In last days I’m receiving a lot of connection requests within Facebook and LinkedIN. 100% of these are unqulified ones: from people I’ve never met before or I’ve never interact with and without any introduction. Because the easiness to click “Send connection request” and “Add as a Friend” button, It makes people lazy in giving you any kind of introduction about themself. This is a common and unfair behaviour on online networking. Doesn’t matter if you are trying to contact an Open Networker or Not. Even if your target contact is an open networker, it doesn’t mean that you can avoid to introduce yourself. Because your target contact is an open networker, she/he receives hundreds of contact requests and you probably will be just one of them, just a new stamp in her/his contact list, a new email address to “spam” to. After 5 minutes you’ve been added, probably she/he will have forgotten your name and your face. Ok, you have a connection more and probably you can access to her/his friends/contacts list and so what? Which is the goal you are reaching? Networking online is just the same as networking face-to-face. Would you ever approach to a person during an event without introducing yourself and asking her/him for their business card and address list? I suppose you wouldn’t. If you act like that, in the best scenario the person probably will give you her/his business card but she/he will forget you one second later. In the worst case she/he will completely ignore you even if he is an open networker. The politeness isn’t an option. Here is some advatages you can gain introducing yourself: You’ll be noticeable. Being a contact used to receive unqualified connection request, just because you’ve introduced yourself, you will be noticed by her/him. When you’ll send a new message, she/he will recognize you. You’ll be intersting. If in your introduction you’ll give a reason-why and you’ll show that you payed attention to the contact’s profile, you’ll drive your target contact to “study” your profile too. You’ll establish a relationship. Seeing a personalized message, a target contact will be impelled to write you back. You’ll get her/his attention and you shall establish a contact since the beginning. Paying attention to a small detail, such as writing 2 lines in your contact request, you are already helping your business. Is it a so big effort, comparing to the benefits?
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It was November 2004 when I joined Linkedin and I started approaching online business networking, finding out year by year the great opportunities belonging to this activity. Since then, I experimented and observed numerous ways to build and manage professional relationships using social web capabilities. Ten years later, my friend Gianluigi Cogo ( a real innovator in social related processes) and I publish “Business Networking, How to use social web for building professional relationships” (title translated) targeted to italian market. As written in the introduction, the book doesn’t claim to be a complete work (it is quite impossible, due to the on going social web evolution) but it offers a framework for understanding how to organize a profitable on line business networking. For this reason, the book starts from an introduction of business networking theory, going through tools and methodologies for both personal and corporate implementation, giving a sample of cases from “real world” and analyzing the impact of each action. More, we decide to complete our work with a “virtual” round table. The last part of the book cointains an interview to main protagonists of social media scene in Italy and Europe. You’ll find how Mauro Lupi, Barbara Bonaventura, Mafe De Baggis,Vincenzo Cosenza, Gianluca Diegoli, Marco Massarotto, Alberto D’Ottavi, Robin Good, Giorgio Soffiato and others are approaching at online business networking. Actually book is in Italian only, but if you’re a plublisher and you’re interested in translating it, please contact us. In the meanwhile, if you are interested in online Business Networking, you can follow us on Professional Networking on Scoop.it where we collect the best practice for turning online contacts in amassadors and increasing revenues.
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