When we talk about doing business today, there is a very real aspect that many people overlook. While it is essential, of course, to learn about your market and understand how to create proper advertisements to promote your service or product, the reality is that you can do business in this market without a little bit of networking. Whether you are a veteran of business or somebody who is thinking about creating a business the reality is that you might have heard this term used many times without properly understanding what it truly means. Let’s dive deeper into what networking is and how it works in the digital age in which we find ourselves.
What do we mean by networking
When we talk about networking, we are not simply talking about making personal relationships with other people who are involved in business. While it is very important to create a circle of contacts for yourself so you can learn to rely on and get tips from other people who work in the same industry as you there is a deeper layer to what networking does. Networking is a massive aspect of business that not only allows you to know the players of the industry you find yourself in but also who you can count on when you need to expand your business in certain areas. Essentially networking allows you to not only make friends in the industry but also allows you to know who does what in the industry. For example, if you are somebody who sells products it is very important to learn who are the reliable people when it comes to production as well as shipping.
Creating a personal network
Once upon a time, networking worked through dinners and profile events which reunited many people from the same industry nowadays it is somewhat different while also being much more open when it comes to opportunities. To create your network, it is much easier nowadays to create a LinkedIn profile with which you can openly communicate with other business leaders as well as members of your industry directly from a very professional social media platform. This way this avoids the someone awkward situation of messaging a business leader while having a lot of personal information on your profile or having family pictures in the mix. This is what we can call personal networking since it allows you to create personal relationships with other players in your industry.
Public Relations and Business Network
This is both an effort of marketing as well as networking. Whether you are using platforms like Facebook Instagram or even Reddit the reality is that having a very strong presence for your business online can be a very good thing for you. This not only allows you to reach broader markets, but it can also allow you to interact with other businesses in the public eye and share in the positive light that they get. This is why for example you can see a lot of Microsoft businesses interacting with each other since they allow for a certain shared prestige to exist on online platforms. If you don’t know where to start when creating a social media following, you might consider boosting your presence through online platforms where Reddit accounts are available here for purchase, giving you a head start in building credibility and visibility. While follower count is not everything especially if a lot of those are not actual users the reality is that people are more inclined to follow accounts with larger numbers especially if they are supposed to represent an official account of a business.
As you can see while the digital age and its massive influence on the current state of networking and business can seem somewhat scary the reality of course is that there is nothing simpler once you get used to the Internet works. Nowadays it is unavoidable that if you want to run a business you have to have your end and feed into the Internet. Only platforms are not only the present, but they are also very much the future of most businesses. This becomes increasingly true once you realize that the competition is so high that sometimes you are competing with companies that are across the globe from you. The scarier part and most difficult aspect of existing as a business online of course is having to deal with massive companies that are already established like the Amazon’s of this world. Nonetheless, there is still very much a place for every business online you simply have to learn how to create a place for yourself.
