“It’s not what you know but who you know” – one of those incredibly annoying business sayings which gets wheeled out time and time again. The aggravating thing is that it’s correct; knowing the right people is incredibly advantageous for any business, whether online or offline, for a variety of reasons. Whether it’s a feature on a popular website in your niche or an interview with your favourite F1 team, if you know the right people they can help you get that foot in the door.
The problem? How on earth do you get to know these people? Networking is a skill that comes naturally to a select few individuals and has to be worked hard on by most. The thing is it’s not necessarily as hard as you may think.
Have you got the balls?
The likelihood is that the people you could really benefit from being in contact with are well ahead of you in the game. As an example take Darren Rowse with his Problogger site, definitely one of the market leaders when it comes to covering how to make money online. If he were to feature me in any way on his site it would give me some great, and more importantly targeted exposure.
So how do I plan to go about doing it? I think the problem that many people, including myself have with networking is an irrational fear of trying to contact the person or people behind these businesses we one day aspire to mirror. Why on earth would that person wish to speak to me?
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