Trying to kick The Copyeditor’s Desk into high gear: improve networking efforts online and face-to-face; tell the world who we are and what we can do for them.
Around editing 40 pages for a client and teaching a class that goes till after 9:00 p.m., I wrote Newsletter #1, compiled a Contacts list in Google, and this morning shipped the copy off to 57 people. Minutes later it was out the door to a meeting of a freshly a-borning chapter of a large women’s business networking group.
It was pretty interesting. Had a good time meeting the various proprietors of various small businesses. Had an OK lunch at an expensive restaurant perched on the side of a fake lake. Handed out a bunch of cards; collected a bunch of cards. Heard the pitch for why we should join up. Three hundred dollah a year and $20 a lunch. Two meetings a month. If you’re not a member, you don’t get to give your 60-second commercial.
So…how to tell whether a group like this is worth it?
Well, it looks to me like the value of a networking group depends on whether a certain number of the members meet the criteria of the kind of client you realistically can help, and the kind of client who can afford you. Most of the folks I met there were one-person shops: very, very tiny businesses that depend entirely on the talent and industry of their sole proprietors.
The networking group I do belong to mostly consists of small businesses, but only one is a true one-man operation. Some, maybe most of them, could in theory afford what we want (and need) to earn for our services.
The friend who invited me to today’s shindig is a chiropractor. Most of the women there were middle-aged and older: full of aches and pains. They represented a rich vein of potential patients for his practice. But for a couple of editors? Maybe not so much.
If you’re an entrepreneur, you need to pick your networking groups to fit your business. The members need to have some need for your service or product and they must be able to afford you. They need to be in your business’s demographic—that is, the kind of people who are interested in whatever you offer—and they should be open to your specific kind of marketing.
The ladies were perfect for the chiropractor but way off the screen for a publications consultant. One woman was waving around a couple of books she’d self-published. If she’d sprung for one of our designers, she could have promoted her business with books that looked like they’d come from a real, mainstream publisher. But had I suggested that to her, back when she was in the production stage, chances are she would have ignored it. She either would have felt she couldn’t afford a designer’s $50/hour fare, or she would figure that writing and self-publishing a book was something she could do herself, with Amazon’s help. One way or another—whether she hired me or not—I’d be wasting my time courting her.
Work smart. Network smart.