Iphone Riles

It's all very well to hear the buzzword "networking" time and time again and accept that it's an important process. You know you have to promote but how do you do it? Where do you start and once you start, how do you build up?

Achieving success boils down to overall mentality and a step by step approach where each action builds on the last, enabling you to climb higher. The process of networking and promotion is the same, don't be overwhelmed, just start off with what you have and look to build upwards.

FOUNDATIONS - THE INITIAL IMPETUS

Start off at the basics, yourself. Get your attitude right at this initial stage, every meeting is a chance to network and by doing so promote. This doesn't mean that you have to terrify everyone by aggressively forcing business cards on them or ringing your friends up with plans to turn them into walking billboards for your business venture.

Of course you need to see every relationship and meeting as potentially beneficial in terms of business but you also need to appreciate that the wrong approach might annoy people and give them a bad impression of you and your business.

Make fun ways to get friends and family involved and avoid putting pressure on them. Make promotional materials such as flyers, leaflets, business cards or whole promo packs and mention them to people you know and see if they ask for some to distribute. Consider giving people you know free samples or trials of your product or services. These people will be your initial push of promotion.

To push or not to push.

A delicate balance exists between promoting yourself to the best of your abilities and being irritatingly pushy. There's no point holding back and not promoting yourself to someone who may be interested but at the same time it's counter productive to push someone too far.

For example you might be talking to someone socially and find out that they run a bar. This could be a good opportunity to get some promoting done through a new contact but being too heavy handed could be the way to scare them away from ever talking to you again.

Even when you're pushing a fairly forceful agenda you have to be sensitive, in fact the harder you're pushing the more sensitive you have to be. Drop introductory hints before you come right out and ask something, use the replies you get to assess your chances of a favourable response at this stage. Asking how people go about promoting themselves is a great way to open up a discussion that might give you the opportunity to arrange something.

It may take some practice to get this "ground testing" right and every now and again you may get it wrong. If you do get it wrong, don't be embarrassed and anxious over it, this will make your mind shut down on the situation and block it out, whereas you need to examine it fully and analyse it. What actually went wrong? Where were your slips?

Make a list of the lessons you have learned from the experience to cement them. In this way, a slip up can be changed from a damaging thing to something that has just made you a better promoter and a better business owner.

Pay attention to what people say, their tone of voice and their body language, if you are being told "no" then don't push. It could be that you don't know the person well enough for them to wish to do mutual business with you or discuss business as opposed to their being totally uninterested. Give it some time and when you have built up a better relationship with the person consider trying again.

If you open up a discussion gradually you give someone ample opportunity to change the subject or drop a hint that they aren't interested in talking promotion or co-promotion with you.

Know your event.

Some events are created specifically for selling and others specifically for networking, some events have the potential to be either, know the occasion and behave accordingly. You shouldn't be treating your best friend's wedding as primarily an opportunity to promote but when you meet new people your job will inevitably come up in the conversation. If you are careful and spark someone's interest they will be asking you all the questions, meaning that you don't have to push yourself. If you are at a convention specially created to enable promotion then it's appropriate to shift the focus to what you do and be more forward but it's always good to keep some personal interest in the equation and be friendly with people as well.

Some events will be more useful for information exchange rather than co-promotion contacts. For example if your business is alternative clothing then it's not the best idea to aim to find other people in the same business to swap promotional packs with but it is in your best interests to discuss promotional methods and the various aspects of the trade.

Aim to create an impression wherever you go and on whoever you are talking to, always carry business cards on you. Consider having different types of cards that cover different situations. For example you might have cards for company representatives, cards for other business people and cards for potential customers.

Imagine the impact of handing that card over before you do, a professional soliciting for business won't be very impressed with a jazzy business card, but at the same time if you are at a rock gig talking to people about your business then that smooth professional card might just get shoved deep into a pocket and thrown straight in the bin the next time it surfaces.

WORD OF MOUTH - FIRST CUSTOMERS

Word of mouth is one of the most important ways a business gets promoted, but be careful, people have to be saying the right things!

As you get your first customers, be good to them. These are the people who, if you treat them well, will return to purchase more of your products/services and tell friends about you.

Also, if you have friends or family who are promoting you, but not necessarily buying, be appreciative of their efforts.

If you're someone who has trouble with names, faces or details about people in general then seriously consider ways to combat this. Customers, especially good customers, love it when you remember them and can ask them a couple of questions pertinent to them or to their lives.

Other business people will be impressed by your ability to remember their details as well but unlike customers they're liable to be put off dealing with you if you can't remember anything about them or if you get them mixed up with someone else.

Many people state in a matter of fact way that they "don't have a good memory" or have a "bad memory for faces" as though this is a level of ability they can never improve. It won't take much to improve your memory, even if it's tolerably good already. There are plenty of self help books on the shelves of stores and libraries that you can look through and, as with most skills, once you find the right angle for you the process for improving gets easier. If you don't want to rely on memory alone then make notes on the back of people's business cards when you get home, keep lists or add notes to paperwork. Just because other people make the "personal touch" to their business seem effortless it doesn't mean that they didn't put in a lot of effort in reality.

When dealing with customers always stay polite, friendly and helpful. Even if someone riles you don't lose your cool. You may well be dealing with a time waster and want to dispatch them, but there is no point spending extra time arguing just so you make certain you've got an enemy for life.

THE INTERNET

The internet is a vital networking tool. These days everyone has a web page, even if it's just to show the world pictures of their cats. If you don't have one for your business then that mere fact alone sends the message that you're not taking yourself seriously, and if you're not, why should anyone else?

Shopping and business of all kinds from groceries to banking is now taking place on line more and more frequently, for everything except a small niche of businesses a web presence is essential.

If you don't know anything about computers or the net then it would really be a good idea to start. Even if you aren't going to end up building a web site yourself you would ideally wish to be able to maintain and update it yourself and at the very least you should be contactable by e-mail.

That said you don't need to suddenly become a multimedia whiz over night to get your site up and running. Here again networking can help you in the form of interchangeable skills. You might be surprised how many people are just as keen to trade skills in some way as to make sales.

Whether you do your site yourself or get someone else to do it for you bear in mind that technology is changing fast, if you get a site that is very basic today, then a year from now it will be painfully obsolete. Within your budget factor in some forward thinking.

Do you want customers to be able to buy on line? Use a recognisable and well thought of system to process payments, something that people will feel safe using. Interactivity is what sets web-sites apart; think forums, a blog and comment features.

Remember that you don't need to get all your internet needs from one provider. The chances are you might know some things yourself and have a friend's help and then contact a professional if you need anything more.

The internet also has a wealth of promotional opportunities. Branching out from one blog on your site you can have multiple blogs, for example on Live Journal, Word Press or blogspot. You could set up a MySpace account and use the facilities on that, post on forums on the net or start communities all with the aim of promoting yourself. Make sure all your blogs have a link to your site, most blogs make the facility to do this very apparent. It's generally better to have lots of blogs that are more specialist than one very broad one. Try to update regularly, daily if possible, and aim to answer comments!

Blogs bring you into contact with people interested in your business from a customer's viewpoint or from the viewpoint of an information exchange, at the very least it never hurts to have a few more people know about you. Your web presence is just as important as your face to face meetings, indeed it could be argued that in modern times this is MORE important. Websites and blogs also give you the chance to write to and contact people whom you might not otherwise have acquired a phone number for or had the chance to meet.

Stay open to the new ideas and suggestions you receive, your promotional drive should never stop. Don't think of it as a chore, or you're going to get tired very quickly if you want to make your business successful! Don't worry if things go a little slowly at first, the people you form connections with will introduce you to other people, as time goes by you will make more and more useful connections and your business will grow as your promotional net widens and becomes more efficient.