Networking in Surrey News – week beginning 21 March 2011

Oh dear! The news is just one catastrophe after another at the moment...

but let's not allow ‘compassion fatigue’ to stop us thanking our lucky stars we aren’t in Libya, Japan or any of the world’s other disaster zones right now. Perhaps feeling sorry for all those innocent people having their lives destroyed by events beyond their control may just stop us feeling sorry for ourselves - and maybe even prompt us to be a bit nicer to the people we meet in our everyday lives. Hope so!

Why not start with the business folk you meet while out networking? There’s plenty of opportunity to meet some new faces at the dozens of events currently listed on Networking in Surrey – including our 29 upcoming Featured EVENTS (half of them free to attend) together with more than 120 over the next two weeks alone in our Regular Group Meetings section ... busy, busy! Remember, you can go along as a guest a couple of times to most of the regular groups – just contact them via the links on NiS to arrange it.

Our Membership continues to grow steadily, and we’re just passing the 450 mark on Networking in Surrey – meet the latest Members here. We’re up to 560 on Berkshire and 32 on Bucks and we hope to reach 3000 unique visitors to the sites this month, all local businesses. So, please keep blogging to get noticed by them (and by Google), comment on others’ blogs, post Offers and Freebies and generally raise your profile.

And for maximum impact, have your logo and sales message displayed over 11,000 times a month throughout the site by becoming one of our lovely advertisers, who help keep it all free – here are this month’s local heroes ...

Jane Hardy - One Stop Financial Security

Louise Knecht - Sunshine Clinic

Tessa Hood - My Video Talk

Sarah Martin - Ladies at Eleven

Karen Purves - PowerHouse

Ian Morgan - BoB Clubs Business over Breakfast

Diary of a Networker...
Since I last reported over a week ago I’ve been interviewed by the lovely Sally James for her Business Affairs on Brooklands Radio (as have several NiS Members in recent months – Louise Reynolds and Antonio Falco were in the studio for the same edition). Sally and I talked about the networking marketplace and the future of business networking in general, and I managed to mention lots of groups during our short session – you can listen to it here.

Later that day I was at Oliver Barry's splendid champagne reception at the Talbot, Ripley, with a veritable ‘who’s who’ of local networking present, including NiS Members Samantha New-Fielding, Sarah Martin, Uzma Afzal, Charlotte Grant, Christine Chalklin, Richard Golding, Derek Williamson, Ian Crocker, Jenni Kenyon, John Edward, Julia Britten, Max Wright, Sonia Duggan, (Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub!)

I’ve just returned from a lovely evening at the King William pub with the Horsley Network, featuring a brilliant presentation by NiS Member Claire Brown on how as a total ‘non-techie’ she uses Social Media in her local gardening business. Claire only wants customers within half an hour’s drive of her home, but she has used a combination of Twitter, her blog, and a forum she found on Twitter, to build (in a matter of months) an international network of gardening experts, celebs and enthusiasts, who are now her knowledge base and support network. This ‘expertise bank’ is now helping her to attract exactly the customers she wants in the Horsley area. Amazing!

Talking of ‘village networking’, it’s becoming quite a phenomenon over the border in Sussex, as I learned from another NiS Member last week at a ‘top secret’ meeting to discuss a new networking format. All very cloak and dagger, and I’m sworn to secrecy at this stage, but if it works, it will be nothing short of revolutionary (and it’s nothing to do with what I talked about on Sally’s show). 

It’s “Izzy, whizzy let’s get busy” for me this week...  ‘Ready Steady Cook!’ networking at Foxhills with James Webster tomorrow evening followed by a Surrey Business Club meet-up with Deryck Svensson, Phil Arnett and Ian Kent, then off to London to check out Jonathan Jay’s NABO Network on Wednesday afternoon, Twestivals all over the place on Thursday evening, and a Business Bedfellows workshop with Elaine Hickmott on Friday at Gorse Hill.
Happy Networking!