The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors And Closing Deals Online
The first part of the book is devoted to seven dimensions of network strength:
- Your character - how others see you in terms of integrity, clarity, consistency and trustworthiness.
- Your competence - the skills and knowledge that you demonstrate through your on-line presence.
- Relevance - how much value a given acquaintance brings to you, given your goals for on-line networking.
- Information you have about your network - the more you know about someone in your network, the more powerful the relationship is.
- Closeness of your relationship - the closer your relationship, the stronger it is for networking purposes.
- Number - how many people are in your network.
- Diversity - how different individual members of your network are from each other.
The middle chapters (4 through 12) were most useful to me. The authors cover seven on-line tools in detail - their purpose and uses in your networking efforts, how they work, and basics about how to use them. The tools covered are:
- Personal web sites
- Email lists, newsletters and discussion groups
- Real-time tools - Instant Messaging, Chat, VOIP, Web Conferencing
- Social Network sites (LinkedIn, for example)
- Blogs (although I found Andy Wibbell's Blogwild!: A Guide for Small Business Blogging
more useful when learning to blog)
- Relationship Capital Management software
- Tools for organizing face-to-face meetings
In addition, there is an extremely useful chapter about how to manage your E-mail in box - this is where I learned things that are saving me at least an hour every day.
The authors have developed a companion website, which includes an interesting blog.
If you are doing any kind of networking - and most of us probably are - check out this road-map to virtual networking. You'll be glad you did.
