Can You measure the business outcomes of your networking effort?

The “summer song” of the business world these last years still is “Networking. Networking is Great, Networking is Great for You, networking is WOW, networking will save your business, Networking is the best marketing tool for the new economy. Network, Ô Network, Yes, Network”, and All the folk dance on this cute, nice Music.

Have you tried networking for your Business? Can You measure the business outcomes of your networking effort? Is it worth the time, the stress, the uncertainty, the investment you devoted to it?

Recent studies and testimonials on business networking are revealing that 92 to 98% of professionals and business people on social or professional networking websites and clubs obtain No business impact from the time and money they invest in networking, and are unable to measure any impact they assert.

John Veitch a Top networker on Rize, LinkedIn, Facebook,  put this way :

“I’ve always had high hopes that people might use the Internet to achieve useful things in their lives.

Mostly that’s failed to happen.

In recent years with the introduction of social networking opportunities I’ve seen that most people fail to understand how online social networks work. The success rate on Ryze is somewhere between 8% and 2% depending on your viewpoint. On LinkedIn the success rate is even lower. None of the many social network sites available are any different. There are millions of registered people, a few spectacular stars, a tiny cohort of regular users and many uncommitted users, creating a massive long tail of people who don’t get it.

There are huge numbers of people who have joined professional networks, but far too many sit isolated and inactive”

Sure, it’s Not because networking doesn’t work, Networking does work  But only for The few who understand what networking is about.  Get first insight from our previous post  “Why most of people waste time in networking?”

John observations are right.

Many websites have tried to help the unskilled networkers, but our survey found out that close to 90% of people on professional networking websites get No value for the time and eventually the money they  spent in these networks.

On these traditional networks, the reason for linking two people is weak.  Most networks are built on a casual business acquaintance – maybe you worked in the same company. Those networks are fine for who-knows-who, but when it comes to marketing your company to:

• Receive faster, more enthusiastic and more qualified responses to your promotions
• Turn more prospects into loyal paying clients,
• Switching from chasing customers to having customers come to you,

They’re useless.

The problem with current networks is that they don’t create enough “business transactions” for the majority of their users. The number of transaction is too low, discouraging the majority of users and even worse, there’s no way to measure the value (ROI) of the transactions that occur.

We need to go beyond networking as we know it.