to endure!

Linked in

Ryze

Women Business Owners

Meetup

Konnects

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS SYMBOL ON WEBSITES LATELY? Do you know what is? Do you hear everyone talking about blogging lately, blog this, blog that and I am sure there are a few out there that have no idea what blogging is and what this symbol is and how it can work for your business.

Well simply put a blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. A weB Log (blog) is a journal kept on the internet, filled with all kinds of writings or “posts” related to a particular subject or industry. Blogging sites can provide excellent information on many topics, although content can be subjective.

How can a blog work for your business? Well for us, as an example, we have been in the marketing, graphic design and print industry for quite some time. We have alot if ideas, knowledge, tips and tricks that can help our clients and any small business looking for a little marketing know how. However the underlying strategy for any blog is to get people interested in what we are saying, hopefully use our services or refer them and to drive more traffic and awareness to our site and to our business.

A feed is a web document that usually ends in .xml or .rss and it is a slimmed-down version of a website that is created to be easily syndicated. It may be represented by an orange icon, like the one you see above. One on the simplest explanations i have come across to explain RSS feeds is in the video below by the Common Craft Store. It just can’t get any simpler than this.

rss_plain_english

There are may ways to start a blog and best of all they are free. You can use Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad. Before venturing into marketing your blog, do some research and see read up on blogging. There is a huge value in it for your business!

So never really paying attention to the keyword phenomenon, i decided to do a little investigating and see how this is suppose to help me and my site. After the usual morning cup of joe and browsing i came to realize, my site really never had any keywords. What are they you ask? Keywords are an important part of meta tags (a specific kind of HTML tag that contains information about the page itself) These are words that you enter into your meta tags that describe your page so that when someone goes to a search engine like Google and they type in one or more of those words your page will be added to the list of pages that appear within the search. Basically meta tags help search engines know what your Web site is about. So I have gone ahead and added words like “Graphic designer in Treasure Coast” and “Florida logo design”, stay tuned as I will be monitoring my site within the month to see where my site ranks in search engine world.