Thank you so much for your comment Suzanne. I guess it can be difficult to take the time to build the relationship etc when you are conscious of wanting a sale, and you may just have started your business, and may be facing financial constraints. However, something that I guess I, and all other small businesses need to learn is that this is the strategy that will bring long term fruit to business endeavours – being genuine, taking time to invest in relationships… Thank you once again for the comment. Tosin

Bravo! This is a wonderful experience based post. Face to face networking events can be tough. I know here in the US, namely, Vegas so many people know each other and conglomerate together and that is so intimidating.

On the other hand, when you are comfortable with being there and someone walks up to you with business card in hand it is the obligation to take it and look at it, Um get to know my name before you are shoving a card in my hand.

Building relationships with people who are in your industry or a potential client or just someone you want to learn more about is the way to network.

thanks for sharing your experience.

We have now created a link to this post on our own brand new directory of business blog posts.

http://www.greatsitesctk.co.uk/intro/business-blogs/Networking/Building-a-business-network-of-friends/details.htm

Please give an honest rating of this article there, and give ideas for improvement etc. Thank you, from Great Sites

I have now created a link to this blog post on our own directory of business blog posts from Great Sites. The link to this particular post is at: http://www.greatsitesctk.co.uk/intro/business-blogs/Networking/The-Great-Sites-Networking-Challenge/details.html

We’d be grateful if you would please leave an honest rating of this post on the directory. Thank you from Great Sites

Dear all

Just to say many thanks to Great websites for the write up on their blog regards Edinburgh Dusters.

Starting a business can be very daunting and the burning question is where do you start. Best advice I can give is go for it.

If you like to talk to people then you will find it easy to network as it is easy to sell your idea or bounce it off folk.

The main thing you have to be passionate about it or it wont work.

Hi Fraser, thank you for submitting your business details.
Here are a few thoughts on growing your business from the blog posts we have been analysing thus far on Great Sites:
I know you are a great networker already, otherwise this would have come top of the list – networking will score highly for any business. Secondly, the Power of 100 rule – I may well recommend this for any business -this simply means consciously trying to contact 100 people a day – once again, it would not surprise me if you did this already! Please let me know what you think about this – do you have any additional business advice to offer to our readers? Tosin

Hi Uchechi, thank you for submitting your comment about your services. From the small business advice we have been getting from the other blogs which we have been analysing I’d like to suggest this – have you heard of the the “Power of 100″ rule as a way of growing your business? Basically you try and make contact with 100 people everyday – or if this is too big a number, then you could always try the “Power of 20″ rule.

Perhaps also, because your business is in events, you could try to get more customers by going to as many events as possible! A great way to promote your business while having a great time! Tosin

hi every one you can be guaranteed a reliable and dependable service

Thank you very much for your comment Maria. We greatly appreciate your comment. Have you tried looking through the themes that are available for WordPress – If you go to Admin, then “Appearance” then “Add new Themes”? There are seemingly thousands of themes available, many of them are free and I’m sure that there is one that will be suitable for you. The theme we are currently using is one that we downloaded free from this source.

I will have a look over your site, and make suggestions as to what I can think etc – I aim to get back to you within the next 2 days. We would love to feature your organisation. Hopefully speak soon, Tosin

I love using wordpress, it has everything we need to run our site, except for one thing. A better theme. As we are a not for profit group, and have only been established since the begining of August this year, we use wordpress own theme because we don’t have income for our own theme. Our site really needs a theme with sidebars on each side and still have a customisable header. Our sidebar is becoming to long and a bit tedious and we have so many topics to cover. I have just started to read over all your work, so I guess I will find an answer somewhere, I’m sure if you look at the site, you will probably know instantly what we need. I do all the work on the site, self taught on how to build a website, I learn everything as I go along. I know some web design, but not enough. We need our site to stand out, to speak to people not just with our content.

Wordpress is an excellent platform to use, and we would prefer to stay with them. So any ideas to help improve our site are most welcome.

I will continue over the weekend going through your material, and I have already signed up for your Blueprint. I will also be writing to have our site featured with you.

I would highly recommend wordpress to others, but it does need more theme’s or themes with the option to have sidebars on both sides of the blog and customisable header.