How To Build Online Relationships And Why
In our day to day lives, small business owners come across a wealth of people. If we work from home, we end up building relationships with everyone around us, from the postman/woman who drops off parcels of business cards, right through to the various tradespeople who pop in during the day to check meters or try and sell us things.
When we first leave the corporate world to work at home, we can be shocked at just how much activity takes place around our homes.
Do You Miss The Corporate World?
However, despite all of these new relationships, it’s easy to start to miss the camaraderie and social side of working for a large corporation.
Instead of being waved off each morning to go and join a team, the likelihood is most of us get up, shower, have breakfast…and then go off to work in our home office.
This could be a corner of the sofa in the living room, a desk under the stairs, or a small study on the top floor.
Instead of going out for lunch with a group of colleagues, we remain inside with a dog, wondering how we got to the point where we may not meet anyone in the flesh from morning until the end of the working day.
The good news is, everyone who works from home goes through the same acclimatization to get used to shifting from office to home working.
The Good News…
The even better news is, there’s a fantastic network of people available online to relieve the loneliness and make home working as busy, sociable and talkative as any office job could ever be.
With the growth of online communications mechanisms such as Skype, Facebook chat and MSN messenger, it seems that working from home can be as busy as a full day in the office.
Is building on-line relationships a waste of time?
Building relationships online isn’t even a waste of time – in fact, it’s just the opposite.
Having a great set of people whom you can draw upon for various things is a real prerequisite of successful home business, for a number of reasons:
- It alleviates the loneliness which can affect all home workers when they make the transition to leaving a large office
- It enables you to network online and share your blog articles through Facebook, Twitter and other vehicles like Google+, knowing that your network will support you through sharing
- It allows you to contact a group of people when you launch new initiatives, and ask them to help you with pilot phases, getting great feedback from people who care about you
- It opens up channels for developing new business, as you work with people from across the globe who share the same interests and passions as yourself
- It gives you access to a strong knowledge base, with people you can ask for advice on specific industry-related subjects, knowing you will be communicating with people who understand you and what you offer
- It opens up new challenges to potential customers as you forge new relationships and people get to know who you are, and what you can do for them
- It supports potential ‘job swaps’ where you help each other, through providing specific services, in a mutual agreement.
With all these benefits, it soon becomes clear that your online relationships will become the cornerstone of your home business.
Network with people, nurture your contacts, and you’ll soon get to the stage where you can’t sit down to work in the morning without getting bombarded with people who want to get in touch.
You’ll wonder how you ever thought working from home could be an isolating experience!
What’s your experience of building on-line relationships? How have you benefitted from them?
Please share your views in the comments below.
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