Posts Tagged ‘Conversations’
Networking Revolution
Its time for a revolution in networking.
Life has always been, and will always be, more about who you know than what you know.
People have always collected and shared useful contacts and always will.
In recent years, business networking has followed a set pattern: join a group, deliver a quick sales pitch, ‘work’ the room, follow up. Keep doing this (known as a slow burn) until people get to know you and trust you and maybe they’ll do business with you or refer you to their contacts.
I’ve always been puzzled by the dichotomy of the ‘quick sales pitch’ and the ‘slow burn’ of the ‘know and trust’ process.
If a quick sales pitch is so effective why do you have to wait for people to get to know you and trust you before they’ll do business with you?
On the other hand if the know and trust stuff is important (and it obviously is) why bother to introduce yourself with a sales pitch?
Many business people have embraced social networking as a way to enhance their business networking and those who do it best have realised that they need to be fully rounded people, not just business people. Instead of spouting sales pitches, they engage and have conversations (just like networking has always been outside of the business community and why it is called ‘social’)
Clever folk use social networks to figure out who they want to meet before they turn up to a face to face event.
Time is precious and petrol is expensive so why would anyone pitch up to an event on the offchance that there will be someone worth meeting? Why not research attendees on-line then break the ice so that you never need to walk into a room full or strangers or ask “what do you do?”
We can find people who share our interests, values and beliefs and who therefore don’t need to be ‘sold’ to. The ‘slow burn’ is much faster and often takes place before people meet face to face and geographical barriers are no longer an issue.
Networking is returning to its roots. Its about creating contacts for life, not just for business.
Wherever you are in the world, you can join The Inspired Group (no membership fee). Join in the discussion on the A-Z of Business Success on LinkedIn to exchange experiences with other business owners and make great connections.
Whether or not you choose to attend our events, you can engage with the speakers and other participants both before and after the event.
You can carry on the conversations on our Facebook page and enlarge your network even further on Twitter by following the hashtag #binspired.
Participate! Inspire and be inspired!
Posted in Networking | 
Tags: Attendees, Business Community, Business Networking, Business Owners, Business Success, Clever Folk, Conversations, Dichotomy, Exchange Experiences, Geographical Barriers, Linkedin, Membership Fee, Networking Revolution, Participants, Roots, Sales Pitches, Slow Burn, Social Networking, Social Networks, Speakers, Values And Beliefs | 
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How to get more Twitter followers
There are only two ways to get more Twitter followers.
(Warning! There is more advice about how to use Twitter than there is about how to lose weight and most of it is just as useful!)
Actually, there are three ways to get Twitter followers but the first one is:
Be a celebrity. 
If you’re not one, then these are the only two ways open to you:
I assume you’ve done the ground work, got some key words in your bio including a real location that will show up on searches, got a good picture so that you look like a real person and you’ve used some search tools to find people to follow. Now you want “A FOLLOWING” so that you can get your sales message out to as many people as possible and start making money from this game. (And boast a bit about how popular you are.)
The quickest and easiest way to get more followers on Twitter is to simply use an autofollow application. This means that every time someone follows you, you automatically follow them back.
You won’t know who you are following but the numbers make you look good.
You will pick up loads of robots and ‘broadcast only’ accounts but as you’re not going to engage with them it won’t matter. You may get a few genuine accounts following you of course but you can get rid of them easily enough by using an auto DM that says something like
“Hi thanks for following me, check out my website (link)”
Most of the real people will unfollow you in a heartbeat. If this doesn’t shake them off, don’t worry. Just set up some auto tweets to broadcast your sales messages at regular intervals. They’ll turn up in the middle of real people’s conversations like a fart at a party and that’ll get rid of those tiresome folk who actually want to make conversation.
Don’t forget, numbers are everything in this game so take no notice of the losers who say you should only follow people you are prepared to talk to. I mean ..!
If you blast your sales message out to enough people some of it will stick so just get to it!
Or
If you have too much time on your hands you can always sweat it out with the real folk. This means that every time someone follows you, you need to take time from your busy schedule to see who they are and make an assessment on whether they are interesting enough for you to want to talk (Yes, really…… *talk*) to them.
Your numbers may be pitifully low compared to the autofollow geezers but hey, you can handle it, can’t you?
You have to reconcile the time you spend on choosing who to follow and the effort you put into making interesting, useful conversations, being helpful, re-tweeting stuff and all that ‘social’ activity and the fact that you may not actually get much sales stuff in, with the chance that some of these ‘real’ folk could, potentially, be quite interesting, maybe useful and even, as a last resort, fun.
But then, pfft, where’s the ROI in that?
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If you are new to Twitter you may need help with how to apply it to your business but you don’t need help in how to be human. Twitter is about making real connections with real people – just like in the real world! See post Twitter Business for Beginners
Posted in Social Media | Tags: Auto Sales, Broadcast, Busy Schedule, Celebrity, Conversations, Fart, Find People, Followers, Game, Geezers, Heaps, Heartbeat, Hi Thanks, Intervals, Key Words, Losers, Real People, Real Person, Robots, Sales Message, Sales Messages, Sales People, Search People, Search Tools, Start Making Money, Three Ways, Twitter, Two Ways | No Comments »
