OLD Jayne Blog on nonprofits/ngos, communications, community engagement, volunteerism, aid & development, women's empowerment, & random thoughts

What online networking is... and isn't.

07:37, 3 March 2010

.. Posted in Communication, Outreach and General Mngmt


.. Link



If you enter a room with lots of people and walk around exchanging business cards with everyone but not saying much beyond, "HI, here's my card, nice to meet you!", is that networking? Are these people now your professional associates? No, ofcourse not.

Yet, people will say "yes" to every invitation to connect on LinkedIn or as a friend on FaceBook or whatever and say, "Look, I have 500 connections! I'm networking online!"

Sorry, but that's not a connection. It's of no more value than a large stack of business cards. Or a phone book. It's not going to lead to greater name recognition for yourself or your company, greater credibility, a business invitation or a job.

Making a connection for business or social reasons has not really changed because of the Internet. I have a 1943 dictionary (New Universal Self-Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language Based Upon the Foundation Laid By Noah Webster, to be exact), and in the back are samples of business letters and social letters for every occasion: Letter from a Young Man Starting a Business, Asking a Friend to Make Some Purchases, From a Young Lady Applying for a Clerkship, Application for a Situation as a Gardener, on the Death of a Husband, Asking the Character of a Governess, and on and on. These letters are all about connecting, professionally or socially, about becoming friends or associates -- not just information in an address book. As I read these "old-fashioned" letters, I'm struck with how well people presented themselves once upon a time, in clear, concise language: here's who I am, here's what I want/am offering, here's why you should be interested and want to reply to me. Current online networkers could learn a lot from 1943!

As I've said many times before, the biggest value from the Internet is, and has always been, the ability to connect with people interested in an area similar to what you are interested in, and to be able to collaborate with and learn from these people no matter where you are on Earth. But when I say "connect", I don't mean just marking someone as a connection on LinkedIn or as a friend on FaceBook or whatever.

For instance, connections on LinkedIn are people I have actually worked with, or whose work I'm familiar enough with to be able to talk about to a basic degree. That keeps LinkedIn connections of real value to me, rather than the online equivalent of a stack of business cards. My connections can view each other and know that these aren't just a long list of names and email addresses I have no real connection to -- these are my colleagues, in every sense of the word, and my colleagues are welcomed to leverage my connections for their own professional reasons.

When people I don't know write and ask to connect on LinkedIn, I give them lots of alternatives. I invite them to:
For most people, this is what they actually wanted -- to get updates from me about my work and resources I find interesting. Just a few have been offended -- they define connection or colleague very differently than me, as something in terms of large numbers, and I wish them well in getting what they are looking for. And a few follow through and use these avenues to actually make a connection with me. How do they do that? The same way I do when I want to actually connect with someone online:
  • I send the person an email or make a post to his or her blog, commenting on something that person has written or said.  

  • I post questions, answers and resources on an online discussion group with a membership that includes people I would very much like to know, and that I want to know me (and I still get way more value out of YahooGroups and GoogleGroups than I do LinkedIn or FaceBook).

  • I invite people to post comments on my own network in reply to my blog.

  • I refer someone to a person or resource, in response to something they have written online.

  • etc.
This does lead to real connections -- people I end up collaborating with, recommending to others, co-presenting with, even working with or for, or hiring (see more in my post last year on networking via the Internet for jobs).

Networking takes real time. It takes thought and strategic thinking. It was true in 1943 and it's still true now.


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