A fundamental tool of a good networker is a thorough master database of contacts. While Outlook is passable as a contact manager, its primary focus is still as an e-mail client. True contact management tools are much better suited for active networking. We use and recommend Act! by Best Software. GoldMine is another excellent product. Both integrate with Outlook as an e-mail client, but provide much more robust functionality centered around contacts, rather than around e-mail messages.

Among the data fields that one should include:

standard contact information (phone, address, email, website, etc.)
spouse
children
birthday
background
category (1=family/best friends, 2=close friend, 3=casual friend, 4=casual acquaintance, 5=met once, and 6=stranger)
connections (how we met/common affiliations)
education
affiliations (clubs, etc.)
special interests
career history
accomplishments
appropriate holiday greeting (Merry Xmas, Happy Rosh Hashanah, Happy Chinese New Year, etc.)
For an exhaustive list, see “The Mackay 66″ in Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive.

It is critical to maintain the database with new information as you obtain it. People regularly switch jobs, locations, and occasionally spouses; one out of seven Americans moves every year. If you do not work to maintain it, the value of your database will rapidly degrade.

The exercise of building a database of everyone you know will facilitate keeping in touch with them, and will also help you think about who you can introduce to whom. This will help you to become a matchmaker, connecting people with similar interests. Incidentally, this is 90% of the job of an investment banker.

Make sure that you have critical categories well-represented in your network. In particular, a good network should include people from all of the following areas: real estate broker; a source for hard-to-get tickets; travel agent; community leaders from major ethnic/religious communities (Catholic / Jewish / Protestant / African-American / Feminist); headhunter; banker; elected local official; high-ranking police officer; firefighter; insurance expert; auto mechanic; media contact; and spouse and/or best friend. For more on this, see Harvey Mackay’s Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty.

Learn the software you select inside-out. The searchability of a good database is one of the principle advantages of using technology for your networking. Take a class, get a good book, or even get some one-on-one coaching to be sure you’re really getting the most out of it.

An interesting aspect of the emergent online networking trend is the combination of itwith face-to-face get-togethers. Ecademy and Ryze were started out of in-person networking groups, and eWomenNetwork, originally planned as an online-only community, attracts large monthly luncheon crowds. Meetup.com takes this one step further — it exists exclusively for the purpsose of helping people connect online so that they can connect in person.

Meetup’s premise is that people would get together more easily and more often if someone else would just pick a time and place. So Meetup establishes a date and time for a group of people to meet, gives them a limited choice of locations to vote on, and asks them to RSVP online to indicate if they’re planning to attend. Simple, but ingenious.

Meetup has become most popular among members of Book Crossing (a global book exchange community), Slashdot (a technology news and commentary community for self-avowed nerds), as well as supporters for a variety of political candidates. In addition to the more socially-oriented get-together, there are also meetups for entrepreneurs, small business owners, consultants, realtors, and a variety of other work & career topics. And with get-togethers in over 500 cities around the world, odds are good of finding a meetup near you on a topic you’re interested in.

Once you find a topic you’re interested in and determine that there’s a meeting date near you, you can put in some basic profile information, leave a brief public message for others in your area interested in the topic, and RSVP to indicate your plans to attend the next event.

Fair warning that there are a lot of “theoretical” events - Meetup creates an event for every topic in every city, again based on the idea that the meeting can’t happen until it’s out there as a possiblity. But you can subscribe for your topic/city and be notified via e-mail as to how many people are planning to attend, and which location everyone voted for. They’ll also let you know if enough people don’t sign up within a few days before the meetup so you won’t show up for a meeting with just yourself.

Signing up and showing up for a meetup is a bit of a stretch, but keep in mind that it is for the others, as well. You can be assured that the other people you meet, besides being interested in the topic, are also interested in networking, technologically savvy, and willing to take some chances themselves. That makes an interesting combination.

Developing and maintaining a good reputation is essential for any networking, but especially for online networking. It takes time to develop a solid reputation, but only an instant to lose it, so you must take care in how you participate in networking communities. Be deliberate and methodical, not haphazard. Developing a systematic approach to how you initiate your participation in mailing lists and discussion forums is one of the surest ways to consistently create a good first impression. Here are a few simple tips on how to get started:

Learn the Lay of the Land - Don’t jump right in and start posting until you get a feel for what kind of people the other members are, what their conversational style is, etc. More than anything, you’re trying to find out if this is a place you want to network before you make your presence known, because you actually damage your reputation if you introduce yourself and then disappear. Better to never say anything and quietly slip away if it’s not a place you’re going to stay.

The Power of “Hello” - Always start with a personal introduction before you join in the conversation. This gives context to what you say, a critical aspect to good communication. A good introduction should be upbeat, personal, tell a short story, tell briefly about your business without being a sales pitch, invite people to connect with you, and affirm your commitment to participate in the group.

Dive In, But Don’t Splash - Once you introduce yourself, join immediately into the conversation. You should have already gotten your “lurking” over with before you introduced yourself, so there’s no reason to delay. However, don’t be a boor and hog the conversation. Generally, a good guideline is to be in about 2-3 conversations at a time. Also, rather than replying to every single person involved in the conversation with short responses, better to post just once every day or two with a more thoughtful, reflective response that addresses multiple people’s posts. This is the online equivalent of being a good listener, rather than listening just being a matter of waiting for your turn to talk. You’ll establish far more credibility this way as being thoughtful and knowledgeable  in other words, an expert.

For whatever reason, business-oriented mailing lists have had traction on Yahoo Groups that MSN Groups and AOL Groups have never matched. Skimming through the groups under the business categories in MSN or AOL will turn up primarily lists with fewer than 10 people. On Yahoo Groups, though, many lists contain several thousand people. Also (and this is very important), Yahoo displays the groups in a category in descending order of number of members, so the most popular groups are displayed first. Hopefully, some day they’ll have it do the same for search results when searching for a group by keyword, rather than browsing group listings by category.

Yes, you have to deal with a lot of ads. Yes, the service level is sometimes inconsistent. But in terms of features for the price, it’s tough to beat. Yahoo Groups continues to be free, in spite of persistent rumors about plans to start charging for the service. And while many groups only use it as a mailing list, it offers much more functionality - chat, file sharing, photo galleries, shared web links, free-form database, polls, and a group calendar.

As far as what lists to get involved in, there are plenty of general business lists in the Business & Finance section, as well as thousands of specialty lists for various industries, professions, etc. There are also over 5,000 Industry Associations, and several thousand Business School Alumni groups. For all you job seekers, there are some 10,000 Job Listing lists, many serving particular niche markets and having much higher success rates than Monster and the other general-purpose job boards (the Software Product Marketing E-Group, which we’ll feature in a future issue, is a great example). So the opportunities for networking are many and varied.

One particularly nice feature of Yahoo Groups is the ability to control your level of inbound communication. You can select to receive individual e-mails, a single daily digest of all the day’s messages, or to participate only on the Web. Use this to keep your e-mail to a manageable volume even if you’re a member of several groups.

By the way, in case you’re wondering if any real business happens in Yahoo Groups, the multi-million-dollar merger between Mongoose Technology and RealCommunities was initiated in a conversation on the Communities of Practice Group. So the answer is a resounding “yes”!

Many people think of publishing articles as “publicity”, but not as “networking”. Keep in mind, though, that the three key aspects to increasing the value of your network are the number of connections, credibility, and intimacy (see Make Your Business Click: How to Value and Grow Your Business Relationships Online). Publishing articles dramatically increases both your exposure and your credibility, making it a great networking tool.

If you’ve never written before, you may want to get your feet wet with some local publications or newsletters first, or perhaps by publishing on your own web page or weblog. As you develop your topic, you can start contributing guest articles to sites and e-zines such as About.com, SmallBusiness.com, or niche sites or e-zines for your industry or interest. The beauty of publishing on the web is that you can usually get published within thirty days or less. Once you’ve refined your writing skills, developed your topic, and established some reputation and credentials, you can start looking for freelance opportunities with major publications who will pay you for your submissions.

Those major publications both reach a larger audience and increase your credibility, but that really only helps you if you receive a byline that has your contact information and a one or two line bio, and are not just listed by name. Make sure that’s specified in your contract in advance.

To start finding places to publish, you can start online with Google Directory’s Markets for Writers, which lists a variety of sites with lists of places to publish. If you can’t find what you’re looking for there, or if you want a nice, large list all in one place, then check out the 2003 Writer’s Market Online. This 1,100+ page book provides a comprehensive list of both online and print markets plus a one-year subscription to the Writer’s Market web site. Or you can just subscribe to the web site for about $3 a month.

Remember, one of the main advantages of online networking is the ability to be networking 24×7x365. Getting published is one of the most effective ways to create a passive presence that’s attracting connections even when you’re not there.

One of the top destination sites on the Web, About.com is unique in that it provides original content, human-edited links to Web content, news, and online community on several hundred subjects, from ADD to Zoology, and everything in between. This unique combination of features, plus the fact that each guide is a real (and generally very accessible) human being make About a great networking opportunity. There are four basic ways to network using About:

Forums - About has a discussion forum for every one of their several hundred topics. Some are fairly quiet, while others are extremely active. For general business purposes, check out the Small Business Channel, which includes Entrepreneurs, Small Business Information, Small Business: Canada, Marketing, Management, Human Resources, and more. Or, if you a particular niche interest, odds are that there’s a topic for you elsewhere on the site. A lot of participants in the forums are new and inexperienced, looking for information, so it’s a great place to share your expertise and help people, networking at its best.

Publishing - Most of the About Guides welcome guest articles, as more quality content generally means more page views, which is how they earn their money. Publishing is a great way to demonstrate the depth of your expertise (see this week’s tip). And all guest articles on About are bylined so that readers can contact you directly.

Get to know the Guide - If you do the above two things, you’ll develop a relationship with the Guide. Because there are so many other people doing that, as well, About Guides generally have a lot of contacts, making them hubs - good people to have in your network.

Be a Guide - The ultimate way to network on About is to become a Guide. This is not a trivial process - there’s a rigorous selection process and a month-long training/trial period (which you’re not paid for). The compensation varies greatly from topic to topic, but the exposure and credibility you gain as a Guide is hard to put a price on.

For networking purposes, we strongly recommend you get a permanent email address, either your own domain or a forwarding service that you can route to your ISP-based account. Many leading universities (if you are a graduate of that university) will give you one for free, and a variety of low-cost services exist for this. Alternatively, you can register your full name or family name as a domain name (e.g., Teten.com, DonnaFisher.com) and get your own email address based on that domain name (e.g., david@teten.com). We recommend NameBargain.com or GoDaddy.com as inexpensive domain name registrars (e-mail forwarding is available for $0.99 a year with a GoDaddy domain).

Free web-based mail services (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) are another option, but they don’t carry the prestige and distinctiveness of your own domain. Also, if not checked regularly, they can easily fill up, and people attempting to reach you will get a “Mailbox full: unable to deliver message” error - definitely not the image you want to put forth. They’re fine as spam-catchers, but should not be your primary permanent e-mail.

We strongly discourage using an email address from an internet service provider (ISP), such as name@aol.com, or a work email address, such as dteten@MyFormerEmployer.com. Using an ISP email address locks you in to that ISP, and makes you difficult to reach should you switch ISPs. Why give someone an email which may be out of date in a year? And why should you advertise for AOL’s services if AOL is not paying you?

Recently, David wanted to contact a member of the International Executives Resource Group (IERG) with regard to an IERG-related issue. This particular individual was formerly the CTO of a mid-size company. David found the CTO’ s resume on the website and sent a note to the email address on the resume. However, the CTO had a Verizon internet address, and David’s email bounced because the CTO apparently had switched ISPs. Then David tried calling the CTO, but he had switched telephone numbers also!

Imagine if David were a potential employer: would he bother calling directory information to track the person down? Of course not; he would just contact the next résumé in the pile. With a permanent email address, the CTO would have avoided the problem of being out of touch.

Once you set up your permanent e-mail account, be sure to manage it closely. When you change ISP’s, don’t forget to change the routing of your e-mail forwarding right away. Take care of your permanent e-mail address as if it were your good name, and it will keep you connected for life.

Business networking is inextricably tied to both knowledge networking and social networking - wherever one is occurring, the other two usually are, as well. SmallBusiness.com is a site for small business owners and related experts to come together and share their expertise and experiences.

Membership is free - the site is advertiser-supported, but the ads are minimal and unobtrusive. Members can set up profiles which are not highly structured, but are easily searchable. The search feature helps out by allowing the user to narrow his selection by business category. It also gives equal opportunity to everyone by displaying the results alphabetically, but randomly going to a different point in the alphabet on each search (I got the W’s on my first search).

Rather than the traditional discussion forum or mailing list format, the primary form of communication consists of members either posing questions or volunteering short tips and advice, and then other members responding with their comments. This form of communication tends to reduce the off-topic “static” and insignificant chatter that frequently plagues discussion boards. On the other hand, it doesn’t lend itself to dialogue and conversation. Of course, that can always be continued off-site.

Topics of advice include onlines business, accounting & taxes, starting a business, marketing & sales, and a variety of product recommendations. All advice is open for ratings by other members, so you can tell the helpful advice from the not-so-helpful before you spend time reading it. You can also bookmark your favorite people to add them to your network for easy future reference.

One unique and especially intriguing feature is their use of collaborative filtering. Similar to the technology used to recommend books on Amazon.com, SmallBusiness.com tracks your selections of topics and experts to recommend particular advice or people to you based on comparing your past behaviors with other members and showing you the top people and topics they have found helpful. This is a pretty intriguing feature that is sure to help you make new and interesting connections.