Networking in Atlanta: A Quick Summary — Clarity First Consulting

At this point, you’re probably feeling very excited about going out into the world and finding some awesome networking events in Atlanta.

Before you venture out and meet some awesome new business partners, I want to leave you with a few important takeaways that I believe are the most important points we’ve covered.

What We Covered

Let’s go through each major section and extract one single takeaway:

| Chapter 1 : Setting Proper Networking Goals

Almost everything you do in the networking domain is tied to your overall networking goal. It’s important to get it right the first time (make it a SMART goal), and then use that goal as an anchor to help you throughout the next month of networking.

A notebook with some text that reads: tie your networking goal to a tangible business goal, make sure that it is a SMART goal, whenever you make an important business decision, refer back to your overall goal, networking probably won't work for you so don't get your hopes up just yet.

| Chapter 2 : Finding Events.

There is an abundance of networking events in Atlanta. Because of this, it’s critical that you vet the events you attend to maximize the return on your time.

Note: Unfortunately, at times the best way to determine the value of an event is to attend.

A notebook with some text that reads: spend time finding the most relevant events to go to, ,always vet the host of the event before attending, most of the time the best way to vet an event is to go yourself - so make sure youre not wasting your time.

| Chapter 3: Hosting Events

Hosting events is certainly one of the most effective ways to build authority with your target market, but it can be time consuming so make sure you really need local clients/customers!

A notebook with text that reads: lecture formats are simple and a great way to get started, make sure not to sell your products during the event, focus on providing value to attendees. The key takeaway is that you should give to get. Focus on making your events stellar, and stellar customers will show up.

| Chapter 4: Before the Event.

Although not completely necessary, preparing before the event is a fantastic way to show how proactive you are (and subsequently waste less time at the events themselves).

This is a most useful at larger, more exclusive, events. A notebook with text that reads: make a quick plan for who you want to see before attending the event, reach out to them beforehand, remember that planning is the key to success!

| Chapter 5: During the Event (Event Etiquette).

People are more or less understanding of the difficulty of networking. They will empathize with you if you try to join their group, as long as you do it confidently.

A notebook with some text depicting: remember that everyone else is nervous too, when approaching, do it confidently, and always be smiling. Remember that you can get away with almost anything at these events if you do it confidently.

| Chapter 6: After the Event.

Following up is just as important if not more important than the event itself. Make sure you preface the follow-up, then keep it simple and authentic.

A notebook with the text: personalize your follow-up and make it authentic, keep it simple and be specific about where you want the interaction to go, and more importantly remember that following up is as important as the event itself.

Thank’s for reading!

If you take one thing from this guide, it should be that showing up is 90% of the battle.

If you’re at all nervous about networking, just go to make friends, and once you see that everyone feels the same way, you’ll start to get more and more comfortable breaking out of that comfort zone.

Get out there and make some new relationships! Mingle like your business depends on it.

Spoiler: it does.

If you enjoyed this guide, share it with anyone who you think would find it relevant. I believe that most people have networking hangups, and the goal of this guide was to help with that.

Let me know if it did in the comments below!