Your Blog Can Beat LinkedIn at the Networking Game

Note: This is a guest post from Michael Benidt and Sheryl Kay, who are business researchers and technology trainers, and the authors of HiddenBusinessTreasures.com. They’re great friends of the Hill Library, and we’re thrilled to hear their take on online networking.

When it comes to building your business almost everything you’ve been told about the Internet is wrong. Want a couple of examples? How ‘bout these two widely accepted business building strategies:

• Write a blog to grow your business

• Join LinkedIn to grow your business relationships

Writing a blog will not grow your business. And, joining LinkedIn will not grow your business relationships.

Does that mean that writing a blog and joining LinkedIn have no value? Of course not. It’s just the way they really work is not the way you’d think.

Let’s take blogging. While writing a blog won’t grow your business per se, writing a blog can grow your business relationships – far beyond what LinkedIn can do and far beyond what you might have imagined.


Hitch Your Wagon to a Blog

So why won’t writing a blog build your business? Just look at any random list of small businesses and check out their blogs. You’ll find a huge percentage of them are abandoned, ignored or never got started in the first place.

Right at this moment there are (if I count right – keep your hand up please) 97,396,448 blogs in the United States alone. Tomorrow there will be 143,486,336. The odds of anyone finding your blog are astronomical. The odds of anyone having time to read it are even more astronomical.

However, the odds of someone selling you a blogging workshop, teleseminar or boot camp are, much, much higher. This is why the people making money are the ones who are telling you to blog – not the ones who are blogging. Are you starting to get it?


Taken In by Networking Sites

Now, we’re not picking on LinkedIn or other business networking sites. But, LinkedIn doesn’t build significant relationships any more than a business mixer does. You’re the one who builds the relationships. These sites don’t do it for you.

And, the truth is, most of the folks on business networking sites don’t want a relationship. They want a link.

Here is an exercise you can do to prove this for yourself. Next time someone invites you on LinkedIn, write to them. Update them on what you’ve been doing - the kids have grown; Aunt Lucy is in rehab; you’ve switched jobs twelve times. I’ll give you odds that they won’t write back.

And, if they do write back and tell you about their Aunt Lucy, take notice of how few ever go beyond that first exchange.

The fact is that they’ve “tagged” you - and that was the point. They don’t want a relationship. They want a bigger list. It’s the online equivalent of counting coup.


There’s More Than Information in Them Thar Hills

Instead of looking to LinkedIn to create relationships for you – and instead of fiddling with your blog to gain readership, what if you could use your blog to create the kind of real relationships that will truly help you build your business?

How do you do this? The secret is in the raw material found in search engine news alerts and RSS feeds. Managing and coping with this kind of information input has been nicely covered by Shirl Kennedy in her article on this blog, Information Overload -- Bring It On!

Shirl focuses on the value of the information in these stories – and rightly so. But, there’s more. Let’s focus on the people who are featured in those news stories.


The Reporter’s Secret

What makes news feeds and alerts such a fertile networking arena? The secret is in the way reporters write their articles. They create three main human contact points:

• EXPERTS - When a reporter writes an article, he or she is unlikely to be an expert on the topic. So, the reporter will interview and quote knowledgeable, believable experts. They do this to give the article “authority.”

• FEATURED INDIVIDUALS - Reporters also need a human-interest angle for the story. Articles that only include facts rarely capture our interest. As readers, we want to know how real people are affected.

• BY-LINE - Finally, and perhaps most important, such articles regularly include the reporter’s e-mail address.

The folks above are all potential networking connections for you. You see, these online days, they are accessible. With the help of search engines, James J. Hill Library resources like the Dun & Bradstreet Million Dollar Total, and other tools you can almost always find their email address and even their phone number. Sam Richter’s recent blog reminds us about the power of ZoomInfo.com in How to Be an Online Spy, and Use What You Find for Sales Success.

Yes, you can find them.


So, Go Ahead – Write to Them

The most powerful thing about your blog is that by blogging, you become a member of the press. Well, OK, admittedly, there is much debate about that – and traditional reporters might gag at that claim.

But, you can’t argue with this. The most powerful thing about your blog is that you’re more likely to get a response when you say, “I’d like to interview you for my blog,” than when you say, “I’d like to get to know you better.”

So, are you beginning to get the idea? It’s not just the information that is powerful. It’s the people in the information that are the real hidden treasure.

Here are just 3 ways to make an initial contact based on a news article:

1. Give a compliment. Every writer likes to hear good things about their writing (and, please, only do this if you really liked the article!
2. Ask a question or ask for some relatively simple advice (people love to show their knowledge and people love to help – if they can do it easily)
3. Refer them to something that relates to the topic of their article (“I read what you said about “blah blah” and thought you’d like to know…)
   

Keep these emails short and to the point. And, please, don’t market yourself. If you’re sincere in your communications, you just might find that these initial contacts will blossom into meaningful business relationships. How do we know? We do it all the time.


Or, Try it Anne’s Way

Want another way to use your blog to make an initial contact with a big wig in your industry or topic area?

Anne Florenzano writes the blog Light, Motion and Magic. While starting her business she’s simultaneously tracing and documenting her own experiences as a way to help other women entrepreneurs benefit from her experiences.

Anne also happens to live in the Twin Cities, so she hangs out at the physical James J. Hill Library (yes, there is one) in St. Paul. Which just means that she’s pretty adept at finding people’s contact information.

One of the craftiest ways that Anne found to network using her blog was her To-Do List for Starting a Company. She read four top-notch entrepreneurial books and then collated the information from all four of them into an incredibly useful checklist.

You can probably guess what Anne did next. She contacted all four authors to let them know about her To-Do List and to ask permission to use the material. All four wrote back to her – including Guy Kawasaki and David Meerman Scott.

Now, I don’t know about you – but I haven’t written to Kawasaki or Meerman Scott lately. Anne has. And certainly, her contact with these famous authors is “brought to you in part” by her blog.


Better Than a Letter to the Editor

Another James J. Hill enthusiast is Paul Jones, who writes the blog Cause-Related Marketing. It focuses on how companies can use sponsorships and other causes to help their marketing efforts.

Paul used a networking approach that is so simple that we wish we had thought of it.

Blog comments are today’s equivalents of “Letters to the Editor” (a fine and recognized facet of journalism). Commenting on other people’s blogs is also encouraged as a way of raising your blogging profile. But, Paul found something better than a letter to the editor or a blog comment.

Here’s what Paul did when he… well, let’s let Paul tell it:

"Stanford Social Innovation Review is a prestigious magazine in the sustainability movement. I had seen an article in the magazine that I thought had missed an important point. I thought, I could write a letter to the editor, but rather than that, I sent an email directly to the publisher. She wrote back – and it started the beginnings of a relationship. Who knows where that relationship might go? However, I got more attention and response than I would have with just a letter to the editor or a blog comment."

Now, it’s Your Turn

So, give it a try – don’t just sit there on your typewriter fingers – reach out and touch someone more famous, better connected or much smarter than you are. You’ve got the element of surprise on your side. And, you’ll stand out in the crowd a lot more than you will on LinkedIn.

And, when you do try this networking strategy – let us know how it worked by leaving a comment on this blog. Thanks.


Michael Benidt & Sheryl Kay are “the only speakers who treat technology with the disrespect it deserves.” You can read more from them at HiddenBusinessTreasures.com and HiddenSpeakerTreasures.com.