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Business networking requires some financial investment, whether for membership subscriptions or meeting fees. It's therefore important to choose your organizations and events wisely; take advantage of opportunities to attend as a guest before you sign up and talk to current members to see how useful they are finding it.

Networking on the Internet

So far, we have looked at networking face to face, whether in a social or a business context. An alternative approach which is growing hugely in popularity is networking via the Internet or e-networking.

The Internet has changed how we do business. In the past, meeting your clients and establishing a good relationship was often a prerequisite for doing business with them. These days, it is quite possible to have clients from all over the world and not to physically meet them until the work is delivered, if at all.

As with physical networking, there are different levels of e-networking. The first is the social networking sites such as Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/) or My Space (http://www.facebook.com/). These provide access to literally millions of people. As of February 2008, MySpace claimed to have over 300 million accounts. These sites are generally open to teenagers as well as adults. There is so much traffic on them that it is easy to get lost in the hubbub. Such a site would be useful if your business is writing websites - an international business with clients anywhere on the plants; it would not be so useful if you are looking for customers for your local catering service.

The next level is the general business e-networking site. This might be an online address book service like Plaxo (http://www.plaxo.com/) which allows automatic updating of your details on the main server or Linked In (http://www.linkedin.com/) where you build a network of contacts. The size of one of these networks can be amazing. I currently have a tiny network of just 8 primary contacts. At the secondary level (contacts of my contacts), there are more than 700 people. At the tertiary level (contacts of my contacts' contacts) there are more than 112,000 people. That's a huge number of people I can potentially reach.

Finally, there are the specialized networks, based around a specific profession or expertise. These are generally much smaller, with maybe only 50 to 100 members. They provide a useful sounding board for ideas; can offer solutions to specific problems you are dealing with for the first time; and, most importantly,

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