How to network: 5 methods from top experts

In his classic 1974 study Getting a Job, Granovetter… found that 56 percent of those he talked to found their job through a personal connection. [The Tipping Point]

MIT researchers… found that the more socially connected the IBM employees were, the better they performed. [The Happiness Advantage]

…businesspeople with entropic networks full of weak ties were three times more innovative than people with small networks of close friends… [Imagine: How Creativity Works]

(i) Do something every single day. Make it a habit. The more of it you do, the better you can get at it. Every day is an opportunity to get better, but do not try to do too much at once. Take the long view, and connect with at least one person professionally every day. Could be following up with someone you already know; could be asking for an introduction from a mutual connection.

(ii) Once in a while, think of two people who should know each other but don't, and introduce them. Follow through with them later to learn from whether that introduction was worthwhile, so you can get better at making introductions. Practice!

(iii) Imagine you got laid off today. Who are the five to ten people you'd write to for advice? Make sure to invest in those relationships regularly, not just when you have an urgent need.

(iv) Look at the five to ten people you've spent the most time with in the last three months. Are you happy with the way they're influencing you? If so, find another person who belongs in that group and invest in that relationship. (If not, change the way you're spending your time! How you spend your time determines so much in your life.) [Adam Rifkin]

After you identify your key contacts, think about how you first met them. In the center column of the work sheet, write the name of the person who introduced you to your contact (if you met the person yourself, write "me"). This column will reveal the brokers in your network and help you see the networking practices you used to connect with them. [Harvard Business Review]

After he committed to working at Microsoft in Seattle he had a lot of anxiety around all these relationships he'd built in the Bay Area. He took the amount of money that he was going to save living in Washington State as a savings off his income tax and pre-committed that to what he called "an interesting people fund" which was a fund to fund flights and coffees and dinners with interesting people in the Bay Area… Pre-committing $100 or $1,000 reduces the likelihood that when it comes time to actually do the thing you know you ought to do, you bail.

One of my personal favorites is probably Adam Rifkin's idea of the "Five-Minute Favor" (if you can do something for someone that will take less than five minutes, just do it.) A lot of people look at the idea of helping others and say, "Gosh, that's going to be time consuming, or exhausting, or put me at risk of being exploited." I think that Adam's idea enables us to a sense of, "What if I just took a couple minutes every day to try to help someone in a way that a small commitment to me, but could be of large benefit to them?"

We all have friends who are just cool to be around. They're always sending you awesome stuff. In emails, they're like, "Hey, check out this book", "Oh, you've got to see this video I just watched, here it is."

That is actually networking, because they're serving you first. Now one day if they came to you and said, "Hey man, I know you have a friend who works at X company. I'm actually trying to get connected there. Do you think you can introduce me?" Of course you would say yes… Networking is about a personal relationship.