Canadian Marketing Blog

Maintaining a Network

"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."

Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

One axiom I have in networking with people is to try to add value (to the people I network with - not me) 98% of the time. This builds a "goodwill" account and gets the stuff I send read. It also helps to build a following.

One principle in networking is to "gently" stay in touch with people. What I mean by this, is being respectful of their time and mind space.

This meshed with the concept of having many people in my network. Of course I would prefer to meet with everyone in my network daily for an hour but that would limit how large my network could be. And it would no doubt violate the time and space of people I was networking with.

Marketing is what we do when we have limited time to interact.

So I decided to start sending out daily quotations from famous people. I know that email is an "interrupting medium" so I chose to only send them by twitter, linkedin, facebook and post them to a Tumblr page and to a section on my blog. That way if people "chose" to look, they would see them.

Of course being a time management guy, I largely automated the process by using Ping.fm to post to all sources at the same time and using Hootsuite to send them at preset times. So right now I have my quotes set to go out for the next 90 days and even without me logging in, they go out. I often read books that are rich in quotes so can add 10 or more at a time in a short sitting (or even more efficient, have my trusty assistant, Elliot, do that for me)

Once I started to send out the quotes, people said "Jim likes quotes" so would send me quotes that all I needed to do was to cut and paste. Only once did this get me in trouble when I posted a quote that was not said by the person who I attributed it. And I had just moved to the US at the time so did not understand the political nature of the quote (Making rich people poor does not make poor people rich - I attributed to Abe Lincoln but he never said it).

And by attributing quotations to other people, they often seem to have greater weight than my own words. In a way I get their brain/power attributed to me.

And for that matter, if I could not find a quote, I could always make one up and attribute it to the great Anon.

Of course not all people like quotes:

"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

I guess that is why Emerson is not connected to me on Linkedin.

When I got my most recent job somebody gave me a networking book called "Work the Pond" (by Darcy Rezac, managing director of the Vancouver Board of Trade). Its point is that successful networking is all about POSITIVE networking: a practice of asking what you can do for others, vs what others can do for you. Re-focusing my thinking of "networking" - which many people see as a bad word - in this way was extremely helpful. It is interesting in this new "social media" world to watch various "networkers" try different techniques - some of which work and some of which don't.

How goes, fellow Canadian? Yes, these are great quotes, and it's fun to see them tossed around so well by a fellow Canadian. I'd been reading a thesis from a young entrepreneur leader for whom I serve on his PhD committee, ahead of reading this - and yes, these and they are so refreshing. So is the thesis but quotes inspire in a few well spoken words.

I like to gather ordinary people quotes about hot topics that engages a circle. Have you tried it -- people love to create quotes that spill the beans on their best wisdom - and it allows for great discussion on any topic.

For instance, my own quotes would include:"Networking is much like opening gifts at a Christmas party. Great expectations are often surpassed by people you meet."

Your turn...?