How do you choose which networks to join?
In this week's newsletter:
Joining network and institutes
How would you choose?
This week's projects
Boosting your profile
Finding reasons to call
One of the first things many people do when they become self-employed is look around at the various professional bodies, trade associations and networking organisations. Sometimes the motivation is the need to validate and 'make official' the skills you already have but there's also the opportunity to meet and network with people in the hope of finding clients and projects that fit your skills. In fact, many of us wind up with something of a collection of memberships and find it difficult to get the most out of all of them. Our partner organisations tell us that the majority of their members don't get involved in local meetings or go to networking events. If you're one of these 'inactive members' then maybe now is the time to become more active and make sure you get the most out of your membership.
How would you choose
If you belong to several organisations you'll have to choose which one to focus on, or you may be wondering whether to join a new organisation or drop an existing membership. The choice really depends on what you want to get out of it - are you in it for professional development, for networking or are you just using your membership as a means of buying cheap PI insurance! An interesting discussion has started up on the Skillfair LinkedIn group one exactly this topic, so why not see what other people think and add your own opinion?
This week's projects
A number of training opportunities have come and gone this week, and there have been a number of web-related, marketing and evaluation projects as well.
To hear about projects as soon as they're posted you need to be a full member, it's only £144 and there are discounts for members of our partner organisations - so why not join now and make sure you don't miss out?
Boosting your profile
One of the benefits of being active in networking group is that more people get to know about you and what you can do for them - and you never know when that will lead to a new client or project. Many people now look to the web and social media as their first port of call for help and we're finding increasing numbers coming to us after trying, and failing, to find the expertise they need via search engines.
If you have your own website you'll know how much effort is involved in creating it and keeping the articles up to date. One of the benefits of Skillfair membership is that we spend a lot of time and effort adding content and making sure that Skillfair is properly indexed by search engines. Your profile, and a link to your website, benefit from this giving you a much better chance of being found by someone who is looking for exactly your skill-set.
New members also benefit from being Tweeted and from appearing in our new consultant alert that goes to over 10,000 clients and consultants every week - so why not join now and boost your profile?