What is networking? Networking rules. Networking: connections are everything

It is often more useful to know many than many.
Robert Lembke

At the word Networking, many immediately associate with the Internet. Indeed, if we take a dictionary, we will translate as Net - network and Work - work. Networking? Not really. Actually Networking is the job of building a network. networks business contacts. The more these contacts, the more powerful the network, the more successfully any business and personal issues are resolved.

Sometimes, without realizing it, we have been engaged in networking since the first years of our lives. Kindergarten, school, college. We make friends with those who have cool toys; who is stronger or constantly has pocket money; who legibly and systematically writes notes and gets along with teachers ... For what? To get what we don’t have or to solve some of our “selfish” issues that arise on the horizon.

Networking: having the right connections, you can solve any problem

But the unconscious acquisition of contacts does not bring such a useful effect that you can get by networking purposefully!

How to acquire new contacts, acquire useful connections, and then maintain and develop established acquaintances - networking tells about all this.

Perhaps, networking has not yet been singled out as a separate area (as, for example, jurisprudence, economics, politics). But to call it a component of some kind of science is also not correct. This is comparable to the fact that a lawyer must write and speak correctly, an economist must count quickly and accurately, but neither grammar, nor literature, nor mathematics are subordinate to jurisprudence and economics.

Networking is a necessity for a successful life. It doesn't matter if you are a businessman or a housewife. It's just that some are engaged in the acquisition of contacts consciously and purposefully, while others are from case to case.

What networking gives you:
1. New acquaintances
2. Skills public speaking and improvement colloquial speech
3. Getting pleasure from communication
4. Expanding horizons in the process of exchanging views
5. The ability to resolve emerging issues better and faster
6. Feeling useful and needed by other people
7. Increasing personal self-esteem

And this is not all the advantages of networking. If you want to be more successful, start networking professionally! IN

Today I want to tell you about what is networking and review the main networking rules, the observance of which will allow them to deal with them most effectively. I must say right away that this is a very interesting, and most importantly, useful event. Exist different kinds networking, but we will be primarily interested in business networking. Although I think that the rules and recommendations discussed in this article can be successfully applied in other areas of human life.

What is networking?

The term "networking" is borrowed from in English, where it consists of two words: net (network) and work (work).

is the creation of a network of contacts and useful acquaintances, which in the future will be able to help in a quick and effective solution various issues. Networking is based on building long-term relationships between people based on trust and mutual assistance. It cannot be argued that the purpose of networking is to use other people for their own selfish purposes, since it involves mutual assistance to each other.

For example, I understand finance and make contacts with a doctor, programmer, electrician, etc., so that if necessary I can turn to them for professional help and advice, and they do the same to me.

Theory 6 handshakes.

Networking as a phenomenon was born on the basis of a pattern that was called the “6 handshake theory”. This theory was developed and proved in 1960 by American scientists Stanley Milgram and Geoffrey Travers.

The theory of 6 handshakes is that each person can indirectly know any other person on earth through a chain of mutual acquaintances, the length of which is most often 6 people.

Thus, using networking, you can get help not only from your acquaintances directly, but also from their acquaintances, and so on, along the chain. This is especially important when you need the help of some rather influential person or a person of a rare specialty, profession.

Types of networking.

In general, all types of networking can be divided into two broad areas:

1. social networking- establishing contacts that can help in solving any domestic and social issues. Often in this way they are looking for people with similar interests and tasks, social circles of interest are formed.

For example: young mothers get to know each other in order to be able to resolve issues related to their babies faster and more efficiently.

2. Business networking– establishing business contacts that may be useful for solving any business problems.

For example: entrepreneurs get to know each other in order to exchange experience, search for employees, etc.

As I said, further I will consider business networking. Where and how is the best place to look for business contacts who might be useful? Of course, on the Internet. Professional business portals, business forums, social media(thematic business communities), and other sites visited by business people, as well as online trainings and webinars.

I want to look at the basic rules of networking that will help you establish the right business connections, and therefore open up broader prospects for business development.

Networking rules.

1. Complete your profile in detail. When you register on any site, or join a social network community for the purpose of business networking, take the trouble to fill in all the necessary information about yourself as much as possible, put a photo, and all this must be true and relevant. So they can immediately form an impression about you, and it’s much easier to get to know a person, seeing who he is and what he is like. Moreover, those who are interested in you will be able to find you by keywords in your profile.

2. Observe business etiquette. Be humble, be confident, communicate in a businesslike and respectful tone, address strangers with “you”. Of course, any kind of error in the letter is categorically unacceptable.

3. Be concise. When addressing other people for the purpose of business networking, form your letter briefly and clearly, immediately stating the purpose of your appeal. It should be single and specific. Briefly explain why you chose him. The first appeal should contain no more than 2-3 small paragraphs.

4. Get recommendations. The best way lead successful business networking - get referrals from your mutual friends using the theory of 6 handshakes. If you write “I was recommended to contact you by such and such a person”, you will have a much better chance of getting an answer and establishing a business contact.

5. Show your competence. Before you start personal appeals in order to establish business contacts, it is advisable to communicate “in public” for some time on the most discussed topics, demonstrating your competence and professionalism. So a certain impression will already be formed about you, perhaps they will even begin to contact you first.

6. Quality is more important than quantity. It is worth striving to make not as many business contacts as possible, but contacts with those people who can be useful to you. In addition, remember that networking is mutual assistance, so immediately think: can you yourself qualitatively help so many people?

7. Don't be persistent. If certain person does not want to make contact with you - do not insist. You need to understand that this is inevitable: all people are different, and everyone can perceive you in their own way. Your persistence will only cause irritation and leave a negative impression of yourself.

8. Think about how you can be useful to a person. Since business networking is based on reciprocity, immediately think about how useful you can be for the person you want to get to know. And tell him about it, because any business man First of all, he thinks about his own profit.

9. Don't add everyone as a friend. Probably, everyone is familiar with the phenomenon when someone unfamiliar asks to be friends on social networks, you add him, but he is silent. Therefore, it is better not to do this: whoever needs it will immediately write the purpose of his request. Do you know the saying “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are”? For this reason, you should have really worthy people in your friends, and not just anyone.

10. Post interesting and valuable information. If you will be running your page, blog, or creating topics on the portal, make sure that they are relevant to your business interests and needs, as well as contain valuable information for others. Imagine what will happen if the person with whom you want to establish business contact goes to your page and sees stupid and indecent pictures with obscene expressions there?

Summarize. Of course, networking is very interesting and useful tool to establish the necessary business connections and contacts, but, like any tool, it will be effective only in capable hands, and in inept hands, on the contrary, it can be harmful. It must be remembered that it is very difficult for a person to reach the goal alone. It is much easier to do this by joint efforts - here it starts to act. Use networking in life and business.

Now you know what networking is, the theory of 6 handshakes and what are the basic rules of networking. I hope this information was helpful to you.

Join regular readers and you will get a lot of useful tips and advice on earning, investing, managing personal finances and achieving success. See you soon!

"Networking - what is it?" - you ask. This is the creation of a circle of acquaintances for doing business. Each of us knows that connections are everything. If you reread the biographies of successful people, you will notice that once someone helped them in some way. Only thanks to other people they were able to become famous and rich. This article will focus on networking - the ability to create connections and maintain them. Read more about this skill below.

The concept of "networking"

Networking is the creation of a network for the exchange of experience and communication, consisting of friends, relatives, acquaintances, friends of acquaintances and their relatives.

Networking. Books dedicated to this skill:

How to look for friends?

Set a goal to meet one new person every day. It doesn't matter where you meet him: on the street, at work or in the store. Making new friends is a constant need. If you want to get to know a specific person, swipe preparatory work. You will need to find out what places he visits, where he dine, what his hobby is. At the very first conversation, your future friend should understand that he needs you, and not you, and it is you who can be useful to him. In a delicate way, talk about the benefits that he will receive if he strikes up an acquaintance with you. Get a good diary where you can write down all contacts, as well as hobbies, hobbies, new friends. Gradually transfer this data to the computer.

1. Always give more than you receive.
2. Seek every opportunity to help others.
3. Make real friends.

Benefits of networking:

1. In a situation where you do not know who is asking for help, you can give him contacts of other people who will help themselves or advise another useful person.
2. You will never be bored, because you will constantly learn something new about business, the world that surrounds us, and other people.

Connections are the key to success

Every person who is constantly developing and wants to know what networking is. "What will it give?" - you ask. Naturally, the opportunity to achieve financial success!

• tutorial

Imagine yourself in a large conference room filled with hundreds of experts with badges on their chests. Flocks of anxious-looking people loiter past snack tables laden with biscuits and pies during the break. Others waltz through the labyrinth of partners' pedestals, next to which men and women in business attire conjure over neatly laid out advertising brochures and branded pens. Still others are standing staring at their phones...

You came to the event in person, although you could later watch it in your favorite slippers at home or in the subway car on your way to work. You did it for a purpose, didn't you? Communicate with some important experts; hear how more experienced people solve similar problems with big data analysis in Hadoop or reduce Google Analytics tracking glitches; meet a new potentially interesting startup or journalist, or maybe you yourself are a startup and came to look for useful contacts; gain a lot of new clients; find and motivate future employees. Your task is to leave a positive lasting impression on the maximum number of people over the next few hours. Already starting to suck under the spoon?

Networking is a cross between the art and science of building professional relationships, but few of us do it naturally. There are many great reasons for networking, and most importantly, the more people you meet, the larger your circle of acquaintances and the greater the chances of finding best clients, partners, employers or employees… At least in theory.

But for many introverts (and there are many of us), big industry events make them feel like they're in first grade for the first time. "Just smile and introduce yourself!" Mom told you. Aha, shaz!

Introverts are masters of thoughtful one-on-one conversations with loved ones, but they find it incredibly difficult to sell themselves and their ideas to complete strangers with a carefully rehearsed Elevator Pitch.

What is Elevator Pitch

Elevator presentation (or elevator speech) (eng. Elevator Pitch or Elevator Speech) - short story about the concept of a product, project or service. The term reflects time constraints - the length of the presentation should be such that it can be fully told in the time of the elevator ride, that is, about thirty seconds or 100-150 words.

So how do you develop a strong and effective professional network if you hate networking? Calm, just calm. Having been making apps for business for more than a year, we have probably eaten a hundred dogs, books and articles on working with business cards, contacts and acquaintances, and therefore we have the honor to tell you a dozen practical and really useful networking tips that even a social phobe can use. By the way, for advanced users, for whom this is not enough, I highly recommend visiting the Global Networking Marathon on May 23-25 ​​at DI Telegraph with a real networking guru.

1: Make yourself cool but easy-to-read business cards

Despite the fact that business cards have been buried for more than a dozen years, it is still one of the most important tools for establishing contacts and continuing communication. If you come to the event without business cards, your networking opportunities fall below the waterline (but still possible, see point 2).

There are a lot of tips to improve their "coolness" and visibility, such as making business cards in the form of coins, seed bags or voluminous designs from cardboard, but in fact, ingenious business cards with strange fonts and a background image of the planet Earth are not really appreciated in the business community. impressionist technique.

This is how you don't have to do it

The main thing is that the business card is readable and contains all the necessary information. A similar opinion is shared, for example, by time management guru Gleb Arkhangelsky.

Recently, more and more people are using business card scanners to quickly save information from a business card to phone contacts (for example, our ABBYY Business Card Reader : download from the App Store , download from Google Play). Business card scanners can do many other useful things: write notes, assign tasks to a contact, upload business cards to cloud storage, in Excel, look for a contact on social networks, etc. If the application “processes” your card with great difficulty, you will have problems, since manually retyping data will not cause anything but negative.

What are the "must have" requirements for business cards to consider. In our experience, these are:

Business card requirements

1. Printed on thick matte paper.
2. Design should be as discreet, simple and concise as possible.
3. It is desirable that all important contact information be collected on one side of the business card. The reverse side is best left clean for notes that the recipient of the business card will make.
4. When choosing a font, it is best to avoid italics. In contacts, it is better to use the same font color everywhere.
5. The background and font should be contrasting, ideally white background and black font. You should avoid combinations of gray background plus dark gray font, green background plus blue font. The background must be uniform.
6. The company logo should be clearly separated from the rest of the information by color and style so that the text with the logo is not confused with the rest of the information.
7. The orientation of the business card is preferably horizontal.
8. For foreign partners - separate English-language business cards, and not Russian contacts on the one hand, English contacts on the other.

Here is an example:

What happens when you can't stand out with a business card? Well, why not. First, you can buy and stick a special NFC tag with your information written on a business card.

Secondly, no one bothers to add some nuance to the business card, which will not interfere with simple reading or recognition, but will be memorable for a person. For example, an unusual job title, a photo, a picture of your product or maybe even your favorite book, a (small) QR code with a link to your product, or an interesting quest, a crossword or a subway map (just kidding).

Even if you don’t work anywhere (student) and are only looking for a job, print yourself 100 business cards (it will cost no more than a couple of cups of coffee) indicating the position of “consultant” or “junior iOS developer”, or even write a company named after you on the business card and you can get much more out of the event.

Business cards should always be at hand: in the front pocket of a jacket is best. Also, you should always have one hand free (a phone in one hand, a plate of tartlets in the other - this is a disaster) to shake hands, give a business card or offer a handkerchief to the lady.

2. If you run out of business cards, improvise

happened scary tale- you forgot business cards at home or they suddenly ran out. What to do? Improvise!
Firstly, you can write down your contacts (name, surname, company, position, e-mail address, phone number) on a piece of paper, carefully torn from a notebook distributed at the event. The main thing is to do it carefully and use a size as close as possible to standard 5x9 cm business cards.

Secondly, you can ask the interlocutors to immediately write down your contact details on the phone or find and add you through social networks (Facebook, or better LinkedIn). You can answer “plus one friend” immediately at the event.

Thirdly, key conferences often have their own mobile app just for more convenient networking and communication. Some interlocutors can sometimes be reached only through them, the fear of personal communication also removes it, but most often it is impossible to hope for some kind of breakthrough using remote means without real communication. This is just a way to consolidate the personal contact that has already taken place.

3. Come early, leave late

If you hate networking, you most likely hate parties with large crowds of people. And you are not alone. Devora Zach, author of Networking for Introverts, says that introverts thrive with a small group of people, but withdraw into themselves in a crowd. The simplest life hack on how to avoid the crowd is to come to the event early, when people are at a minimum.

As the first guest, you have the chance to have a one-on-one chat with several members before the main fuss begins. You'll also have the added bonus of making a first impression before your conversation partners drown in a sea of ​​business cards and handshakes. Perhaps you will have so many fruitful conversations in the first half hour that there will be no reason to stay for the entire event and eat snacks "alone in the crowd", struggling to cope with bouts of demophobia.

The same applies to late departures. Sometimes the most interesting things happen at the very end: the closest contacts, the most interesting interlocutors, the most productive communication and valuable insights happen after the main crowd subsides and people tired of the event disperse home. Do not miss these opportunities, stay a little longer and you will be rewarded.

4. Try to relax

This advice sounds very trite, but in fact, networking is essentially a friendly communication and making pleasant contacts with new people. This is not a phone conversation trying to sell Forex investments and imposing Kirby vacuum cleaners on all the neighbors, this is meeting new people. Some of them may end up being yours. best friends, someone is an investor in your project, a new employer or partner, and someone, perhaps, a future wife or husband. This is not a race for the number of business cards and acquaintances, but the establishment of meaningful contacts.

Try to look energetic and smile. You may not immediately learn to enjoy communicating with (yet) strangers, but imagine what it will be like for them to see your sour, shy mine. If you are completely exhausted, go to the toilet and jump for 2 minutes. Seriously, it works! After such an “operation”, you can cheer up better than a dozen cups of coffee.

Dress confidently and professionally. No need to put on a formal suit and new shoes, and then wander around with a sad look “well, he doesn’t suit me!”. Throw on a shirt, a casual jacket and jeans and you'll already look stylish and comfortable, giving the impression of " successful person". If the jacket doesn't suit your image at all, dress comfortably, but spend at least 5 minutes choosing jeans and a T-shirt that you won't be ashamed to show yourself in people.

5. Set goals: the exact number of people to meet

Even with masterful use of all the previous tips, you may still be shy around strangers. This is the norm! You can be a savvy entrepreneur, a creative thinker, a talented programmer, but no one will know a thing about you if you can't even open your mouth!

There is a small life hack: set the goal for the event to talk to a certain number people and stick to it no matter how things go. If you promise yourself that you're going to talk to at least 10 new people, don't break your promise. Reward yourself with ice cream or an extra hour of Warcraft if you can keep your word.

Or take a friend with you and bet: whoever talks to least amount people and take fewer business cards, treats to dinner. Having set a goal, you direct all the efforts of your consciousness and subconsciousness to something specific, removing all obstacles and doubts on the way. Plus, once you reach your goal, you'll have a real reason to leave!

6. Communication with one person and with a group is different: do not be intrusive

If you see people standing alone, sadly looking into the distance (or vice versa inside themselves) or staring at smartphones, these are ideal candidates for communication! The whole look of this person says: “well, someone come to me, I didn’t come to the event to read the feed of messages from people who are in a completely different place.” While introverts often need a break from the crowds alone, a two-minute polite conversation never hurt anyone. Of course, at first politely ask, for example, like this: “Will I disturb you? May I ask?..” Or simply: “Hi, my name is Sergey, how do you like the event / reports / snacks?”

By the way, I can recommend the book “How to talk to anyone. Confident Communication in Any Situation ”, rather unobtrusively talks about different strategies for just destroying the fear of communication.

If the person you are interested in is already talking to someone in the group, do not approach, pushing everyone away and introducing yourself, this is unpleasant. Get close enough to be noticed and just stand there listening to the conversation. If you have something to say about the topic of the conversation, feel free to use it. If not, wait, in any case, they will pay attention to you and you can join the conversation.

Ideally, if there is someone you know in a group of people, pause during the conversation and ask to be introduced to you. This method also works if you need to meet someone alone. If your acquaintance knows the person you need, ask to be introduced and continue the conversation with the new interlocutor. This allows you to get a much deeper contact than self-acquaintance.

7. Be Interested, Not Interesting

Socializing events are often quite frustrating for introverts because we think networking is all about selling ourselves and making deals. But it's not! Networking is about building relationships, and an important part of it is being genuinely interested in the other side. This is exactly where introverts can excel.

If you are an observant and thoughtful person, you are probably a great listener. Use these skills. When you strike up a conversation, don't try to drown the other person in an ocean of your business ideas or professional skills. Ask why they came to the event and do not immediately switch to yourself, dig deeper. Ask how they got into this business or this position, what they love most about their job, what interesting things they have created or experienced lately. If you feel comfortable, ask about hobbies or family. It creates the right first impression!

Once you have built some sort of relationship, it will be much easier for you to talk about yourself and your ideas. Interlocutors will be interested in you because you were interested in them.

And one more tip: pay maximum attention to the interlocutor! If you ask a personal question and then scroll through your Facebook feed or look around for other people, you're signaling "yeah, I'm not really interested in this at all." Just 2 minutes of 100% attention on a person is much better than half an hour of chatter, on which you are constantly distracted!

8. First of all, think about how useful you are

As I already mentioned, in my opinion, networking is the opposite process of sales. If their goal is to sell what you have to a person who does not need it yet (although it may be necessary), then the goal of networking is to help a person, give him what he needs in order to earn trust, and possibly get something. then in return (but this is not an end in itself).

First of all, think about what you can give people at the event YOU! What do you know how to do, what do you know, who do you know. If you do not intersect in any way with the sphere of interests of the person you need, there is practically no chance of any kind of relationship. But don't think that if you're a student or junior developer, you have nothing to offer a Forbes billionaire or Google's chief architect. You can recommend an interesting book or article, give advice on using an IT service, or even recommend a new music album or concert.

Prepare a short, impactful performance story (no more than 20 seconds). Do not say that you are a bank manager or a Java programmer. It says absolutely nothing about you personally! Share how you help people make their financial dreams come true or create programs that help millions of people recover faster.

9. Use social networks for real communication

This advice is best for those who are looking for a job. Professional sites like LinkedIn or Professionals.ru are amazing search tools. the right people, but they are poorly suited for construction real relationship which may lead to a job offer. To do this, you need "old-fashioned" live meetings.

Start by looking for professionals who work in the right field or occupy the desired position in the company. Most often they are on the 2nd or 3rd circle of contacts (that is, acquaintances of your acquaintances). You can ask any of your "social friends" to introduce you, but even if this is not possible, write a personal letter about you, why you would like to add the person to your contacts. The best thing to do would be to ask about their experience, to hear their "story". How did they get into this business? Which interesting experience they have? What advice can they give to someone who is trying to enter this professional field?

If you live in the same city, invite them for coffee or lunch. If you live far away, ask permission to make a phone call or Skype. Don't talk about yourself, listen to their story, do an "interview". You don't have to ask if they have an open position, more often than not, if there is one, they will tell you about it. End the meeting by asking for the names of other people they recommend contacting. Write thank you letter and, if necessary, ask to be kept up to date with open vacancies and, if this is not taken rudely, include a link to your resume.

10. Remind yourself

Networking experts unanimously say one thing: if you don’t remind yourself, you lose your hard-earned contacts. The consensus opinion of networking guru Keith Ferrazzi (author of Never Eat Alone) is that you should write to e-mail, SMS, via social networks or call within 48 hours after the first meeting. But how not to be imposed, but to be useful?

The best way to overcome the awkwardness of subsequent contact is to make it as natural as possible. If you are a good listener and paid maximum attention to the interlocutor (and I think you took advice number 7 seriously), you will not have any problems with further communication, because you remember that Vasya is interested in books on personal development, Masha is engaged in self assembly industrial robots on Arduino, and Petya is looking for an application for meditation. (If you have memory problems, make notes on business cards interlocutors after the conversation).

If you really want to build a relationship, don't send an impersonal "nice to meet you" email. Find something that will be useful for people: a review of a recently published book on personality development, a rare collection of sensors for Arduino on eBay, or a link to the program Petya needs with a description of how you use it to the maximum. Then your letter will not be self-promotion, but a really valuable message, and you will make a good impression. And if you get an answer, and the interlocutor really interests you, offer to meet in a cafe during the week.

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Good day, dear reader! From this article you will learn about an interesting science - the science of networking. What is networking? Most people who more or less know English will reason as follows: the word is “no” (net - network), and “work” (work-work), therefore, this science means something like “working on the network (Internet )". This logic is quite understandable, but the term “networking” has practically nothing to do with working in a global space. It means something completely different, but what exactly - read on.

Networking- this is building business relationships with the aim of obtaining certain benefits in the future. To put it simply, networking is about making connections. As you understand, friendship for the purpose of profit has always existed. It just never occurred to anyone to call this phenomenon such a buzzword - networking. IN Soviet times the presence of connections was called even more simply - blat. By the way, for those who are interested, the word “blat” is of German origin, which means “piece of paper”.

As they say, in a good again Soviet proverb: “Without a piece of paper you are a poop, but with a piece of paper, well done!” Then, it turns out that in our days there is nowhere to go without networking.

Moreover, it may not be interesting for you to create a network of people in order to extract further benefits for yourself. This sounds somehow intimidating, or something, as if you are trying to enslave this world. However, you will do this without even consciously, just living on this planet. After all, you meet new people almost every day, you have constant contacts with classmates, work colleagues, both business and friendly, in general, you are engaged in nothing more than enslaving the world Joke, of course, although ...

So if you still willy-nilly encounter networking, then it would be nice to still study this science at least in in general terms in order to use the acquired knowledge for their own benefit. All the same, networking requires almost nothing, except to just live and communicate with people.

In general, networking as a scientific trend originated in the 70s. 20th century America. It all started with the so-called "6 handshake theory" - a theory that says that any two people on Earth are separated, on average, by only five levels of mutual acquaintances (and, accordingly, six levels of connections).

It was proposed in 1969 by American psychologists Stanley Milgram and Geoffrey Travers. The hypothesis put forward by them was that every person on Earth is indirectly familiar with any other inhabitant of the planet through a short chain of mutual acquaintances.

Then other cunning and pragmatic Americans developed this idea and realized that with the help of a network of their contacts, almost any problem could be solved. And at the same time, the larger your network, the faster you will be able to find a person who will be able to help you in this or that business or life situation.

For example, you have a younger brother, and he recently swallowed his lost milk tooth. What will adults do? They will start at urgently call all your friends who have at least some relation to the medical field and ask for advice about the situation that has occurred.

As you can see, people quite consciously use the "gifts" of networking, without even realizing that they are simply "shaking their network and finding a solution to their problem at the other end of it." Now it is clear why rich people communicate with people of equal status - such people are more likely to have what the richest person does not have. It looks something like this: “Hi, Roman! Can I take your yacht for a weekend ride or you can take my jet and fly to Australia.”

What is the best way to build a network in networking?

In fact, building a business network is quite simple and uncomplicated if you are a sociable and sociable person. By the way, who cares to know, these two words are similar, but have a slightly different meaning.

The word "sociable" means a person who likes to talk for no particular purpose, just like that. Such a conversation is also called a "heart-to-heart conversation." Sociable people usually they are the soul of the company, etc.

The word "sociable" means a person who communicates with another person for a specific purpose. For example, if you work in an office, then you go to your boss for a meeting with a specific goal - to make a presentation on the level of sales, for example.

Sociability is more inherent in business, business people who simply do not have time for "heart-to-heart talk" in work time. For networking, it is important to have both sociability (for starting a conversation) and sociability (for further positioning yourself as a person with certain abilities that are useful to other people).

After you have understood the difference between these two adjectives, it is worth mentioning several principles of networking, without knowing which building business networks will be very problematic.

Principles of networking

1. Constantly maintaining contact with other members of your business network.

If you are familiar with influential person, then in order for this person to help you at the right time, you need to constantly remind you of your existence. Today it is easier than ever to do this: social networks, sms-congratulations, etc. help you! Such reminders act as a kind of "connection check", something like "first-first, I'm second, as you hear, reception."

Or, if you prefer, self-reminders are a kind of “lube” for the construction of your business network. After all, when the moment comes when you urgently need this or that person, you need your network to work without failures, right? Otherwise, why is it needed at all?

2. Asking for something from one, you yourself must give something to another.

In the network, as you know, everyone is equal. Each acts as a certain link connected with other participants in the mechanism. In connection with such a “democracy”, you should always be ready not only to ask someone for help, but also to be always ready to help any member of your network. Here you can draw an analogy with the work of the president. What gives the presidency? Glory, respect, honor of the citizens of this country. It also gives a certain “subordination” of people to the power of the president.

Although this should not be the case in developed countries, the fact remains. In turn, the president of the country must constantly be "charged" on possible problems their subjects. Thus, he, as it were, "pays" or pays tribute to his network. As you can see, networking is a universal thing, and it (in the sense of technology or science) can be applied everywhere, even in the highest echelons of power.

3. All power is in weak contacts.

As strange as it may seem at first, people who are on the very periphery of our network of business contacts come to our aid in difficult times. Indeed, in some situations people are helped only by acquaintances of acquaintances who know a person who can solve your problem. It is likely that you have encountered similar "oddities".

However, now you know that it's easy typical example networking work.

In fact, there are a great many of these principles. We have listed only the most important ones. If you are interested in the topic of networking, then we advise you to listen to a wonderful audio book by Darcy Rezak "Connections are everything". In it you will find many useful information about networking and take a fresh look at your ability to make new acquaintances.

Its main purpose is to create business connections with the aim of further extracting benefits from the created network for oneself in the future. Moreover, this benefit should not exceed your “giving back” of your time and effort to other people. Oh, here we talked a little about positive networking. Well, okay, we hope that we will motivate you to do self-education, because after all, we believe that human development in modern world- this is one of the most valuable virtues.

Now you know, what is networking.

Sincerely, the site team website

P.S. You can also watch 2 videos to get even more inspired by the philosophy of networking.