People have been networking online long before it was tagged as “social media.” Meeting online through chat rooms, messages boards and the like, experimenting with reaching out beyond their immediate community. Now social media is a buzz word and many if not most people participate in one way or the other. There are many benefits to building a solid network online. I’ll touch on a few below.
Meet new people
Figured I’d state the obvious right off the bat. Networking online is a great way to meet new folks. The web allows you to chat with people you might have never met before. My network extends all over the world. It is interesting getting to know not only new people, the learning their culture as well. It’s funny when you start talking to others across the globe how much we all actually have in common. Now days, those involved in social media have “real life friends” and “online friends.”
It is easy to find those with similar interests as well. For example, you can quickly seek out those in your industry or those that share the same hobbies as you. You can build a professional and personal networks online.
Reach higher influence in social networks
Success in social media has a lot to do with, well, being social. Being social allows you to make friends. As you might have noticed on many social networks, the more friends, the more influence. Now, I’m not saying it’s a shear numbers game, because it’s not. Just like anything in life, quality often trumps quantity. But if you can combine quality with quantity in your online network, you can achieve a high level of social media influence.
Find jobs easier
This is especially important due to the economy and competition of the job market. If you have searched for a job in the past couple years, you’ll notice that applying through a Monster.com and others is similar to buying a lottery ticket. You technically have a chance that an employer will contact you about the job, but in reality your resume is competing with hundreds if not thousands of others. Employers are often overwhelmed with the responses they get after posting a new position.
You can think of it a little like marketing. You can push yourself in front of people and hope someone is interested, or you can put yourself in places where others are looking for qualities that you offer, thus potentially increasing your chances for employment. There are powerful sites like LinkedIn that allow you to create comprehensive profiles that those interested can search and browse. I often receive job opportunities on LinkedIn even when I’m not looking for employment. Many recruiters and employers use sites like LinkedIn to find potential candidates as opposed to placing an ad. It is surely a base you should cover.
Learn
Since I’m active in social media, I rarely need to check my RSS feeds and definitely don’t have to watch the news anymore. I get all the information I need from Twitter, Facebook and Digg to name a few. From my experience, news travels much faster on social media than anywhere else I’ve seen. There have been multiple occasions when events happened and I receive my updates on Twitter MUCH faster than TV, radio and news websites were updating. Social media operates pretty much real time, so there is virtually no lag.
Many people you network with online are open and share their experiences with you. Everything from strategies they have learned, successes they’ve had and even failures they have learned from.
You can also learn by asking for feedback. You can throw ideas out to your network and receive valuable feedback that you might not have otherwise gotten.
Networking in general is powerful. Everything from joining your local Chamber of Commerce, interest groups as well as online. It is a good idea to have a live, local network as well as an extended online network. Online networking has become a necessity for many people and the opportunities gained are virtually limitless.
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All good points. I would like to add that networking is a two-way street. You need to give to get. Too many people are focused on the getting: How many leads can I get from this person. Does he have a job for me? And so on. Networking is about relationship building. You need to develop trust in order for it to produce results.