Networking in Surrey News – week beginning 5 September

OK, Folks! It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get back to work. School’s IN, the so-called Summer is over, and we’re starting the long run-up to the ‘c’ word – Xmas! Meanwhile, the economic situation is as dire as ever, and there is no sign of light at the end of the tunnel...

Only the strong will survive the coming recession (I use the word advisedly) so we need all friends we can get. Traditional marketing is dying by degrees, and we have to look at new ways to spread the word about our businesses.

It will come as no surprise that we recoomend networking as a powerful and, crucially, cost-effective new marketing weapon – but only if you do it right. With that in mind, I’ll be teaming up with some of the smartest networking specialists around to create the Networking Academy  so we can help businesses of all sizes and across all sectors to network for fun and profit too. More of that very soon...

Meanwhile, NiS is still forging ahead. We’re about to crash through the 700-Member milestone (meet the newest Members here), and our Google Analytics stats for August show that visitor numbers and page views held up amazingly well during the peak holiday season (1,539 absolute unique visitors – all local – and 10, 748 pageviews) making all our advertisers jolly happy bunnies! Check out their ads over in the right-hand column of every page on the site...

Things are hotting up on the events front too – you’ll find the ‘major players’ running hundreds of events each month in our Regular Group Meetings section.

***** TIP: Contact the organisers and go along as a Guest – you’ll connect with dozens of the most active and committed networkers in Surrey, and extend your personal network.

Our featured EVENTS include some of the more unusual one-off networking opportunities... Mike Turner’s Digital Business Brighton (love your stick of rock logo, Mike!) is a great out-of-area Guest Event with top-notch speakers - and an early-bird offer to save £50 if you go with a friend and book in the next couple of days.  Another great offer is James Webster’s 2-for-1 ticket deal for the Leisure, Luxury and Lifestyle Show – not strictly business, but a fab day out. These are both Member Promo site-sponsoring events (see what that means here on NiS).

You’ll also find FREE events like Business Biscotti Cobham, and the Staines Tweetup (both on Tuesday this week) as well as the competitively priced FSB Kickstart afternoon in Cobham on Friday, with great speakers and a large turnout (non-Members welcome!) – and much more besides...

***** TIP: Here’s how you can use the Networking in Surrey site to manage all those business connections (and pocketfuls of cards) you pick up at networking events... If the person whose card you came back with is an NiS Member, just add them as a Friend on the site. If the contact isn’t a Member of NiS, do them a favour by using the Invite option on our Home Page menu to suggest they join NiS free to be your Friend here.  

Then whenever you visit your ‘My Page’ profile you’ll see all your Friends' cheery smiling photos*. That will remind (and encourage) you to contact anybody you haven’t been in touch with for a while. It’s more visual, and a lot more user-friendly than your average CRM system - and certainly much more effective than a shoe-box full of business cards... :o)

Happy Networking!