Time is a commodity every business owner wished they had more of. To build our business, we need to get out into the community and make new contacts, but doing so requires time, and in the case of face to face networking–massive amounts of time.
If you happen to live in the Portland metro area in Portland, Oregon, you have a couple dozen networking opportunities–you could be out at events two or times a day every day of the week. What is the cost versus benefit of these activities?
Generally speaking, networking is a long term investment in your business marketing program: so for that reason it should be just one of several facets of your overall marketing effort. For example, I attend the East Portland Chamber of Commerce and the Gresham Chamber of Commerce AM meetings every week. My current weekly time investment in these organizations is about 4.5 hours. I miss a meeting once in a great while, so lets assume I’ll make it to 45 meetings this year, that equates to 202.5 marketing hours.
Other marketing activities I use consume another 4 to 10 hours of my average week (we’ll call it 10 for calculation purposes), so there is another 450 hours (using the same formula for missed chamber meetings). So fo rmy marketing program, I will invest about 652.5 hours. That is 31% of my “normal” 2080 annual working hours (like any business owner limits them self to only working 40 hours a week.) Of my marketing effort, face-to-face networking is consuming 31% of my time.
What does all this mean? Well, we need ONE more bit of info for consideration before this makes sense.
With a pending recession looming, marketing activities should increase (not decrease). The savvy entrepreneur knows that now is the time to expand marketing efforts, not with-draw. But how? I’m already filling what’s left of my week helping customers, how can I possibly increase marketing efforts?
Virtual business networking. Business blogging, social networking and online communities are but the tip of the ice berg that makes up virtual business networking. Note, that there isn’t a page on wikipedia yet for business blogging, the idea of blogging for business is still new and under development.
When I add up the time it takes for me to networking at the chambers, a quarter of the time is spent traveling to and from the event itself. At the chamber event, we spend the first half an hour meeting new people and catching up with friends. That is another hour per week. Then the meetings are pretty much the same in each chamber, we hear announcements and go around the room and introduce ourselves. Two hours a week, pretty much spent listening to other people speak.
On those terms, attending chamber meetings sounds like a losing proposition, but it is NOT. My purpose is NOT to get you away from the chamber, keep going and supporting your local community. Being at the meeting gives you access to influence local politics and establish your industry expertise (topic for a future article).
However, when considering adding MORE activities, you should consider the value proposition of a chamber versus on online approach.
I am a business blogging expert, so my opinion is biased towards the blogging medium. I’ll try to keep that opinion calm…
Social networking includes MySpace, Facebook and google’s new site Orkut. These sites give you access to millions of other people and hundreds of forums where you can chat till your heart’s content.
Online communities includes organizations like Virtual Chamber Chamber of Commerce, Yahoo Groups, and Second Life.
The idea behind online networking is the same as attending local chamber events, getting your name out in the public for prospective customers to see and establishing yourself as an industry expert. You may be a member of an association and if they have a discussion forum (public or not) then that might be a great place to get involved.
Look at associations your best customer’s belong to. If your business is a natural fit for your customer and they belong to a online network, then maybe you should get involved too–but be careful! You don’t want to seem like a pushy salesman online where you customer might get embarrassed. Like business blogging, in your customers virtual waters, you want to be a friendly knowledgeable resource. You want to write things in a manner where your customer can chime in and agree without sounding like a business endorsement.
Business blogging is an excellent way to reach new people. Unlike some of the online communities, there is not fee for blogging. You can setup you blog on a number of different servers (WordPress, Blogspot, etc.). Don’t worry about the name, nobody types the web addresses anymore.
The goal is to increase market exposure for your and your business without taking too much time away from other marketing activities. In this time of tough economic times, the LAST thing you want to do is withdraw any of the marketing efforts. Using the major search engines, you can find social and business networking opportunities by the hundreds.
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Thanks Ed, you have opened my eyes to the world of Blogging! I am not a gifted writer and what’s worse is, my wife is extremely proficient in writing. We all have stories that will interest others, but we are afraid to let them out. It’s said, “it is better to allow others to think of you as a fool, rather then speak, and remove all doubt.” Ed you have kept me from becoming a fool in my writing.
I would encourage everyone to give Blogging a try. It is easy. Just tell a story about yourself, or something you witnessed. Submit the story for publication. Allow Ed to do his magic, and you are on your way. Blogging has been a lot of fun and quite simple, so please give it a try.
Ken Bear Cole
Fishing with Bear LLC