Couple of months back I had submitted my details to the International Who’s Who website.
The website is quite basic and does not provide details like:
- How much the membership costs?
- What are the direct benefits?
- How many members do they have?
- How many and which countries are represented?
Basically all the stuff that would help me decide whether or not to become a member of the association, was missing. Nonetheless, I submitted my details, eager to find out more about their association and how it would benefit me.
Last week, I got a call from their US office and was told that my submission had been “pre-approved” [ whatever that means ] and that someone from their office will be calling me on a certain day and they also gave me a time for the interview [ they did not tell me what the interview was for so I assumed they just want to find out more about me ]. I was thrilled – how cool would it be to be listed in the International Who’s Who! I waited anxiously for the call and last night a lady from their US office called me up.
I spoke with the lady [ or rather she spoke with me ] for 20 minutes – and she spent the last two minutes trying hard to sell me the membership. The other eighteen minutes were spent talking back and forth – she trying to find out more about me and me sharing the same information. Only in the last 2 minutes when I insisted she tell me some more about the association and how it would benefit me as a member did she give me generic reasons like:
- You will be part of an international community
- You will have the ability to send messages to all our members – great advertising opportunity
- Only top CEO’s and senior management people are invited [ considering the fact that I am not a CEO and neither qualify as Senior Management ]
- It will be fantastic exposure for you and your business, etc.
No specifics.
Then she told me I had two options to join – one a “Regular” membership where I paid 600 USD for the first year and the other a “Premium” membership where I paid 700 USD for the first year. She told me that the “Regular” membership option would be best suited.
Once again I asked her why I should join. This time she let me on to the number of members and the number of countries represented – apparently International Who’s Who has 90,000 members from 154 countries. My immediate thought was – “I am already on LinkedIn with over 4.2 million members and even openBC has many more members than this association – why am I wasting my time?”
I told her that I would need some time to find out more about the association – maybe dig deeper into their website and get in touch with current members – so that I know what I’m getting into. With that I was informed that “Our website won’t give you too many details and if you don’t decide on a membership option during this call, you won’t be considered for membership.”
How do they expect potential members to sign up for their membership when they cannot even put up an informational website? And how can they expect a potential member to take a decision in twenty minutes of air-time when they don’t even share basic membership benefits – what is their USP – why should I become a member of International Who’s Who?
I politely told the lady that if I was expected to make a decision during the phone call, I’d just have to pass-up the “opportunity” this time around and with that I hung up.
I wonder what would happen if LinkedIn and openBC got down to spending even 10 minutes on the phone with people who’d signed up saying they’re interested in hearing more – they’d be flooded with membership requests because these two platforms have successfully been able to differentiate themselves from other networking platforms and also send a clear message what those differentiating factors and benefits are.
Phew!
November 29th, 2005
Yay!
I did do a good job in writing my profile on Ziggs! I always find it exciting to enhance my ability to network better. I just got an e-mail from their VP Marketing, Julia Bradley, announcing design changes on Ziggs as well as the fact that my professional profile has been chosen as one of the featured profiles on their front page!
One of the advantages of Ziggs is that for someone to view my profile, the viewer does not necessarily have to be a member of Ziggs. Anyone can view it. Unlike LinkedIn – where only registered members can take a peek at my profile and although openBC shows a majority of my profile to a non-registered member, details like Current Company are not shown.
View my Ziggs profile
November 24th, 2005
Just for their look of the profile – the aesthetic point-of-view – I love Ziggs.com!
I have no idea how effective it is because I am still in the process of uploading my profile there, will share if something comes out of it. It looks lovely too – especially the photograph that I picked for myself!
If you are registered on Ziggs then you can view my profile on Ziggs.com – otherwise you’ll have to register yourself.
November 3rd, 2005
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Not that I want to promote the thought or the idea behind the BusinessWeek post (“Is social networking broken?“), just that I wanted to share the various “comments” that have been made at the end of the post. |
MY COMMENT ON THE BUSINESSWEEK ARTICLE:
First of all, LinkedIn cannot be considered as a “social” networking site. It is an online business networking portal. Secondly, as others in their comments have pointed out, the post made by Adam Kalsey is old.
I am not much of a Social networker – not because I have not been inclined to use the social networking portals like Orkut, but because I have used them and found that unless I really have a lot of time to waste, I have no real “benefit” participating on these portals.
However, not only do I see innumerable benefits of being part of a business network on portals like LinkedIn and openBC, I have actually experienced the benefits which range from thought-provoking discussions, new associates and contacts, to actually making money and doing business. And even though I am based in Bombay, India, 90% of the business that I have generated from participating on online business networking portals like LinkedIn and openBC, has been from overseas clients.
The classy business networking portals like LinkedIn and openBC provide ample amount of control on who I want to connect with and what information I want to reveal to each person on my network. These portals empower the users. What might be considered as Spam by me might not be considered so by someone else. Of course, if one signs up on Orkut and displays a personal e-mail to everyone, like someone mentioned above, “dense” would be the appropriate word to describe the person. But we are learning, albeit slowly.
If I send out Spam on my business network, it will not be overlooked. Not only will I stand to lose professional contacts that I have put in effort to connect with, I will also lose credibility for future requests to connect. Also, I might lose membership to the business networking portal altogether. I send out an e-mail to all my network contacts (more than 1200 people and growing) every month. Till today only three have sent me personal e-mails and asked to be removed from the e-mail since they did not feel that it suited their needs or requirements. Business networking makes that possible.
As for unwanted contacts, online business networking allows us to say “No”. And if we do not say “no” when we feel that the contact is unwanted, we will complain how our connections list is growing larger with “unwanted” contacts.
Online business networking is not limited to just reading profiles on the networking portal and writing a monotonous request to connect. Everyone has links to blogs or websites on their profiles and we can find out more about them using those links. Read: Request to Connect
Strangers are friends we have yet to meet. Unless we connect with people we do not know, how can we ever hope to know them?
ALSO THE CNET POST ABOUT “Why social networking does not work”. Do not miss the TalkBack section.
MY COMMENT ON THE SAME:
LinkedIn is not a “social” networking portal. It is an online business networking portal as you have rightly pointed out.
On your point 2. “It takes too much time” – LinkedIn and openBC (another trail-blazing online business networking portal) are definitely more useful than social networking sites. However, I do not believe that they are less information rich. LinkedIn and openBC profiles of people who are members of the portals have links to the blogs that they write or frequent and their websites. People who are there for the business networking, constantly update their profiles with new developments. These portals are one of the best way of finding out more about a “person”.
In point 4. “Strangers kind of suck (or, put nicely, the social hierarchy is really not that attractive)” where you say “Sure, business networking is valuable, and it’s great to have a lot of resources who might know someone who can help you with…something. But that argument gets a little thin when you’re suddenly bombarded with date offers or all-too-frequent postings about the unsavory or just plain uninteresting habits of the strangers you suddenly know.“
It seems like you are confusing business networking and social networking. Business networking is not based on the premise that we connect with people we already know and the connections made are not for seeking dates or sharing quirky habits. You are right, instead of sending them (people I know) an e-mail or sending them a message via IM, I might as well meet up with them for coffee. But why should I restrict myself to people I know? I, personally have not only participated in thought provoking discussions and built relationships with people I have never “spoken” to, let alone meeting them, I have done business with them and made money and am constantly giving back to the network by helping other networkers. Even though I am based in Bombay, India, 90% of my clients are from abroad. Online Business Networking allows me to do that.
As for point 5. “And I can probably find it faster using Google than I can by e-mailing one friend who’ll e-mail another who’ll e-mail another while my deadline slips away. Sure, it’s helpful–once in a while. But once I have all these folks in my address book, I won’t be much help in terms of ad impressions.“
Agreed that Google is great, I swear by it myself, but how will you know that the person you have found is who he/she says he/she is? How will you ensure that (once you have found their e-mail id online) your e-mail to them survives their Spam filter? One of my professional contacts recently asked me for help with transcription services that she required. Within 6 hours, I had sent out e-mails to various e-groups on Yahoo where I am a member and I had sent out half a dozen e-mails to other connections on the same networking portal and I had 5 quotes for providing the service. Within a day, the originator of the search in the US had decided on whether she had better opportunities at cost-savings in India or in the US – and this is assuming that I was the only peron she asked. Try contacting a stranger who you find on Google and see if you can repeat this. I am not saying that it will not work – it just might – but when online business networking portals like openBC and LinkedIn provide me the facility with better, faster and more secure results, why should I rely only on Google? Why shouldn’t I combine the power of all the technology available to me, optimize it to my needs and strive to live in a truly global village?
June 14th, 2005
