For Starters: Networking 101 - People Are Your Best Resource

Jul 10th, 2007 by Leonid Shalimov | Scroll down for comments

Welcome to the second article in the For Starters series. It’s kind of harsh referring to friends and colleagues as ‘resources’ but we’re not saying it in a possessive sense. People need other people to succeed in one way or another, you might not like it but its true.

Networking is one of the most crucial steps when starting a blog (or a business, or really anything for that matter). It’s not easy and it takes hard work. Most people are generous and willing to help to get you through it as long as you are determined to reach them.

Get to know people that are in your niche.

This is the simplest it gets. Put yourself out there and don’t be afraid to contact other people. Some will be friendly, others won’t, but the majority will be willing to help (have some faith in humanity).

A good resource for finding other blogs in your niche is Technorati. Search for popular keywords that revolve around what you are doing. Scroll through that list of sites and feel free to comment on the blogs or even contact the site owners.

Lightning Tip: When commenting on someone’s blog, don’t copy and paste pre-written stuff. Take the time out to read and give an in-depth comment, most blog owners will appreciate this more than some crappy spam.

Another good resource is the BlogFlux Directory. This seems to be one of the most popular recent blog directories. Find your niche and do the same thing as with Technorati.

Don’t be afraid to market yourself.

Let others know what you’re doing. Take the time to sit down and write a small & personal ‘elevator’ pitch. An elevator pitch for those who don’t know is a pitch that you should be able to tell someone quickly in an elevator setting that will get your point across clearly and concisely.

Write something around two paragraphs with a closer (Sincerely works best) and save a copy to your desktop. Now anytime you contact someone or send an e-mail out, you have that ready.

Learn from your mistakes. You should be messing up once in awhile.

Messed up? Good. Take the time to learn from it. You won’t be getting everything right and in a way, thats a good thing. It’s better to make mistakes earlier than later.

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Leonid Shalimov posted this article under Self Improvement, Series - For Starters on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 6:13 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment or trackback from your own site. View Technorati Linkbacks.