Ian McKenzie

Unless you are a self-sufficient hermit avoiding all other human contact, you are involved with networking.

You may have social networks involving your work colleagues, neighbours or others with similar hobbies and interests to you. Perhaps you belong to some clubs or professional associations.

In the past most networks involved having contact generally with people living in a fairly close geographic location to where we lived. The Internet has changed all of that. We are all becoming more and more part of the global community. The costs involved in communicating with people all around the globe is considerably less now than was the cost of communicating with people just a few hundred kilometres away a few years ago.

An increasing number of businesses now have services and products that are available for the world wide market. One way of “marketing” products to this world wide audience is involvement in business networks.

There are many online business networking sites from which to choose. Some are well established with millions of subscribers, and there are “new kids on the block” also. Which ones should we involve ourselves with?

I do not consider myself an online business network marketing expert. But, I have spent considerable time over the last month or so investigating, and involving myself with online business network marketing sites. So, perhaps the time that I have spent may save some of your time if I report some of my findings.

Firstly, just about all of the online business networking sites that I have come across have a basic membership which is free, and then one or more levels of paid membership.

The people running these networking sites might be “nice guys”, but most have established the sites with the aim of getting a financial return from them. If you join sites as a “free” member you will generally be offered “carrots” on an ongoing basis to upgrade your membership to one of the paid levels. You will need to work out the pros and cons of this for yourself on a case by case basis. However, my advice to you would be to do what I have done and only join those sites which offer free membership. Then after you have been involved with the site for a while, you can decide if it is worth your while to upgrade to one of the paid membership levels.

But, why join multiple sites? Why not just find one “good” networking site and stay with it?

The simple answer to those questions is “exposure”. The more networking sites where you have your business profile listed, the more likely you are to find, and to be found by those with whom you would like to network.

Let me tell you about some of the business networking sites that I have joined and why I have done so. I shall start not with the biggest, but with my favourite ..., ecademy.

ecademy is a UK based networking site which I believe started life as an e-commerce site. It currently has I believe around 300,000 active users from all parts of the globe, but the majority of these are UK based.

Like other online business networking sites, ecademy has a basic membership level which is free, and paid levels of membership. The basic membership allows you to have your own company profile listed and you are able to contact up to ten other ecademists daily with the basic membership. I have found the ecademy site the most “friendly community” of all the business networking sites that I have looked at. It is also the site which I have found easiest to use, and the site which has been most useful to me in establishing worthwhile business contacts. 

So, if you are currently not involved with any online business networking sites, ecademy would be a good one for you to start with.

Ecademy has three levels of membership, basic which is free, Powernetworker for which there is a small monthly charge and Black Star for which there is a bigger charge, but of course increased benefits. I chose to initially join as a free basic member, but decided soon after to change my status to Powernetworker.

Linkedin, I believe is the longest established business online networking site and is also the biggest. I understand that it has a staggering 25,000,000 world wide members. I do have a profile on Linkedin, and joined the site about the same time I joined ecademy. Linkedin, like most of the others does have both basic membership which is free and paid membership levels. The fact that Linkedin seems to be the best known of the business networking sites, and that it has such a large membership base has been two of the reasons I have been involved with it. My personal advice to others considering which sites to join and in which order would be to choose Linkedin as second choice after ecademy.

Click on this link for an invitation to join me on Linkedin.

biznik is a new site which I have recently joined as a free member. It like many others has a free basic member ship level. I have not used the site enough to comment any further at this stage but will report back at a latter date.

network2connect
This is another recent addition to my suite of online business networking sites. One of the things I like about network2connect is the amount of information about your business that can be listed in the basic free profile. It is certainly worth taking a look at and joining.

This networking community is fairly well known and popular also. I am a free basic member of ryze, but have not had enough experience with it to comment further at this stage.

Naymz is another free business networking site. I have only recently joined, but it does look interesting.

Talk Biz Now is a “new kid on the block”, as of September 2008. What they plan sounds exciting. I think this will be a big one.

front porch folks is another new one. It seems very friendly and is worth a look.

We can do biz is another new one, take a look.

I have just proven to myself yet again the importance in business of getting profiles out there on multiple sites. I joined Kazeli, another free business networking site back in July, 2007 ..., but I had never got around to doing anything with or at the site. To be perfectly honest, until last night I had forgotten all about the site. I was doing a bit of Google-ing before shutting my computer down for the night and my Kazeli profile appeared in the results.

I have taken another look around the site. It is professional and worthwhile. I do plan on working it from now on, why don’t you come and join me there?

View my page on Professional Performance Network
 

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