Some notes on effectively building your business network:

The time has come in the era of social media where one can go on anyone's profile and see an abundance of connections. In a fearful mind, this can be daunting and questionable. Does this person really know all of these people? What did they do to attain this many relationships?


Speaking on a personal-level, "no" and "who knows" are my answers to these questions, respectively. This leads me to the another question: how many people SHOULD be in a network? The natural answer to this question is: it depends!

It should intuitively make sense to expect a 40-year industry veteran to have more connections than a 25 year-old analyst. But the advantage may be in the younger persons' corner: less time can come with less flooding of a network and, thus, the ability to monitor a smaller crowd more effectively. Let me explain. Over time, the probability one makes a connection and that connection fizzles out increases (unless one lives in a cave or under a rock). Because of this, a younger person has the ability to monitor who joins their network and/or effectively maintain a higher percentage of their network. This obviously does not have to be the case for the industry veteran as well, but if a younger person can keep this mantra in mind when networking, it can go a longer (in terms of time) way. Attached is great article about how to effectively network and maintain your circle. Take a look:

http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/08/how-to-network-effectively.html