I recently attended a networking group (BNI for those of you who’re interested) this week and have been considering joining for the past few weeks. This type of networking happens at a restaurant once a week and is one of the larger networking groups in the world. The yearly membership fee is just over $400 with fees ranging from $40 to $90 per month for your breakfast and other expenses. The two groups that I visited took place at 7am in the morning so I had to wake up super early which I was not thrilled about! 😦 Both groups were very welcoming and I’m sure I’d benefit from joining. I’m just not too sure I want to put in the time it would take to build the relationships which in turn would generate some referrals.
Anyways, I’ve been tossing the idea around of joining but did some networking online today through Facebook and have decided I’m going to stick with networking online for now. So here’s my inspirational online social networking story. An old friend of mine that I worked with in 2000 sends me a friend request today so I add him to my profile and then browse his friends to see if I know any of them. I then find a few friends that worked at the same company and add them as well. One of those friends quickly adds me and then writes on my wall (facebook term for those that aren’t on facebook that basically means they wrote on my main profile page) that the company we use to work for has a group on Facebook. I join the group and also browse another friends profile and find the president of the company we worked for and add him so now we’re friends as well. I have more networking to do since I saw some members on the group that I use to work with. I’m positive some connections will be made that will at some point down the line be positive for my professional carreer. This all happened from the convenience of my office and required little effort and time on my part and was completely free.
So after this experience I’ve opted to not join the BNI group. I will stick with social networking online through sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn for now. I also tend to try some Facebook marketing and will blog later about my results. I’ve seen some pretty targetted ads on my profile page in the last few weeks. I tend to launch some campaigns for my business and some clients that I market that have a need for social media marketing.
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