Adrie's Blog

Networking the new-fashioned way....

People often ask me how to find and connect with people in a new city of country - apparently this poses a great challenge for most. Not so for our Stephanie Frasco, our viral marketing specialist and events director on E.Factor. Stephanie loves to travel so we offered her a real challenge - to get out there and develop E.Factor's brand in an active community of entrepreneurs in Berlin. Not an easy task for any one, let alone if you don't even speak the language yet!

Stephanie combined her skills as an Explorer with those of the Queen of social media and the concept of E.Factor. To start with, she sent out an announcement that she was moving from New York to Berlin - which immediately generated a lot of connections. After that she rapidly organised two live events in Berlin, inviting the existing E.Factor members there and via social medai, tapped into other groups and asked them to partner/participate. And ofcourse since there are a lot of Americans in Berlin, she found this a good source for new contacts too.

Many of the contacts are based on joint interests, such as new media, fashion or technology - which is the core foundation and creates a bond. After barely two months, Stephanie has managed to build a group of 500 new contacts in Berlin - REAL connections as I was able to witness when I was there for a few days earlier this week. Real Entrepreneurs that are interested and keen on learning how E.Factor can help them grow their business.

In short:

* Use all the Social Media, like E.Factor, Facebook and Twitter to actively reach out to people;
* Find the place where people from a certain group, with a joint characteristic, hang out together and meet;
* Organise a small event with a great speaker on a topic that resonates with the local audience;
* make it clear why they should be interested in meeting YOU, it's always a two-way street!

The combination of the new-ways - i.e. using social media, in combination with the traditional way, i.e. meeting face-to-face, is a strong method to generate new contacts quickly - particularly where it concerns young entrepreneurs. For the older generation of business people there are different rules - which I will relate next week if you are interested!?