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Networking for Entrepreneurs

Even though my business is primarily on the Internet, I find myself coming face to face with people on a regular basis. Whether it’s at the two live marketing events I host each year, speaking at someone else’s event, or connecting with people at meetings, I find myself connecting with prospects, clients, and entrepreneurs regularly throughout the year. The concept of specifically networking for entrepreneurs is one that had eluded me.

It used to be that I would introduce myself and give a short explanation of what I did and then focus on listening to the other person in order to get to know them and fully understand what they were doing in their business. For years I did this same thing each time and finally I grew weary of the process of repeating the same thing over and over and not seeing the value of meeting so many new people. At some point I stopped attending most the Chamber of Commerce events, and only spent time with the charitable and non-profit organizations that mean so much to me.

At my last live event I invited Leslie Cardinal to present to my group on the topic of networking. She’s an expert in this area and I knew that I would pick up some excellent tips from her, right along with my event attendees. Recently she wrote a post on her blog about Three Easy Ways to Follow Up After Networking and here is some of what she shared:

First, if you gathered some business cards from the people you met, take a minute to look through them. Don’t try to follow up with everyone you met. That can feel overwhelming. Just pick two or three or four people who seem most important to you at this time.

Second, for the handful of people that you choose to follow up with, decide on the best method for your follow up. You can call them or send them an email or a text message. Another very powerful option is to send an actual written card in the mail.

Third, see if you can find the people you just met in social media sites, especially LinkedIn and Facebook. If it seems appropriate, send them an invitation to connect. Add a sentence or two to your request to personalize it, rather than just sending a generic request. This can be as simple as “I really enjoyed meeting you at the meeting this afternoon,” or “It was great to see you again at the networking meeting yesterday.”

Aren’t these excellent ideas for networking? The whole idea with networking for entrepreneurs is to help you connect with people whom you can serve with the skills you have to offer. What other tips, ideas, and thoughts do you have about networking?

Reasons to Publish a Book

When I published my first book in 2010 my business changed completely. But that wasn’t the only of many reason to publish a book that came soon after my book was available. My confidence was renewed and I was perceived in a different way.

I’d like to share an excerpt from a post by copywriter and content marketing strategist KeriLynn Engel on the 5 Reasons Bloggers Should Self-Publish a Book…

“Establish Yourself As An Expert

The publishing industry is in upheaval thanks to the self-publishing boom. That’s great news for bloggers who want to write a book!

Even just 5 or 10 years ago, self-publishing was still looked upon as “vanity” publishing; the last resort of a talentless writer sick of rejection letters. For a long time, authors couldn’t be taken seriously if they didn’t have the backing of a big publishing company.

Successful self-published authors like Amanda Hocking changed the industry forever.

But thanks to some highly publicized success stories, the public is now more aware of the possibilities of self-publishing:

Amanda Hocking famously earned millions of dollars from her paranormal romance novels before being approached by the publisher St. Martin’s Press.

John Locke was the first self-published author to sell over 1 million e-books on Amazon.

And now, even established professional authors have begun to experiment with a mix of traditional and self-publishing, such as famous New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who blogs about the industry at KrisWrites.com.

Today, self-publishing is respected, even admired and applauded.

By authoring and self-publishing a book on your niche topic, you can position yourself to be recognized as an expert on that topic. When you’re a top author in your niche, that’s a huge differentiator so you can stand out from other bloggers.

This is not only a nice ego-boost, but it’ll also help you to grow your blog’s audience and power your other monetization efforts, such as if you sell products or services from your blog. Being seen as the expert in your niche can enable you to set higher prices for those product and services, and be more in demand.

There’s a reason for the idiom “wrote the book on it” – it means you’re the go-to expert on the topic: Positioning yourself as an expert can also lead to other opportunities such as speaking engagements, interviews, media appearances and more.”

KeriLynn makes some excellent points here and encourages us to self-publish a book. In her post she also shares how we can grow our list, generate passive income, and publicize our blogs by becoming a published author. I have done this more than a dozen times now, and my Hunter’s Moon Publishing company has helped many entrepreneurs to get their message out to the world in the form of a book.

My Write.Publish.Prosper. training course takes you step by step through the process of outlining and writing your book, and I will also provide you wish an ISBN number from my publishing house when you are ready to publish.

What other questions do you have on this topic?

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Excellent Ideas on Networking for Entrepreneurs

Networking for Entrepreneurs

Some Excellent Reasons to Publish a Book

Reasons to Publish a Book