Are you familiar with FaceBook, LinkedIn, Plurk, Jaiku, Last.Fm or even sites like Yahoo Answers? Is your company active on any or all of these sites? Are you generating any return for your time? These are the questions more and more are starting to ask as the number of so called “Social Networking” sites keeps growing yet recent surveys point to the number of active users of these sites may be in fact slipping.

A new three part series aims to take a look at how your business can benefit not from just hand shaking and making a few useless post on some site that your headed to lunch but in actually communicating with potential customers and establishing a relationship which is beneficial to both.

Networking is not only about the ability to connect to people – it is also about the ability to use those connections. We call it a “two-way-street” – networking is not something you do by yourself, you always need your counterparty to be in there with you, to want to help you and assist your advancement. You only achieve this willingness by doing something in return, or even before you ever ask for anything. This is true networking – there are no shortcuts, you need to invest time and effort in order to reap the benefits of the connections you have made.� Marion Freijsen and Adrie Reinders

This “two-way-street” really struck me in reference to my experience with a local business group. I met an executive within the group and introduced them to LinkedIn and they quickly used my contacts as well as others to build their own little circle. Ok so great time for that “two-way-street” right? I asked this same person to then forward my contact info to one of their LinkedIn contacts only to have them respond back they would only do that if I joined, as a paying member, their business group. So much for the “two-way”, this wasn’t even a one-way but a total roadblock unless I was willing to pay their toll.

So how is your street?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Commentary, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.