The new secret of growth

Mike Walsh reveals the secrets of business networking in the Internet age.

Networks are amazing things.

They surround us. Office networks, phone networks, networks of business associates or the Internet itself.

Understanding connectivity is more than just an exercise in curiosity; it holds the secret to a radical new growth paradigm for business.

A friend who worked at Google once took me on a backstage tour of their Silicon Valley headquarters. First stop was the company’s original computer server. Curiously, the blue network cables were neatly arranged along a central spine. ‘Our first network engineer used to be neurosurgeon’, my friend pointed out with a wry smile. ‘We think he was trying to make it look like a brain’. It was an appropriate metaphor.

Just as the brain uses millions of links to store memories and thoughts, Google’s search spiders trawl the connections between websites to bring structure to the chaos of web content.

Being ‘found’ on Google is not just good luck. For any business with an online presence, a high search ranking equals profits.

Despite the claims of cereal-box gurus who promise to get you in the Top Ten results, you can’t escape the basic law: the more sites link to you, the higher your ranking. Google’s algorithm rewards websites that are at the centre of a dense network of links.

So how do you put yourself in the middle of such a network? Blogging might seem the domain of teens, but it’s also a great way for business people to encourage regular website visitors and other sites to start linking to your content.

When that happens - the difference to your network visibility will be dramatic. Not surprisingly, what you had for breakfast or a dull press release is not appropriate blog fare.

But keeping a pithy log of relevant articles and news in your field, spiced up with a few lines of commentary, always works a treat. You might be surprised by how many people suddenly think you are an expert.

What applies to websites also applies to people. Although you might scan the job ads when you are considering a new career, the best positions typically arrive by referral. Interestingly, as social scientist Mark Granovetter discovered, it is weak friendship ties – rather than strong ones – that are the most helpful in finding a job. That makes sense. In a small group of friends, everyone knows all the available opportunities; it takes a random link into a new network to introduce new possibilities for connections.

Fortunately, there are a number of websites that make social networking useful for business people. Think of it as ‘MySpace for grownups’. Three of the biggest – LinkedIn, Facebook and openBC – help you consolidate your own networks and tap into new ones.

If you work in business development, you might also find the websites Jigsaw or Spoke useful for identifying the right contacts within your target companies.

All of that adds up to a new way of thinking about business: cutthroat competition replaced by fluid connections.

In the same way that eBay uses a special market for allocating and reporting the ‘trust scores’ of its members, we are moving to a time when digital reputation will co-exist with your network connections so that people will know who they are dealing with. And in that world, who you know is as important as what they know about you.