Researching Global Issues I Researching Careers I Researching Companies I Job Search I Finding a Recruiter I Resumes, Cover Letters, and Interviews I Training and Financial Aid I Networking and Associations I Internships I Entrepreneurship I Freelance and Home-Based Business I Starting a Nonprofit I How to Start Your Own Life’s Work Support Group I Sample “Research Questions List”
The Web resources in this section include business and personal social networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, professional networking organizations, and online association directories.
Business Social Networking Sites
Facebook is a great way to get exposure for your product or service. More than 2.8 billion people use Facebook every single month, that’s a lot of potential clients seeing what you are offering. Setting up a Facebook business page for your business is free. Once you’ve created your business page, you can use it to create content, share your contact information, link to your website, build a product catalog and communicate with your customers. You can pay for Facebook Ads and sponsor posts from your Facebook business page as well.
With a Google My Business account, you get more than a business listing. Your free Business Profile lets you easily connect with customers across Google Search and Maps.
Groupsite embodies the Web's evolution into a social/collaborative medium by bringing together the most useful features of traditional websites, discussion forums, listservs, blogs, collaboration software and social networks. With Groupsite, people from a wide range of professional and social groups within companies, communities, non-profits, families and more are able to instantly and easily communicate, share, and network. Groupsite charges $99/month all-inclusive, no-per-user fee, pricing model. They offer a 30-day free trial period.
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms, with nearly 112.5 million users in 2020. From gathering insights to selling products, Instagram keeps rolling out tools to help business owners succeed on the photo-sharing social media platform. With the right marketing strategy, businesses can promote products and services, boost their brand, and increase sales on Instagram.
LinkedIn is an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. The mission of LinkedIn is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. You can find, be introduced to, and collaborate with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish your goals. Microsoft completed its acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016, bringing together the world’s leading professional cloud and the world’s leading professional network.
As the premier media industry career website and job board for nearly 30 years, MediaBistro connects job seekers with recruiters looking to fill media positions. Their job board features open positions at today's hottest media companies, in addition to online courses, webinars, freelancer tools and resume services designed to help you build and manage your media career.
Meetup is the world's largest network of local groups. Meetup is a platform for finding and building local communities. People use Meetup to meet new people, learn new things, find support, get out of their comfort zones, and pursue their passions, together. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 2,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities. Meetup's mission is to revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.
Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information on the internet using images and, on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboards. If you want to use Pinterest to promote your small business, it's important to sign up for a business account. Business Pinterest accounts, which are free, give you access to sales-minded features such as analytics. If you already have a personal account, you can switch it to business or just create a new account.
Reddit ranks as the 18th-most-visited website in the world and 7th most-visited website in the US, according to Alexa Internet. Registered members submit content to the site such as links, text posts, and images, which are then voted up or down by other members. Submissions with more up-votes can ultimately appear on the site's front page. While Reddit strongly discourages sales content for its audience, if you utilize savvy marketing tactics, you may be able to access some of the 85 million unique monthly visitors.
Twitter is a social networking site in which you can post 140 character status updates, otherwise known as "tweets", that can be seen by anyone who has chosen to follow you. Within the tweet, you can link to other articles or videos. Additionally, you can scroll through your Twitter homepage to see what other people, who you've chosen to follow, are posting. For instance, you can use Twitter for professional use only, and choose to follow industry leaders in your field.
Yelp is a social site for everything local.Yelp develops, hosts, and markets the Yelp.com website and the Yelp mobile app, which publish crowd-sourced reviews about businesses. It also operates an online reservation service called Yelp Reservations. Having a strong presence on Yelp helps you establish trust with potential customers. Get more customers to choose you by building a strong presence on Yelp. Manage your page for free or upgrade it to stand out. An upgraded page (fee based) can help you showcase your work, stand out in search results, convert more leads and much more.
YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, counts two billion logged-in monthly users worldwide, and ranks as the most widely used online platform among U.S. adults. Video-streaming platforms like YouTube have become so big you’re guaranteed to find a group of people who will become customers, as long as you educate, entertain and provide solutions to their problems.
ZoomInfo is a global leader in go-to-market intelligence solutions. Their platform empowers business-to-business sales, marketing, and recruiting professionals to hit their number by pairing best-in-class technology with unrivaled data coverage, accuracy, and depth of contacts.
Professional Networking Sites
American Cities Business Journals
American City Business Journals is a multi-platform media company providing in-depth coverage of local business communities and breaking news. Through print, digital products and face-to-face events, ACBJ offers business leaders many avenues for making connections and gives them a competitive edge locally, regionally and nationally. ACBJ is the premier media solutions platform for companies that target business decision-makers.
eWomenNetwork is a women’s business association whose members represent over 1,000 diverse business categories including best-selling authors, entrepreneurs, manufactures, investors, coaches, speakers and professionals of all types. eWomenNetwork’s primary focus is helping its members generate more customers, market and promote what they have to offer and provide them with access to the resources they need to thrive.
ExecuNet helps senior-level executives connect to the people, opportunities and expertise they need to be successful. Offers networking groups all over the country for executives. Membership required.
Toastmasters International
Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of meeting locations. Throughout its history, Toastmasters has served over four million people, and at this writing the organization serves over 364,000 members in 145 countries, through its 16,200 member clubs. Since its founding in 1924, Toastmasters International has helped people of all backgrounds become more confident in front of an audience. Their educational programs are self-paced and affordable.
Associations Directories Online
AssociationExecs.com is your best resource for association executives. It is an online database of 204,908+ decision-makers from national, state/regional associations, and association management firms. The database is built on a CRM-like platform that allows you to create prospect lists, track notes and activities, and sync appointments with your Outlook or iCalendar. AssociationExecs has more than 22,000+ national, state, and regional associations and association management firms. Fee based.
The Directory of Associations has been delivering Association information since 2008. The team at SYNCNET created the system that allows anyone to do research free on over 36,000 associations worldwide.
Gale Directory Library offers an online collection of 23 premier directories providing information on companies, publishers, associations, and more—giving access to sources that are unavailable or difficult to find on the Internet. With a major new enhancement to the interface, additional workflow tools, and improved search and export capabilities in place, this popular collection of online directories is easier to use than ever before. Researchers and marketers alike will enjoy the unparalleled functionality, having the ability to cross-search content among their library’s collection of directories to analyze, sort, filter, and export data.
Below find books for all aspects related to professional networking and building
successful business relationships as well as a list of association directories.
Networking Books
Associations Directories
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