Visual Summary / DVFZ Books
Reaching anyone is easy, being remembered is not
How a stranger who owes you nothing becomes a contact worth having, when every part of it happens through a screen.
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01 The problem
Online networking is not a faster version of networking
Because everything else online is instant, people expect this to be instant too. Pinelli says the opposite. Online networking takes a long time, and the part that works is the part you keep doing.
Two things get confused at the start. The first is selling. A pitch sent to a stranger is not networking, it is an advertisement, and the book keeps the two apart deliberately. The second is finishing. There is no point at which a network is built and you can stop. People who reduce their networking online lose visibility faster than they gained it.
The book is also honest about the cost. You never know whether the person behind a profile is who they claim to be, and the credentials they list may not stand up. Hours given to the wrong contact are hours not given to getting better at the work itself.
Networking is about building contacts and relationships. It is not about selling your products or services.Chapter 1, Let’s Get to Network
02 Where you go
There is no all-purpose network, only the one that fits the goal
Most people who decide that online networking does not work have been doing it in the wrong place. Every network has a different objective, and the same effort returns very different things depending on where you spend it.
Indeed carries job listings. LinkedIn is the one the book returns to for business networking, because it is a social network for people and for companies at the same time, and a fuller profile gets connected to more of both. Quora builds a reputation by answering questions well, and its answers rank high in Google results. Meetup gathers people around a shared interest and runs events for them.
One platform is a special case worth knowing about. Slack is excellent for networking with the people already inside your company and useless for anyone outside it, because a person who is not part of the organization cannot reach the content or the chats at all.
There is no one-size-fits-all formula in networking. Every network has a different objective.Chapter 7, Tips, Strategies, and Hacks
Write down, in one sentence, the single thing you want from networking this quarter. Then look at where your time actually went last month. If the two do not point at the same place, move.
03 The first message
A stranger owes you nothing, so the first message has to be about them
Online networking almost always starts with a message to someone who has no reason to answer. The book's fix is not a better pitch. It is five minutes of reading, and an opening about their work.
Gil Petersil, the online networking specialist the book profiles, sets the bar at five minutes: search for the person before you contact them and work out whether they can genuinely help with what you are trying to do. That reading also tells you what to open with. If a profile says economist, open with economics. People will answer a question about their own experience long before they answer a proposal.
There is a limit on the other side. One message to a stranger is normal, and the book points out it is the only way a stranger ever becomes a valuable contact. Sending it again to someone who has not replied, or who has already said no, is the point where networking turns into spam and your name starts to cost you something.
Do not start the conversations talking about how great your idea is or the tremendous opportunity that other people have to collaborate with you, rather start by creating a true bond with your new connections.Chapter 6, Dos and Don’ts of Networking
Before your next connection request, spend five minutes reading what the person has actually published. Open with one specific thing they said. Send it once, then leave it.
04 Synchronous or asynchronous
Choosing the channel is part of the message
Synchronous means live: a call, a video meeting, a conversation happening at the same moment for everyone in it. Asynchronous means delayed: an email, a chat message, an update the other person opens when they can. Online networking runs on both, and Pinelli treats choosing between them as a skill in its own right.
Live is right when the exchange has to go back and forth. A first meeting with a new connection belongs there, so does onboarding someone new, and so does any complex problem where everyone's feedback shapes the answer. Delayed is right when it does not. Status updates, anything crossing time zones, anything that can wait until Monday.
Get this wrong and the content of the message stops mattering. The book's example is a manager who phones an employee at the weekend about a task that could have waited. The information arrives. So does the resentment, on both sides, because the person who sent it also resents the reply they did not get.
The wrong method of communication used at the wrong time is networking gone wrong.Chapter 3, Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication
Ask one question: does this need an answer in the next hour? If it does not, write it instead. A meeting that could have been an email spends exactly the goodwill you were trying to build.
05 Weak ties
The most useful contact you have is usually someone else’s
The book calls them second-tier contacts: the people sitting in your contacts' contact lists. They do not know you. But there is already a name standing between you, and that name is the whole mechanism.
The move is ordinary. Look through who your existing connections are connected to, pick out the ones worth knowing, and reach out with the shared connection named in the opening line. On LinkedIn this is a normal introductory message, and it works because it turns a cold approach into a warm one before you have said anything about yourself.
It runs in both directions, which is why referrals sit near the top of the book's list. Recommend one of your contacts to another and the two of them carry on independently, without you. Giving and helping without expecting anything in return is described in the book as the philosophy of networking, and what comes back is respect, referrals, connections and friendship.
Open the profile of a contact you trust and read their connections. Pick one person worth knowing, then ask your contact for the introduction instead of sending a cold request.
06 The golden rule
Everything you did at the event is wasted without the follow-up
This is the book's golden rule of networking and the step it says people most often skip. Human memory is short. Out of sight is out of mind, and an online event leaves someone very little to remember you by.
The follow-up itself is small. Send a thank you the next day, through whatever channel you already used. Take notes during the meeting so you know who is worth contacting afterwards. Use the chat function while the event is still running to agree a time to talk. Then check your email, because the reply you are waiting on is often already sitting there.
Patience belongs to this too. Working online, the book's norm is to expect an answer within roughly 24 hours, not immediately. And it asks for a courtesy most people forget: when an assistant or an administrative team arranged the meeting, thank them as well. They speak to the person you are trying to reach every day.
All your efforts of making new contacts and connections will remain futile if you turn your back on following up with them.Chapter 5, Executing and Practicing
Block ten minutes the morning after any online event. One thank-you message per person worth keeping, each one naming something they actually said.
07 Quality over quantity
A long contact list is not a network
The arithmetic is tempting. The book works out that messaging 15, 20 or 30 people a day on Instagram builds more than 30,000 new connections a year, and then says plainly that new contacts do not necessarily add value.
So the instruction is to spend your time on the few people who can actually help, and to stop spending it on the ones who cannot. During an event, watch the clock, count how many people you have really contacted, and ask whether any of them are worth anything to you. If they are not, stop. One worthwhile contact is a result.
There is a reason to protect that time. Each contact that pays off raises what the book, following Albert Bandura, calls self-efficacy: your own belief that you can act and get a result. Higher self-efficacy makes the next approach easier. Lower self-efficacy makes you doubt an ability you already have, and the book links the two directly.
Your aim is to network, not to do the math.Chapter 7, Tips, Strategies, and Hacks
How many people did I actually speak to, and is any one of them worth a message tomorrow? If the answer to the second is one person, that was a good event.
08 The whole book
Networking online is a small amount of work, repeated
Nothing here is difficult. What makes it work is that it keeps happening, and that the three groups already in your network each need a different thing from you.
New contacts
Thank them the next day and name something they said. Skip that and, as far as they are concerned, the meeting did not happen.
Second-tier contacts
Your contacts' contacts. Reach them through the shared name and an introduction, never with a cold request that starts with you.
Long-term contacts
Exchange pleasantries, send your updates. The cheapest people in your network to keep, and the first ones to refer you on.
Online, everyone is reachable, which is exactly why being reachable counts for nothing. What counts is whether the person at the other end has a reason to answer you.
Adapted from How to Master Networking in an Online Environment at Work
Sheryl Pinelli · © 2023 DVFZ Training Consultancy Services · 33 cited sources in the source edition