4 Networking Strategies to Boost Your Online Presence

This is a guest post by Bernardo de la Vega. 

What is the one secret to success when networking in business? In order to be successful in building relationships that will lead to business referrals and opportunities, there are four things you need to focus on:

1. Continuously add people to your network.

Use Facebook and Twitter strategies to add people to your networks. On twitter, find a leader in your niche and follow around 300 of his/her followers. After a couple of days you will get about a 25% follow back, then you can just unfollow the rest.

On Facebook, find people who are doing well and are well connected and send a friend request to their friends. The bottom line is that the greater the number of connections you have (based on quality relationships of course), the more referrals you can generate. The math is pretty easy.

2. Seek engagement.

This is the most Important thing you need to do. I run into fan pages all the time with several hundred likes or nicely designed blogs that have no engagement . Don’t expect people to come to you, you must go to them. Go out and comment on other people’s fan pages, blogs, twitter updates.

Posting smart and relevant comments will get people interested in you. Remember having a lot of likes and followers means nothing if you don’t engage people.

3. Help others

Approach people with a genuine mindset of helping them, people can sense right away when you just want to get something from them. Think of ways you can provide value to people as you approach them. It can be something as simple as sharing a website, a tip or a technique that you use that will help them. For example you can tell them about:

• http://www.similarweb.com/ – a free site to find out what your competition is doing about traffic

• http://www.fanpagekarma.com/ – a great site that gives you amazing stats and ways to improve your following for your FB fan page.

4. Share stories.

If you want to build your network in order to generate more referrals, place story-telling at the top of your efforts. Facts tell, but stories sell. Tell a story about things you are doing right and things you did wrong and what you learned from that experience. Being honest is the best way to go.

Using stories is a great way to connect with other people as well. When someone has a very powerful story you can share their story as well. I always hear the top leaders say something like “ someone I know had a terrible thing happened to them and then they had a breakthrough”. People love stories so even if you don’t have the best story you can always find one by talking to people.

Conclusion

It’s crucial to connect with others beyond the superficial meet and greet! Numbers alone don’t really do much. In order to be good at engaging people, lead with value and really try to help others. Finally use stories to really connect with people.

Bernardo de la Vega is the Creator and Founder of Creative Growth Marketing. He specializes in traffic strategies, improving conversions and copywriting. He has an email open rate of about 40% because of the value he provides.

photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc