If you want to legitimize your brand or business and stand out against your competition, you must network. Networking is key to finding your target audience and growing a sustainable business. Finding your target audience is a never-ending job as an entrepreneur. Thankfully, networking can make this job more manageable and less demanding.
The following are four ways to improve your entrepreneur networking skills:
Join Social Media Groups
Facebook and LinkedIn offer many different groups within just about any industry or niche you can think about. Being active in these groups helps you learn more about the individual people that make up the industry and what types of problems they need help with. Not only that, but it also fosters new relationships and helps to find connections you can use to collaborate with to share even more valuable and powerful content.
Attend Relevant Events
Look at your local community college to see if there are any events in your industry to attend. This is especially easy for those within the arts and cultural sector as many cities host events downtown to support local artists and small businesses. Facebook has an option to search for local or virtual events.
Have Something to Offer
In other words, if you are only there to take from them, you won’t be able to grow an authentic network. People attract others because they have something valuable to offer. However, you must be careful not to offer too much, you will simply be taken advantage of. It would be best if you found the right balance. If you give too much, they will likely start expecting it. Be sure the relationships you see are genuine before spending too much time. Unfortunately, many relationships in business are just business, so it is always best to protect yourself first.
Maintain the Connection
Once you find the proper networks, you must do the work to keep the relationship going and strong. The stronger the contection with your network, the more likely they will collaborate with you and introduce you to more people within the industry. You also must be prepared to do the same. This can also look like commenting on other creator content as soon as it goes live or sharing their information through your email marketing campaign without expecting anything in return.
As you can see, networking is a lot easier than you think. All it takes is being active within the right communities and fostering a genuine and beneficial relationship between you and the other party. But, unfortunately, if other entrepreneurs can sense you are just looking to steal their audience instead of providing the benefit, it’s unlikely they will join your network or collaborate with your brand.