Networking at Events - The Host Mentality

Get the most out of event networking, act as the host!

Hosts benefit greatly at events:

• they meet the most people
• they are remembered by the crowd
• and it is generally MUCH for fun to be the host than to the be the person that walks into a room of strangers that is expected to ‘network’

It’s human nature to prefer that other people approach you rather than you approaching them. The hosts of events usually get an enormous amount of people that approach them for different reasons, and the results are that the host often connects with the more people at the event than anyone else, therefore building their "tribe".

There are two options we have - host events or act like a host at events.

You can ‘become the host’ a number of ways if you are not the actual host (assuming this would be well received by the actual hosts), here are some ideas:

• offer assistance to the organizers - Do more chairs need to brought out? Do they need help getting the presentation running? more chairs etc. Need to be brought out?
• introduce people to other people with an introduction line like “Susan spoke at the last event on Search Engine Optimization...”
• offer to take pictures and to send them out to the audience – many people blog now and would appreciate a real photo to add to their post
• offer to pass out a page that everyone can write their contact info down and email it out to the willing participants after the event
• approach the organizers at the end of the event and and offer your help with the next event. Be specific, “I can help with name tags” or “I can bring pens and paper” instead of “let me know how I can help”.

Taking on the host mentality will increase the number of people that you engage with at an event - give it a try.

Do you have any suggestions on how to maximize event networking?

SBK (aka Shannon) contact me: sbk@mondaymarketingtools.com

Photo from Flickr - by emdot http://bit.ly/bfITMi

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