How To Grow, Profit & Organize Your Business » Networking

5 Tips On How To Get To Know Someone You’ve Never Met

Rob Kelly — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 01:33:16 +0000

Have you ever wanted to meet someone, even though you don’t know them? Perhaps you read about them in a book or just heard that they were an awesome person. Here are some approaches I use to get to know a “desired connection” better. 5 Tips On How To Get To Know Someone You’ve Never Met 1) Look up the desired connection on LinkedIn for your common connections…it’s not that simple: read on! Firs off, look them up on LinkedIn to see what connections you have in common. If the desired connection is a 2nd degree connection (i.e. a connection of mine is a 1st degree connection to them), then look closely at those 2nd degree connections and determine if you have such a fantastic relationship with any of the 2nd degree connections that you’d be willing to ask them to introduce you to them. If the answer is “yes,” then great…ask your connection for an intro (but read tip #5 first!). If the answer is “no,” then instead focus on trying to add value to those 2nd degree connections and don’t bother asking for the introduction yet (reason: if you ask a favor of someone, you want them to [...]

A Few Simple Tips On How To Approach An Employer Who Has A Job You Want

Rob Kelly — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:02:48 +0000

You may periodically see or hear about a job you’d love to have — so what do you do next? I believe that the best way to approach a job you want is to get the senior most person at the target-employer to refer you so that you get on the fast track for the interview process (with the hiring manager). If you’re interested in that, here’s some advice I gave a colleague recently on how to do that through LinkedIn: Identify The Employer’s Senior Most Person (Who Is Also On LinkedIn) First, go to LinkedIn and search for the senior most person at the target-employer (I recommend you go for the CEO). Note: If you’re not familiar with LinkedIn, read this LinkedIn For Beginners Article. When I search on LinkedIn I use the “advanced search” and enter in the name of the target-employer in the “Company” field (I start with “Current” in the drop-down) and then “CEO” in the title field. Click Search. Hopefully, up pops the CEO of the target-employer. If the CEO doesn’t pop up, then re-do the search by trying out other senior titles such as “founder” or “president” or “vice president.” Click Search. Now you [...]

Discover How To Network Like a Top-500 Web Site CEO

Rob Kelly — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 04:16:18 +0000

I chatted with DocStoc Founder & CEO Jason Nazar the other day.

I think you should know abut Jason and DocStoc because Jason is an amazing networker (among other things) and DocStoc has been one of the fastest growing Web sites in the last few years (ranked 407th by Quantcast with 15 million unique visitors per month, according to DocStoc).

Jason and I had a little chat in which I asked him a few questions. He agreed to let me share it with you.

A Networking Pro Explains How to Master LinkedIn in 8 Easy Steps

Rob Kelly — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:55:37 +0000

My friend Drew Sanders is one of the best networkers I know. He recently presented his Action Plan for using the networking tool LinkedIn to insurance giant Chubb…and was kind enough to let me share it with you. If you want to know why you should be linked in, check out my You Must Be LinkedIn article. Here’s the 8-step plan for setting up and managing LinkedIn: Step 1: Complete your Linked in Profile (1 Hour) Have a coherent narrative of your history from college graduation Print out several examples that you like and model yours after theirs Brevity is appreciated by all Be factual, but humility is a good tack Step 2: Email accumulation (1 Hour) Export your outlook contacts to a (CSV file) Do the same for your hotmail, yahoo, or Gmail accounts Extra Credit if you have emailing lists from when people have accidentally not bcc’d people and you saw some cool email contacts and saved the emails. Export those as well. Any email from anyone you have ever met now has more value than just a way to get a hold of that person. Step 3: Contact Invitation Process (1 to 3 hours depending on number [...]

Chambers of Commerce Tips

Rob Kelly — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:03:36 +0000

Chambers of Commerce are an enormous resource for small businesses. They are geared towards businesses of 100 people or less and represent more than 3 million businesses. There is a local chamber of commerce in 3,000 towns and cities across the U.S. and Canada…and 112 additional Chambers of Commerce in 99 other countries. I recently met James Mielnik, who works for the Halifax Chamber of Commerce and he agreed to share his insights on how your business can benefit from networking and being involved in a local chamber. Hi James…I know networking is a key component of Chambers of Commerce — what are some specific networking tips you can share? Sixty-five percent of businesses join a Chamber because of networking so I will really want to dig in here. Below are my top 7 networking tips: 1. Cultivate a genuine interest in seeing others succeed…. and help them do it: This mindset should be prerequisite before anybody begins to network. You have a great post entitled Being a Go-Giver not a Go-Getter which echo’s this mindset and has some additional tips. In short, what I see most people doing when they network is talking about themselves and talking about their [...]

Be A Go-Giver (Not a Go-Getter)

Rob Kelly — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:28:10 +0000

I first heard about the concept of being a “go-giver” from Bob Burg in a book he wrote called Winning Without Intimidation; he later made the phrase more popular by writing Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea. I used the Go-Giver phrase, which is corny but good, in a speech I made to entrepreneurs a few years back. From that speech, and others, here are seven tips to being a better networker or go-giver: 1) Giving is Attractive — “No matter what your profession, if you can give increase of life to others and make them sensible [i.e., “aware”] of this gift, they will be attracted to you, and you will get rich.” Wallace D. Wattles from The Science of Getting Rich 2) Be a Connector — If you connect someone, both parties will remember you as the connector (see The Connector Exercise article I wrote. 3) The Helpers Get Helped — “The core of being a really good networker, you need to want to help people, “says close friend Dave Bear of BBDO Atmoshphere. He had an interesting way to put it: “People want to help people who want to help people. That’s the multiplier.” 4) [...]

How To Mazimize The Number of Valuable People You Meet In Life (The Connector Exercise)

Rob Kelly — Fri, 01 May 2009 01:25:27 +0000

A number of people ask me how I obtained a large network of contacts (I have 3,000 names in my iPhone). Strangely, I've never thought of myself as a schmoozer...I'm actually fairly introverted. But I've been very lucky. A few things were in my favor:

Same Career Track -- I have followed a fairly narrow career track of technology/media/Internet for 20 years now.
Social Positions -- My positions have centered around other people (I was a journalist, a deal-maker, entrepreneur, etc.)
Decently-Organized -- I'm a detail-oriented/organized-type of person and so I've done an ok job at entering in people's contact information over those years

So, the 3,000 names isn't that impressive -- it really just came from 20 years times of storing an average of 100+ contacts per year. That's just 1 new contact I made (and

Why You Should Be LinkedIn: Is $948 Per Connection (Per Year!) Appealing?

Rob Kelly — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:44:48 +0000

Are you linked in? If you're in business, you likely should be! LinkedIn is a business networking tool that allows you to keep track of your previous and current contacts as well as get linked to new ones. Why should you care? Because each of your contacts is worth an average of $948 in annual revenue according to this recent BusinessWeek article. I've been using LinkedIn since it was founded by Reid Hoffman in December of 2002. You can see my profile here: LinkedIn (note: You'll only be able to see my public profile there unless you are already a LinkedIn member). LinkedIn is similar to social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, only it's focused purely on business. There are numerous other professional networking sites out there -- with names