A few years back, I was on a business retreat with a childhood friend of Zig Ziglar.  He complimented my networking skills and recalled something Zig liked to say: “Do you know what makes someone a live wire?  The live wire stays connected.”

This past week offered a couple personal examples of this:

• On Wednesday, I received a Plaxo invite from Angela A., whose name I did not recognize.  After opening her profile, I found out it was someone I went to school with from Day 1 of Kindergarten all the way to high school graduation.   She’s married now and is no longer Angie Z. (the name I knew her by).
• The very next day, William B. sent me a Facebook friend request.  I nearly fell off my chair, since he and I were best friends in high school and had lost track of each other about three years ago.  We IM’d through Facebook for about 30 minutes and will be talking tonight via phone.

Had I not been on either platform, I would have missed out on the reconnections. While these are personal examples, the same argument can be made for you and your organization.

What can you do to create real business and professional opportunities?

• Blog - I’ve been blogging for the past few months and have kept to a consistent schedule.  It was refreshing to meet Kit and Brenda, two of our newest clients, when they came to our office on Friday.  When Kit saw me, she had a look of immediate recognition on her face and said she’d been enjoying my blogs (nothing like a little ego boost to spur another post, huh?).  That got me thinking about how often people read my blog entries when they land our home page and how these posts help set a tone for prospective clients.  
• Read Other Blogs - Thanks to my RSS reader, I read a wide variety of other blogs to keep my eyes on the horizon and understand what’s happening.  It’s like attending multiple conferences everyday pulling ideas and news from many different sources.  Better yet, I reply to posts that catch my attention and I can add to the discussion.  This helps me test my ideas and make new connections to interesting minds.
• Twitter - After a few weeks of contemplation, I jumped head first into Twitter (scottwhenderson) and have been swimming for about two days in the Twitter stream.  It’s giving me glimpses into the everyday lives of personal friends, business colleagues, thought leaders, companies, and many others.  Yesterday, I found Josh Kopelman, one of the leading VC minds for the internet, who I had the pleasure of working with during my prior life as a major gift fundraiser.  His latest update reconnected me to his blog - Redeye VC.  From there, I’ve found other intriguing blogs related to the VC world, an area of growing interest to me.

Of course, there are many more ways to get and stay connected.  What do you think are the best ways?  What’s working for you?  What’s not? 

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 8:41 pm and is filed under blogging, social networks, tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.