Day in the Life of a Professional Networker

The day begins at 7:30 am with a "hello" skype from a PR/Marketing friend in India. He's with an e-learning company that is currently promoting some kid-friendly educational apps. We talk about whether or not the company he works for would be interested in seeking more government opportunities. I have a resource for him. Given the time difference, we decide to continue the discussion later. He goes to dinner and I grab a second cup of coffee and finish social media development. Then, the networking really begins.

10 am skype conversation ("convo") with a guy who does project recovery in IT and High Tech Manufacturing. He's in Portland. I met this guru in my @GRCInfo Twitter account. He hit my radar when I realized I was retweeting his posts pretty regularly. The chat commences with "the story" - where all good networking starts. His story -- then mine. Somewhere in the middle of the "convo" I start jotting names - these are the dots I'm connecting. It's what I look for when I'm talking with someone. The dots are the answers to "who in my network can gain or give value in this situation."

The chat ends with me making two introductions. In this case, those introductions were to clients looking for particular types of connections. First, I swap out the Linkedin profiles to facilitate the communication between the parties. Then, I enter info on a spreadsheet so the client can keep track of people whom I sending for conversation. Last, I send an official introduction, usually, leaving it to the client to make initial contact.

Not always are the introductions to clients; in some cases, I simply see where the dots can be connected between people in my general network. It happened with this project recovery guru about a week later, after a conversation I had with a corporate consultant in Germany. As it turned out, they were already following each other on Twitter. Happy to make a straight line to the dot on this one.

The rest of the day unfolds like this:

1 pm: Skyping with the COO of a company in California that has created a data collection system that spans IT and Games Industries. We started our networking relationship on Linkedin. After our conversation, I created three introductions (1 to a marketing company, 1 to an IT firm, and another to an interactive media company - all 3 clients.) As it turned out, the one company that I had in mind for an introduction had already met the COO and was doing business with his company. Cool - now the COO knows that I have connections that are perfect for him.

3 pm: Skyping with the Dir. of Business Development for an Enterprise Software company based out of Georgia. Another Linkedin connection. Two introductions made after this call-one to an IT client and another to a game publisher. Go figure - the biz developer had started his IT life in the games industry...and still has the passion.

Unscheduled skyping with a game publisher in Korea that I met on Twitter. He was looking for distribution opps. Made a connection for him right after our chat. Funny, I hit the one person whom he had called the day before. That guy had gotten the message but hadn't had a chance to follow up. I just encouraged the follow up.

Day over. Do it again the next day. Now, this is networking...it is the business of business, and I love it!

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