Valerie Cheong Took summarises our 2016 June event
SIETAR UK hosted its monthly networking event last week. It is always a pleasure to attend those events to reconnect with other existing members and to meet new ones. Matthew Hill was invited to share his wealth of knowledge and experience when it comes to networking.
Networking is an essential part of any career and key to business owners who are looking for new business opportunities. Matthew led an interactive session with the audience and it effectively fitted with my learning style which is kinaesthetic: learning by doing. It also helped with getting to know the rest of the attendees so that the atmosphere was friendlier and warmer by the end of the evening.
A few golden nuggets:
- Networking is about meeting people anywhere. There is no specific place to network. You can chat with your neighbour on a bus ride or while queuing up for your coffee at Caffe Nero.
- The highest value of networking is advocacy: for example, tweeting about how the attendees to your latest training enjoyed your workshop.
- Always research who would be attending the events you are going to. Look for opportunities to post a new tweet on Twitter or a new post on Linkedin about the events you are going to attend. For example: tweeting about how excited you are to meet a high profile person at the next event.
- Work on a few opening lines that would allow you to engage with the various persons you would be meeting at an event in a fun, attractive way.
- To be a great networker, it is about identifying the pillars of your personal brand and owning them.
- Use story telling to promote your life experiences when you don’t know whether you have anything in common with the person you are talking to.
This evening was quite different from the past events I attended. Matthew used a more pragmatic approach given the topic of the talk. He used a number of live examples provided by the audience and encouraged each one of us to share our experiences. It was an entertaining evening with learning to take a different perspective on networking. A special thanks to Agnes Bamford for having organised this talk!
If you want to know more about online networking, Matthew has written a great blog on the subject: “50 Ways To Build Your Community”. Matthew has worked with a number of multinationals: SAP, GE Electric, Vodafone. To know more about Matthew Hill, please click here.