{"id":2623,"date":"2011-02-26T03:29:58","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T03:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/?p=2623"},"modified":"2011-02-26T03:29:58","modified_gmt":"2011-02-26T03:29:58","slug":"the-end-of-networking-as-we-know-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/the-end-of-networking-as-we-know-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The End of Networking as We Know It!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I loathe\u00a0business networking. <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Chamber of Commerce meetings. Networking \u201cspeed dating.\u201d\u00a0 Trade shows.\u00a0 Business Networking International.<\/p>\n

But when I started my own business, this seemed to be the only alternative.\u00a0 My last \u201ccorporate job\u201d was global in nature. For years I had been leading teams in China, Russia, Brazil, Australia \u2014 almost every corner of the world \u2014 and really had no significant business connections \u2014 no business leads \u2014 in my own region of the country!\u00a0 So I had to get out and press the flesh.<\/p>\n

I dutifully began\u00a0the circuit of lunch and breakfast meetings, hoping beyond hope that a connection would lead to a connection and conversations would turn into customers.\u00a0 It was an endless loop of meeting the same insurance salespeople, bug exterminators and realtors over and over again.<\/p>\n

The end of networking as I know it!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then came the moment that made me realize I HAD to find another way. I attended a local networking meeting called \u201cTNT.\u201d I can\u2019t remember what it stood for, but I\u2019m pretty sure the middle word was \u201cNetworking!\u201d\u00a0 At the beginning of the meeting, everybody stood up and said something nice about their business. At the end of each uplifting description, the whole room yelled \u201cBOOM!\u201d\u00a0 TNT \u2014 get it?\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know it was coming and after that first BOOM somebody had to peel me off the ceiling.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0just wasn\u2019t for me.\u00a0 And it wasn\u2019t working anyway.\u00a0 Luckily, this era of my life coincided with\u00a0the dawn of Twitter.\u00a0 I\u00a0enjoyed the fascinating people, humor, and intelligence that surrounded me once I got in the Twitter groove.\u00a0 And\u00a0I didn\u2019t realize it at the time, but I had stumbled upon\u00a0the greatest business networking opportunity\u00a0in the history of mankind.<\/p>\n

A new way of connecting<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was connecting with extraordinary people who would have been impossible to know just a few years earlier.\u00a0 Many connections became friendships. The friendships went offline into phone calls and meetings.\u00a0 The synergies seemed to multiply day by day and soon I was collaborating on projects, hiring Twitter connections for freelance work, and helping others find employment.<\/p>\n

As the enormous benefits of Twitter networking accumulated, I stopped the time-consuming and expensive local meetings completely.\u00a0Today, I have a thriving international business built almost entirely through social networking. My three largest customers and five most important collaborators all came to me via Twitter.<\/p>\n

For about a year and half I have been teaching a social media marketing class at universities including the Rutgers University Center for Management Development<\/a>.\u00a0 I’ve been able to show others how Twitter can change their lives too — and it has worked!\u00a0 The success stories have been nothing short of inspirational.<\/p>\n

One of my biggest frustrations is being unable to help people who can’t take my live classes.\u00a0 I simply can’t explain Twitter success strategies and tactics in a phone call, a 30-minute webinar or a blog post.\u00a0 I had to do something more. So I wrote a book.<\/p>\n

A path forward<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>If you’re struggling with Twitter or simply want to take your game up a notch, I know that my new book, The Tao of Twitte<\/a>r, will help.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because every Twitter success story, case study, and business benefit has a common formula.<\/strong> Every time. No exceptions.<\/p>\n

This book solves\u00a0four\u00a0problems:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. It takes the mystery out of Twitter<\/strong> for anybody facing the same struggle.<\/li>\n
  2. It provides a proven path to create meaningful, measurable business and personal benefits<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
  3. It’s inexpensive,<\/strong> so anybody can access this helpful information.<\/li>\n
  4. It will help you quickly get up to speed <\/strong>and avoid months of frustration.\u00a0\u00a0The whole book takes maybe 90 minutes to read.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I hope you’ll check out The Tao of Twitter, via hardcopy or electronic version, and let me know how it helps!<\/p>\n

    Mark Schaefer<\/a> is a consultant<\/a> and faculty member of the Rutgers University Center for Management Development<\/a> and his blog {grow}<\/a> is one of the Advertising Age Top 100 marketing blogs of the world.<\/p>\n

    Mark Schaefer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I loathe\u00a0business networking. The Chamber of Commerce meetings. Networking \u201cspeed dating.\u201d\u00a0 Trade shows.\u00a0 Business Networking International. But when I started my own business, this seemed to be the only alternative.\u00a0 My last \u201ccorporate job\u201d was global in nature. For years I had been leading teams in China, Russia, Brazil, Australia \u2014 almost every corner of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,435],"tags":[472,1090,1088,924,247,1089,244],"class_list":["post-2623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-markschaefer","tag-book","tag-forward","tag-networking","tag-new","tag-path","tag-success-story","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2623"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2631,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions\/2631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}