Rita, the enthusiastic entrepreneur I introduced in the March issue of DARE, had been reasonably successful in growing her venture. She had customers, she was profitable and she had a network that she could tap into
 |
| Anjana Vivek |
Earlier in her corporate career, Rita had not connected to the leaders in the company and, as a result, had been left out of the decision making process.
Learning from the past, Rita now took time to build her network. However, she realised that while she had connected with entrepreneur associations and industry groups, she had not built her online profile and social media networks.
The Need To Connect
The lack of an appropriate online presence was now starting to become a disadvantage. In a couple of meetings in the recent past, some of her acquaintances had even commented about her incomplete web profile. Her friend, Vidya, another successful woman entrepreneur, asked her “Rita, do a search for yourself and your company online. What are the profiles that are visible? Are you satisfied with them? Do they adequately represent what you do?”
At one network meeting, a stranger who was introduced to her said, “Oh, you are Rita! I actually wanted to buy some products from you as someone had referred your name. However, I searched for your profile online but there was no mention of the range of products I wanted.”
Educating Rita
Rita analysed her online presence. She realised that she had to take some action, fast. As a first step, she connected with friends who had leveraged on the power of the internet. She attended programmes related to social media, she read articles and presentations and she discussed these with her network.
 |
There was another big challenge. Rita was just not comfortable disclosing personal information in the public domain. As a working woman, she was used to taking certain precautions in the real world, and she wanted to be similarly cautious in the virtual world. She realised that the answer was not to stay quiet, but to think through the implications of privacy issues, safety and security, i.e think about what information she was giving out and who might read it.
After carefully reading and studying the internet presence of companies in different industries and some in competition with her own, she planned her strategy and action plan, step by step.
Rita’s Action Plan
Step One: Rita updated her company website, so that it reflected her current line of products, key customers and partners.
Step Two: She looked at her profiles on popular social networking sites, such as LinkedIn and Facebook. They did not reflect her personality and her work. Deciding to leverage them for professional purposes, she decided to keep her personal life out of such profiles. Now, they showcased her expertise as a professional and as a woman entrepreneur.
Step Three: Rita took guidance. She again spoke to Vidya, who set out the following points to ‘trigger thinking’:
• What do you want to communicate about yourself?
• Whom are you communicating to?
• Do you invite only known persons to connect with you?
• What if someone you do not know invites you?
Thinking through these questions helped Rita create her online profiles. But she knew there was much more to be done. She began to do her homework before entering Phase II of her virtual avatar.
In the next issue: More of Rita’s adventures in virtual networking.
___________________________________
Anjana Vivek is the founder of VentureBean Consulting and a guest faculty at IIM Bangalore. To write to the author, please send an email to dare@cybermedia.co.in with the subject line 'Anjana Vivek'.The views expressed here are that of the author and do not represent
the magazine's.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
