What good are 500+ connections?

What Good are 500+ Connections?

I tried to figure out last night how long I have been on LinkedIn. I was not successful but I know it is North of 2 years, probably closer to 3. I wanted to figure that out because I have come so far since I first got involved in online networking and social media.



Like many, I was introduced to LinkedIn by a colleague, while I was in transition. I quickly saw the power and value of this tool. Almost as quickly I saw the limitations as well. When I first got involved there just were not enough people in my profession of Supply Chain Management on LI. I took it upon myself to head to the mission field of CLM (council of supply chain management now CSCMP) and WERC (warehousing education and research council) to spread the word about social networking for business in general and LI in specific. I invited all my fellow members from both organizations, one at a time to join me on LI and build a community of SCM Professionals. I actually got a pretty good return for my efforts, an excellent return when you consider that SCM professionals and not prone to be early adopters of technology like this.



I had a growing network and was quickly becoming the most connected person to others of my profession. I really derived a great deal of satisfaction helping people leverage this new medium, connecting them and generally facilitating their efforts. Despite this success I still found the interactions, lacking. I was not building relationships that would help me professional or personally, at least not as quickly as this type A personality would like.



It was at that time that I decided to start a group for SCM Professionals online. January 18th 2007 to be exact. I started this group on Yahoo groups and had a profile bumper sticker for the group on LI. It seems that I had tapped a reservoir of unmet demand from my profession. This grew quickly to over 1,300 members on Yahoo. Now if you know anything about Yahoo groups they are good but they do not scale when you have over 1,000 active networkers.



This inspired the move from Yahoo to Ning. Ning is easy to use and provided a much richer experience for the user. The down side was getting people to migrate over form the Yahoo site. 10 months later we are approaching 3,500 members globally on SCNi (supply chain network international)



I had started to create a great network of industry professionals but was new to Atlanta and wanted to build a better network there as I had only recently relocated to to Georgia. I started looking around for a vibrant and robust group. What I found were lots of groups with about 100 or so members and most of them were not active. So I started LInk_Atlanta. Today Link_Atlanta is approaching 2,100 members in only 9 months.



Now I had not done much networking prior to my LI experience and I was quickly become the expert in peoples eyes. But I did not want to build a community that would end up like those I had visited and found lacking. So back to what good are 500+ connections? In my opinion they are not of much value if you do not reach out to them, interact with them and build relationships. I am also of the opinion that the best way to build relationships is face to face. Combine that with the fact that most business is done locally and you have Link_Atlanta LIVE!. This is a monthy networking meeting held on the last Thursday of the month. I have been told that they are the best networking events with very high caliber connections. Not having been to much more than I Chamber of Commerce meeting I have to take my members word for it. The idea is simple, put a face on those local online contacts you have in a relaxed atmosphere and start building relationships face to face. It is the complement of the Online experience or as I like to refer to it "Next Generation Networking". It is the synergy of the best of online business and social networking combined with old school face to face networking.



This has lead to the launch of Link_Texas and Link_Florida in July of this year. This is a change in the model. In Georgia Atlanta is the only Major Metropolitan area. But in Texas & Florida you have many. So the parent group is at the state level and each metro area has it's own subgroup with local moderators or administrators running LIVE events. This concept works well because with the proliferation of networking groups you don't want to have to join a group for every city or state you have business in this way you join one group with one profile, one login and one password and you get all the groups for your state.



Enter Link_USA. In Link_USA you have a group for Region, State and Metro areas. So no matter where you do business if you do it in or with the United States of America Link_USA is the place to be.



So what good are 500+ connections? Not much unless you develop those contacts and build relationships with them, you do business with those you trust. I have simply been trying to take something very positive in online business networking and enhancing it by facilitating the building of relationships.



Please tell all your pay it forward connections about Link_USA and lets start having Link_Live Meetings in your city.

If you wish to be a group moderator please contact me directly.


Let's make networking, work better!



Thanks for Reading

Please feel free to connect.



ChuckZ.

ProfessionalOps@aol.com