Anytime Anywhere Professional Networking
In today's competitive job market, it's more important than ever to have a strong network of professional contacts. Networking can help you find a job, get important advice, and advance your career. It can also help you learn new skills, stay up-to-date on industry trends, and find mentors and sponsors.
Meeting people in person will always be the gold standard for networking, but opportunities to do that are becoming more rare by the day. If you really want to maximize your networking efforts in an ever more remote-first, virtual world, you have to be willing to connect and engage with people in other ways. A live video call is a great replacement for an in-person meeting, but you have to already be at least superficially connected to someone in order to set one up. Then there’s the challenge of finding a time that works for both of you. Needless to say, live video calls, although useful, are not really a great networking tool.
A better option for making new connections and nurturing a newer network relationship is async video messaging. With async video you get the benefits of face-first, personal communication that makes in-person and live video calls so productive, but you can engage in the conversation in a turn-based fashion where both sides can participate when it is most convenient. Without the limitations of finding shared places and times, video messaging enables networking with a greatly expanded scope, purpose, and effectiveness. You can now communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Async video messaging is the present and future of professional networking, but it may be new to many of us. Here are some tips for making your video messages maximally effective.
Be prepared.
Before you start video messaging, take some time to prepare. This means dressing appropriately, being in a quiet place, and having a good internet connection. It also means thinking about what you intend to say, and possibly even writing out a script or at least some bullet points to organize your thoughts.
Be yourself.
The most important thing when you’re recording a video message is to be yourself. Being authentic and communicating like a real person is kind of the whole point of using video. People can tell when you're being fake, so just relax and treat your message as if you were speaking to the recipient directly.
Be engaging.
People are more likely to remember you and appreciate you if you're engaging and interesting to talk to. So, make sure to smile, be as enthusiastic as it is appropriate to be, and try to keep your content interesting and relevant to your audience.
Be clear.
State your message as clearly and as concisely as possible. If more information is needed than what you can verbalize, include other relevant details in attached text, and be sure to include any relevant attachments and links. You can even embed a calendar scheduling widget to open up the possibility of arranging a real-time meeting as a follow up.
When used correctly, video messaging enables a style of professional networking that can be extremely effective, especially when you can’t meet with your network connections in real time. Now you can create more connections, build more relationships, and unlock more opportunities – from anywhere, at any time.
Photo by Karolina Grabowska: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-filming-video-on-smartphone-6333673