Networking is not just showing up on time at the local round table meeting or creating a killer profile online. Here are some articles on how to get started, get better and more effective at networking.

The Importance of Being Memorable
Five ways to help people remember you (in a good way!)
Read the article here…

Effective Networking for Busy People
Think you don’t have time to network? Think again
Read the article here…

Business Networking, Conversation, and Mingling Articles
Read the article here…

If you know of other good articles or suggestions, please create a comment below

Too much time is spend waiting on delayed airplanes, standing in line at the rental car counter and checking in at the hotel. Why not get the most of it! This page is for making it worth your while, how to save time and save up frequent flyer points. Please share your tricks with us by creating a comment below.

FlyerTalk.com
FlyerTalk, part of the WebFlyer Network, features discussions and chat boards that cover the most up-to-date traveler information. An interactive community dedicated to your favorite topic: travel!
Check out the forum, it has up-to-date information on frequent flyer programs (including Staralliance), rental car discounts and hotel programs. http://www.flyertalk.com/

SeatGuru.com
The most up-to-date and complete guide to airplane seat information on the internet.
The site currently provides comprehensive seat and aircraft information for 29 airlines: Air Canada, Air France, Air New Zealand, AirTran, Alaska Airlines, America West, American Airlines, ATA, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Continental Airlines, Delta Airlines, Emirates Airlines, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, KLM, Lufthansa, Northwest Airlines, Qantas, SAS, Singapore Airlines, Spirit, Swiss Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways and Virgin Atlantic. http://www.seatguru.com/

ExpertFlyer.com
is for the really PRO business traveller. 24/7 access to timely information about airline flights and fares all over the world. We do not sell tickets so you are free to purchase them directly from the airlines or wherever you favor. However, with this information, you will be empowered to make intelligent decisions about what flights to take, what fares to pay, where to sit on the plane and how best to use and maximize your frequent flyer miles and elite upgrades. Hint: read the Forbes article posted on their front page. It gives a good insight on how to use the service. http://www.expertflyer.com/

How does SAS Bonus program compare to other Star Alliance programs?
On the following page is a complete comparison charge http://members.shaw.ca/deercroft/starall.html

flyrejsen.dk
Find the cheapest flights from Denmark. This site compares offers from all the online traveling agencies. http://www.flyrejsen.dk/

Here are some of my own tips & tricks

- Get a “preferred” membership with the rental car company and book online before your trip. It will save you lots of time not having to go to the rental counter. I personally use Avis. They won my heart last winter in Chicago on a cold -15 Celsius morning. I checked in on the rental shuttle bus, and when I arrived at my car, the engine was running and there was about +20 Celsius in the car.

- Get a pair of noise reduction headphones. Not only will they block out the sound of screaming kids (you might have to combine with earplugs if the kid is really loud), but they also enhance the sound quality of both music and movies.

- Ask for a specific seat, check seatguru.com before or while talking with the travelling agency. Make a note of the seat number, because they might change your seat at check in. Even on first & business class there is such a thing as less good seats and better seats.

- Get a passport wallet for all your travelling documents such as passport, frequent flyer cards, electronic tickets, boarding card, hotel & rental car confirmations and luggage stickers.

- Bring your own ethernet cable. Some hotels have a limited amount of cables or the cable in the room might be broken by other guests.

Share your tips and tricks and they will be added to the list above. Just create a comment below. Thanks.

The Internet offers many networking possibilities. Below I have listed a few of them.

LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/
LinkedIn is an online network of more than 7.5 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 130 industries.
When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional accomplishments. Your profile helps you find and be found by former colleagues, clients, and partners. You can add more connections by inviting trusted contacts to join LinkedIn and connect to you.
Your network consists of your connections, your connections’ connections, and the people they know, linking you to thousands of qualified professionals.

Through your network you can:
- Find potential clients, service providers, subject experts, and partners who come recommended
- Be found for business opportunities
- Search for great jobs
- Discover inside connections that can help you land jobs and close deals
- Post and distribute job listings
- Find high-quality passive candidates
- Get introduced to other professionals through the people you know

LinkedIn is free to join.

The Company of Friends
http://www.fastcompany.com/cof/
The Company of Friends is Fast Company magazine’s readers’ network. It is a global online and offline community of self-organizing groups of forward-thinking business leaders and innovators. Members help each other improve their careers, companies, and communities.

benefits to being a member of the CoF

- connect with like-minded business leaders
- participate in “intelligent networking” activities and events
- engage in stimulating discussion about leading-edge business ideas and practices
- search for other members network-wide based on geography, industry, and interest
- belong to CoF-related mailing lists with notification of upcoming events and activities
- create an online business card — your CoF profile

Company of Friends is free to join

Delphi Forums
http://www.delphiforums.com/

With more than 10 million registered members and over a million new messages posted per week, Dephi is one of the leading networks of member-managed online communities. Delphi’s services enable individuals to build, manage and grow their own online communities.

Those who register with Delphi Forums enjoy personalized features like their own “My Forums” page, which keeps track of the communities they participate in. Users who participate in message board discussions get email notification when somebody replies to their messages, and when there are new messages in the Forums they’re interested in.

Delphi Forums is free to join

Jigsaw
http://www.jigsaw.com/
Jigsaw provides business contact and company information for public and private companies. With over 3 million business contact records within 300,000 companies, Jigsaw allows you to target key decision makers by rank, industry, department and geography. Search Jigsaw’s company directory of business contact information and get executive’s name, title, e-mail and phone. Get business contact information at all companies, at C-level, VP, Director and Manager level in any department at any company.

Jigsaw’s mission is to map every business organization on the planet, contact by contact and keep them current through a collaborative effort. The resulting database will help business people perform their jobs more efficiently and strategically.

Jigsaw costs $25 per month or 25 contacts per month (Pay or Play).

Meetup
http://www.meetup.com/
helps people get together with a group of neighbors that share a common interest. The site helps users self-organize global, monthly “Meetup Days” — local group gatherings on the same day everywhere — for almost any interest group. Meetups take place in up to 604 cities in 45 countries at local cafés, restaurants, bookstores, and other local establishments.

XING
https://www.xing.com/
Europe’s leading business network, which allows you to establish new business contacts, systematically grow your network of relationships, easily manage existing contact information no matter where you’re located, market yourself and your company in a professional business context, identify experts and receive advice on any topic, efficiently organize your meetings, events and phone conferences.

Netparty
http://www.netparty.com/
Netparty functions as the entry point for a network of parties held in 17 U.S. Cities, aimed at professionals in their 20s and 30s. The events are held at stylish clubs, are designed to combine business networking and social fun.

The young professionals who attend Netparty events work in a wide variety of fields. Member attendees include doctors, teachers, entrepreneurs, attorneys, fashion insiders, advertising executives, actors, sales professionals, writers, investment bankers and other professionals.
Most of the events are geared to all young professionals.

The cost of each event varies with the city and venue but is generally $10-$20.

Ryze
http://ryze.com/
Ryze helps people make connections and grow their networks. You can network to grow your business, build your career and life, find a job and make sales. Or just keep in touch with friends.
Members get a free networking-oriented home page and can send messages to other members. They can also join special Networks related to their industry, interests or location. More than 1,000 organizations host Networks on Ryze to help their members interact with each other and grow their organizations.

It is free to join

Please create a comment below, If you know of other good online networking tools or have a suggestion.

Have you ever googled your own name?
Search engines are becoming a more common tool to find information about people. Someone could be searching for you right now. It could be a potential employer, your current employer, an old friend, an old classmate, a date or a journalist. What will they find? Here are some tips and tricks to take control of what they will find.

Your name
If you have a very common name like “Jens Hansen” (sorry to all the people named Jens Hansen for calling your name common) you might not be of risk in respect to people finding information about you that they shouldn’t. There are 167,000 hits when searching on Google. But only 1,460 hits on “Jens Ole Hansen”. So the more uncommon your name is, the more likely it is that people will find information about you.

How to Google your name
Go to http://www.google.com/ and enter your full name. Remember to put your name in quotation marks “name”.
All search engines work differently, so make sure also to check your name on http://www.yahoo.com/. http://www.ask.com/ and http://www.msn.com/.

Domain name
Register your name .com or .dk to make sure that information posted is controlled by you. And to all you people with uncommon and unique names, who always have to spell your name for others, congratulations you have a big chance that your name is not already taken. Check your name for availability at http://www.speednames.com/ (Danish company).

Post your information online
If you have a website you can enter your information there, but you might find that it does not rank as high on the search list as you would want it to. Good sites for making your information make it to the top of the search lists are http://www.zoominfo.com/ and http://www.linkedin.com/.

Keep your personal life personal
If you have a website where you post pictures of your family and friends, then make it a rule not to mention last names. I once googled one of my former colleagues to find out what he was doing now and found a bunch of pictures of him and his friends totally drunk at a party. These pictures where posted not by him but by one of his friends. This was not done with bad intentions by his friend, but these are the same pictures that a potential employer or customer would find. So, no last names. This also goes for naming files/pictures uploaded to the Internet.

Know when your name is posted on the Internet
With Google Alerts or Yahoo Alerts you can get e-mail alerts every time your name is found by these search engines on the Internet. The service is free and only requires you to generate a profile.

Please post comments or suggestions below

“Etiquette for LinkedIn and the Professional Networking World” written by Liz Ryan from WorldWIT.

After a decade (and for some of us, longer) online, we know all about Netiquette, right? Don’t use all caps in your subject line (or, God forbid, the body of an email message). Don’t send attachments to people who don’t know you well. Don’t we know pretty much everything there is to know about etiquette online? Well, maybe not. Online networking sites like LinkedIn can challenge our ideas about what constitutes white-lace-handkerchief behavior online. In fact, if we’ve learned that it’s important to be polite when using email, it’s even truer in the social networking sphere. Here are ten tips for establishing yourself as a well-mannered online networker, when using LinkedIn:

1) Create a user-friendly profile. Your LinkedIn profile is your virtual business card. Make sure that it represents you the way you want to be viewed by strangers - make that ‘people you haven’t been introduced to, yet.’ A sketchy LinkedIn profile signals that your busy day doesn’t allow you to fill in trivial details like what you’re doing now, what you’ve done in the past, or any other useful information. Such an incomplete profile won’t serve you as you network on LinkedIn, but it’s impolite as well: its message is “I’m going to use this database to find people, but I won’t bother to include enough information about myself to indicate how I might assist anyone else.” Take a few moments to fill in the gaps.

2) Invite true friends - or at least, true acquaintances - to connect. Spam is spam, and you must have a minimal level of contact with a person before inviting him or her to connect with you on LinkedIn. A contact - a less-intrusive overture than an invitation to connect - is a good way to approach people with whom you have no relationship. LinkedIn users vary in their views on how well you must know someone before connecting to him or her, but it’s inappropriate to send connection invitations to people who have never met you, heard of you, or had any inkling of your existence (unless they have indicated a desire to be approached by strangers). Think about it: if you found a person’s phone number on a scrap of paper, you wouldn’t feel that you had permission to phone him. Your possession of an email address doesn’t give you license to contact an unacquainted LinkedIn user and suggest a connection - and it’s this kind of overzealous outreach that gets users in trouble with LinkedIn, as well.

3) When you make a request, be clear about your intentions. You’ll find your LinkedIn contacts generally happy to forward your requests if you approach them politely and are clear about your goals. In the physical world, if you asked a friend to introduce you to his friend because of a mutual interest in sailing, and then actually hit the friend-of-a-friend up for a loan, you’d be viewed as a sneak. It’s no different online. If you’re job-hunting, say so. If you’re looking for investors, ditto. A wolf in sheep’s clothing soon finds his messages sitting, unforwarded, while his LinkedIn contacts wonder whether he can be trusted.

4) Reciprocity is a wonderful thing, and gratitude is key. When possible, it’s great to include in your LinkedIn outreach messages some suggestion that you’re aware of your obligations as a requester. That could mean an offer to make a useful introduction for the person who’s forwarding yours; or an offer to help in some other way; or just a heartfelt thank-you for the introduction you seek. It’s disconcerting for your first-degree forwarder to receive a slew of requests from you in one day (and this is common when one of your first-degree contacts is more-highly-connected than others) with no acknowledgement at all of the favor you’re asking. LinkedIn is no different from the ‘real’ world, in that sense: asking for an introduction is a favor, and it’s nice to show gratitude for that.

5) Pass along requests promptly, or say why you won’t. Membership in LinkedIn is a kind of agreement with the community that you intend to participate as an active node in a large and vibrant network. If people send you requests and they sit there, unforwarded and unresponded-to, for weeks, you’re not only the weak link in the system. You’re impeding someone else’s business efforts, and giving no reason for your bottleneck behavior. If you can’t forward on a request or move a communique forward, say so - and say why. LinkedIn provides a handy list of reasons for declining a request, plus an “other” option - use ‘em.

6) Avoid the boilerplate text, if you can. Of course you can. Unless you’re terribly afraid to strike out on your own with creative verbiage, please make an effort to put your own stamp on the standard invitation language that LinkedIn supplies. For instance, you could mention something impressive that you’ve heard about the person you’re contacting, or bring an old friend up quickly up to date on your doings. Using the boilerplate text shows a certain want of effort - so, even if you stick with the standard language, why not add “sorry to use the boilerplate text, but I’m not much of a wordsmith”?

7) Don’t abuse your network. Once you have cultivated a network, it’s tempting to reach out to the gang anytime you have news or a need for assistance. And LinkedIn’s functionality allows you to broadcast a note to your posse of contacts, by way of a Profile Update blast. Use these sparingly, not as a substitute for the Daily All About Me Newsletter. If you do, you may find yourself being un-connected from people who can’t manage the high volume of what’s-new-in-your-life mailings. Don’t invent history to acquire colleagues. LinkedIn allows you to find former workmates at any company that has employed you, without being connected to them otherwise. Finding a colleague match only requires that you and another person worked at the same organization during the same time period. So, as tempting as it may be to make connection with people who worked in various appealing companies over the years, if you invent a work history in order to do that, you’re going to Hell. Perhaps that is overstated, but if you falsify your employment history on LinkedIn in order to create colleague-links with people you haven’t actually worked with, it’s an abuse of the LinkedIn system and the trust of the LinkedIn community.

9) Play by the rules. There are a number of ways to misuse LinkedIn in such a way as to convey the message, “I don’t care about the long-term health of this network or the company that built it - this is All About Me.” Including your email address in your LinkedIn name, for instance, makes a fee-for-use service like InMail superfluous for someone who wants to reach you, which is (if nothing else) exceedingly rude, seein’ as how LinkedIn provides the basic functionality to users at no charge. Unless you want to broadcast the message, “I don’t care whether LinkedIn can optimize its revenue strategy or not - I’m gonna optimize my connect rate,” you might consider rethinking your Me First approach.

10) Value relationships over transactions. As in physical-world networking, valuing people for their intrinsic worth over the business transactions they enable is key. No less than in middle school, ‘users’ are never welcome company for long. “Ka-ching” networking - the kind of outreach that signals “Say, you could make me a buck today” is unseemly and unfortunate. LinkedIn is a fabulous tool that enables connectors and influencers to help other people and achieve their own goals, too - and it’s great when we keep those priorities in balance.

Article posted 14th of Nov. 2005 on intuitive.com

Konstantin Guericke, Co-Founder and Vice President of LinkedIn, posted the following job search suggestions to My LinkedIn Power Forum: