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Networking between businesses has never been easier.
There was a time when representatives of local business had to drag themselves away from their own business concerns to attend meetings of the Chamber of Commerce or a local business forum and, whilst that kind of personal interaction is still vitally important for the purpose of knowing who is who within your local business community, there are now so many other ways of keeping in touch with business owners within either your neighbourhood or your niche.
The latter is extremely important. It has always been relatively easy to interact with business people operating along your street. Traditionally it has been much more difficult to keep in touch with those operating in the same line of business as yourself who might be based in some other part of the UK, or indeed in another country.
Social media such as Facebook and Twitter, along with business focused resources such as LinkedIn, have proved to be invaluable. They have almost literally brought the world to your computer screen. Today it is so easy to communicate with anyone anywhere else in the world that we pretty much take it for granted.
But why would we wish to be in contact with other business people? Particularly those with whom we are competing in the same finite and often scarce market?
This question needs to be looked at from the perspective of differening situations. If you were the manager of a public house, for instance, and another public house was located next door to your own (unlikely though that may be in this age of closures), your neighbour and yourself would clearly be in competition with one another. If however the other premises were located a few streets away you would most likely share many of the same customers, as they move around from venue to venue. You would have a shared interest in maintaining the quality of the neighbourhood for incoming visitors, and in identifying potential troublemakers and sharing intelligence on such things as drug taking and anti-social behaviour.
Of course most neighbourhoods will play host to a range of completely different business interests. Once again these will have a mutual interest in raising the appeal of an area so as to encourage more outside visitors who will, it is hoped, use all the shops and retail outlets. They will have a mutual interest in eradicating crime such as robbery, vandalism and anti-social behaviour that has the effect of scaring off custom.
Business networks provide a very useful rallying point for local traders, but in addition can provide additional services such as training in starting a business, small business advice and vital support for those thinking of going into home business.
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Mark Richards is General Manager of The Middle Man, a dynamic low-cost online business promotion service. He writes for the Small Business Network, a growing business networking operation in North London.