Making the best out of 'Online Networking'

Let me begin by asking you three straightforward questions:

• Are you a part of any of the following social networking platofrms - Orkut, Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wordpress, etc ?
  

• What exactly is your purpose behind the association with such platforms? Casual timepass, professional networking, increasing contacts, covering up for lack of social circle in the real world.

• Have you ever been left in a dilemna with regards to the time you've been committing online for such networking sites?
  

Before reading ahead, its important that you try and come up with honest and precise answers to the questions above. In today's age of Web 2.0 technologies, social networking sites are springing up everywhere, but which ones are actually capable of solving your purpose? I recently came across a post which seemed to provide a decent methodology to the madness. Let me state a simple real life analogy which would help you understand the utility of the various networking tools in a more precise manner.

When you happen to select someone as a prospective future member of your professional /social network (not the online one), you probably wish to know more about him/her before reaching a final decision. You wish to know about the person's profession, thought process, etc which helps you form an opinion. In contrast, how do you get to know an absolute stranger on the internet. In case you happen to be on Orkut or Facebook, for starters you have to send an add request, right? In case the personal profile does have some info, its an added advantage. But what next? Are you sure that the content that has been put in the personal profile is actually correct? Can the profile help you decode an individual's nature with precision? The answer is 'NO'. But, hold on...platforms like Orkut and Facebook anyway don't intend to provide you serious background info before you befirend an individual. So, what do we do? Explore other options before we turn back to them... The likes of Blogger, Wordpress & Twitter.

If you've been following someone's blog for quite some time, you probably know half as much about the individual as his real life friends. After all, a set of 10-15 posts is more than enough to expose the basic mindset of an individual. Imagine this...you happen to be a hardcore corporate guy. You've been following someone's business blog pretty closely and most of his posts make a hell lot of sense to you. What do you wish to do next? Get in touch with the blogger on a personal level and add him to your contact group. The point to be noted here is that, its the blogger's thought-process which motivated you to get in touch with him. This clearly isn't a case of coming across a random stranger and adding him to your network just for the sake of it. There's some serious reasoning behind your approach, right? This is what differentiates tools like blogging from hardcore networking sites like Orkut. But hey, this doesn't mean that platforms like Orkut and Facebook don't solve a purpose. They do! They could help you cement your contacts. May be you could add the business blog's owner to your Orkut network and get in touch with him every now and then. The point is, its the purpose behind each of these online networking tools that needs to be clearly understood. Here's a process chart which might help you network online in a more meaningful and methodical manner. It might prove specially effective for professional networking.

Professional Online Networking

Now you know how to make the most out of online networking tools. However, at the end of the day despite all the hype around online networking, nothing could be more effective than face-to-face networking. Hence, online networking should never really be considered as a replacement for social networking, just an added advantage.