My friend Colin has just released an awesome book about networking, where he explains how he uses networking to find new clients around the world for his business. The book also features a number of short posts from different authors, including mine. I asked him if I could share my contribution with my readers, and he agreed, so here it is.

For me, networking is all about being genuine and helping people by doing something you love. Everyday we are bombarded with flashy ads and unmissable deals, bizarre marketers and numerous attempts to get our attention. The problem is that we have already built a sort of protection from it, they don’t work anymore.

We are so used from advertising and fake promises that nowadays you just have to be honest and genuine to be noticed. This is not something new of course, as we have been helping each other for centuries, but nowadays it has become even more important.

So when I think about networking, I think about finding genuine ways to help someone, without expecting anything in return. For instance I once received a free redesign of my website by a guy I met online. It wasn’t
something I expected and he wasn’t doing it for the money, in fact, I don’t believe he’s a designer. But the point is, by doing so he gained my trust, and I’ll be thankful for a long time for what he did.

It doesn’t have to be something big, but as long as you are doing something genuinely for someone else without expecting anything in return, you are networking. And that, in my opinion, is the best thing you can do to market yourself and/or your company.

You can find the full book here.