List of online networking groups and forums

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*Remember! Everything you post while networking online is highly search-engine visible and you cannot undo your online history!

These resources can help you boost your profile massively, sell your goods and services online, find help and solutions to your problems, meet life-long business partners and position yourself high in Google’s search results for minumum outlay. Our advice? Try out everything on this list!

Online networking sites:

Word of Mouse Business referral networking for the online generation. Created by master-networker Andy Lopata (author of Amazon business networking bestseller ‘And Death Came Third’) – look out for forthcoming review and interviews on G2B@ podcast.

The Boardroom New networking site with free and premium membership levels. Clean design, easy to navigate, detailed profile. Premium offers tele-networking meetings (via phone) and an online exhibition space. Both features need development but could be good.

Make Your Mark The people responsible for national Enterprise Week, MYM are funded to bring together business networks and young people with entrepreneurial ideas from across the UK. Any group can list its events and the whole thing is stirred up by a group of meta-networkers, called ‘connectors’.

Network Cornwall This network has 1600 members – a potentially great resource for business. The website has a forum which lists posts in alphabetic order (??) and an inviting but potentially self-destructive ‘mail EVERYBODY’ option.

Ecademy Ecademy is an international business networking site, with some of the best online search-and-connect features available. Membership gives you a highly visible profile (in search engine terms) and highly visible content (via blogs, clubs and marketplace listings). Definately a long-term relationship building idea – and like anything, you need to really plan your Ecademy marketing strategy to get the most out of it.

LinkedIn A grown up, chat-free network that focuses entirely on the mechanics of connection. LinkedIn manages your connections and your connections’ connections and so on. Before you know it, you’ll be connected to millions of people. The weakest part of LinkedIn is people asking you for recommendations whose work you’ve never sampled – simply because you know someone who knows someone who knows someone….

Ryze.com claims ‘over 300,000′ business people networking in there. Initial exploration shows the vast majority of them are from the US or India and busy stuffing the ‘classifieds’ section full of ‘make-$4000-a-day-from-home’ schemes.

network2connect Online networking site with marketplace, testimonials, groups and ‘blogs’.  Has an affiliate scheme / network marketing / MLM flavour.  Some of the posts on the relatively quiet forum date from 2005!  N2C is headed up by Geoff Cox of BoB (Business over Breakfast) networking fame and offers both free and a paid levels of membership.

Facebook To me it looks like badly designed chaos – but trillions of people can’t all be wrong. Facebook is like LinkedIn for teenagers, but carefully used, it can drive traffic to your site.

Biznik “Business networking that doesn’t suck” is how Biznik refers to itself. It’s US based with almost no UK members, but it’s like business networking meets ‘Friends’. Clean, fun and friendly. Get a feature-rich free account and you even get a limited number of free ‘promotions’ too.

Event diaries / listings

Plymouth Diary / SynchroCity The Region’s leader in event promotion – this resource aims to create joined-up thinking across the commercial and civic sectors to encourage mutually beneficial clusters of activities. Free to the public in magazine and searchable, online form.

Forums:

UK Business Forums A busy well-managed business forum that offers a basic free membership. Your £36 a year full membership buys you a signature (great for links to your site or your products) but best of all, the chance to post carefully-crafted keyword-rich press-releases (that’s three hyphens in a row, there). Because of UKBF’s solid structure and search engine optimisation, your press-releases will hit the heights of Google’s natural results in record time. Highly recommended.

A1BusinessForums New business forum aimed at small businesses with a UKBF-style forum software, green (eco) feel and offering help and advice. We’ll check it out and report back soon.

4Networking.biz The online part of 4Networking, a rapidly-growing and fairly informal breakfast networking organisation. 4Networking’s online forum lets you create a link-rich profile and gain plenty of online exposure for free. The offline breakfast format is usually busy, fun and focuses on relationship building over referral-giving.

UK Small Business Forums Looks like the kid brother of UKBF (above). We haven’t been there long enough to work out the obvious differences, but when we do, we’ll tell you.

UK Business Chat A fresh new business forum. Nice and blue with a Westcountry flavour.. and the most infernally confusing password re-set process in the world. Ok, so it’s probably not UKBC’s fault… but why the silly ‘can’t try again for 15 minutes’ malarkey? It’s a bit demotivating.

SmallBusinessForums US small business forum, may be useful for comparison purposes – also if you plan to market your products and services to the US.

G2B@ forum This is new, free and specifically for Devon and Cornwall networking: people who are within a reasonable car’s journey of each other.

WCBN forum West Devon Business Network’s member forum. This is open to guests and is a clean, straightforward functional forum that’s new and relatively quiet.

Platinax Clean and metallic, this looks like its worth exploring. We haven’t been in there yet, but the design looks good and it appears reasonably busy. More later!

Teneric This is a great example of a busy forum designed to create traffic for Teneric’s business planning solutions. Worth a look.

TIYB – This is Your Busines Another new business forum that’s green and free. Too early to differentiate this one from the others.

About My Business I haven’t explored here, but the last time I checked, I noticed that this forum is ‘borrowed’ by more than one business. This means if you post in here, your post might reappear attached to a business site you don’t recognise.

Startups.co.uk A broad set of resources for start-up businesses – including a forum that’s under development if the long thread about ‘how do we develop this forum’ is anything to go by.

Salesandmarketingforums.co.uk A relatively new, friendly AND RELAUNCHED (APR 2008) forum dedicated to sales and marketing offering full profile & signature functionality for no cost. The white on dark grey with orange links is distinctive, but not the easiest to read in the posts themselves. ** The’ve now relaunched with a great looking new forum design & more and better resources. Worth a visit – it’s starting to get busy as the result of the relaunch publicity.

Shell Livewire Distinctive, non-forum home page design hints at loads of resources for businesses but took me ages to find my way to a forum – no signposting. Worth the effort because at first glance, the forums look seriously busy and you get a feel you’re in a serious business networking place. More later!!

Online Directories:

At some point, you’re going to be invited to join a ‘local’ business directory. Click here for a list of online, local business directories and some guidelines how to evaluate them.
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