Networking: It Pays To Reach Out

Networking– it’s important. Especially if you’re a one-man shop like me, living in the woods of New Hampshire!

I do most of my networking online. I have all these friends and clients I’ve never actually met. They’re so supportive.
I’d be lost without ’em.

Networking is mostly about building relationships. You hope it will lead to work, of course, but not everyone’s ready to buy. Some may never need your services.

But you try to do your best for each person, and hope they’ll reciprocate. It’s a great feeling when someone in your network passes along your name.

I was featured in a post called 10 Entrepreneurs Explain How They Leverage Networking in Business.

It contains some excellent tips– well worth reading.

My own contribution focused on referrals. Here it is:

When I do work for someone in my network, I always
ask for a testimonial that I can feature on both my website and my LinkedIn profile.

I insert these testimonials at the end of every blog post,
and those I post on LinkedIn and Medium.

I write up case studies for all assignments, and ask clients to tweet them to their followers.

I cultivate other contacts by quoting them in my posts, then asking them to share the posts with their own networks.

All my posts contain one or more illustrations, so when my contacts share same, they give my work wider distribution.

How do you use networking to build your business? Do you have a tip? Please share it in a comment. Let’s learn from each other– that’s really what networking is all about.

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About Mark: I’m an illustrator specializing in humor, branding, social media, and content marketing. My images are different, like your brand needs to be.

You can view my portfolio, and connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Questions? Send me an email.

Follow @mrstrongarm