One of my goals this year is to attend 4 real-world face-to-face networking events each month. Why bother with offline networking at all? After all, several virtual assistants I spoke with told me they do all their marketing and networking strictly online.
Face-to-face Networking Builds Trust
My personal experience with online-only networking is a mixed bag. I met all my past and present clients online. The problem is that some of my business relationships soured in large part because of their virtual nature. For example, dismissing an overdue invoice with promises of payment at a later unspecified date is much easier to do via e-mail than through face-to-face contact.
From the client’s point of view, they might want to deal with someone local because hopefully it would ensure higher level of customer service and greater ease of communication. Plus, it turns out that many solo entrepreneurs and small business owners are a fairly conservative and cautious bunch. They really need to get to know you and chat with you a few times before they even look at your Services page. Or is it a Southern thing?
Face-to-Face Networking Lets You Assess Your Future Client
Either way, this need for face-to-face contact works for me since it gives me time to evaluate prospective client and decide whether our working together would be a good idea after all.
Face-to-face Networking is Fun
I’m a stay-at-home mom who spends most of her days in the company of a preschooler. As intelligent, entertaining, thought-provoking, and fun as my son is, I still crave, occassionally, to be with other grownups talking about things other than Thomas the Train, drums, and alphabet. Networking provides just such an outlet, not to mention a great opportunity to wear something fancier than jeans and running shoes.
Face-to-Face Networking = Learning
There are things you will hear in a small group of regulars who know each other quite well that you will not hear in public spaces online. There is also a great opportunity to meet and listen to people from a different “niche universe”. Even though many of the people you meet are not your target clients or potential partners, they might offer a unique insight, share a valuable resource, or get you thinking about a new solution to your problems.
Now, face-to-face networking is not without its drawbacks.
Face-to-face Networking is Time Consuming – an hour-long even will take half a day if you factor in the driving time, pre-event mulling about, presentations that run on for a bit too long, and post-event networking.
Face-to-face Networking is Expensive – well, compared to online networking it is. Since most of the networking events are scheduled during business hours, you miss out on getting some work done. Many events have attendance and/or membership fees. Many are hosted over breakfast or lunch at cafes and restaurants – another expense. Finally, if your situation is similar to mine, you’ll have to arrange for childcare while you’re out networking.
Signal-to-Noise Ratio – I’d love to attend a networking group strictly for coaches or, say, for professional organizers – my target market instead of one with realtors, mortgage brokers, financial advisors, franchisees, MLM, and home parties-type businesses – not my target market. This can be easily controlled online, but offline many groups intentionally limit the number of participants from the same niche.
Still, I think old-style networking is important in a B2B business that is relationship-based, such as virtual assistance or social media support. And so I’m going to 4 networking groups this month. I found all of them through Meetup:
Women Business Owners Network – WBON – I’ve been a part of this group for about 8 months. I met one-on-one with a couple of people from this group and once bartered my services with another group member. I also did a presentation on Social Networking for Small Businesses and will be doing another one in March. But that’s as far as I’ve gotten for now.
Raleigh Entrepreneurs Organization - this is a new group I joined just a few days ago. It seems to be a diverse and active group with lots of interesting discussions. Also, very important to me – they meet in the evenings.
Raleigh Internet Marketing Mastermind – I joined this group last spring, but was able to go to only a couple of meetups since then. It’s a very in-demand group and meetups fill up very quickly, within a few hours of being posted. I’ve talked at length with some of the group members who might need my services and I’m hoping to work with some of them. But even if not, it’s a fantastic group to attend to learn all things Internet Marketing-related.
Raleigh Working Business Owners After Hours Meetup – I run my business part-time and in the evenings and it seems I’m an exception among the members of my other groups. So I was especially excited when I found out about this group late in December. I’m going to the first meeting later this week. So far, I have to say that this group has the most active message board and forum of all the groups I’m in. Very impressive!
So that’s my 4 for this month. Things might change next month if I see that one of these groups is not what I need. I have to tell you, for a part-time entrepreneur on a shoe-string budget, maintaining this pace is tough. But I hope that after 3-4 months I will be able to narrow it down to 2 networking meetings per month, possibly alternating between 3-4 groups.
What’s your experience with offline networking? How many events do you attend? How do you find out about networking groups? Please share your success stories!
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