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Networking

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One-on-one conversations – whether in person or online – can be an excellent way to spread the word about your book or journal article. Word of mouth is a powerful promotional tool and – while social media, blog posts etc. let you connect with a wide range of people – talking to someone directly can be the best way to get them to read your article. Networking at events is a great opportunity to talk to new people about your work, but for many of us starting conversations with strangers can be intimidating. Hopefully these tips will make things a bit easier though:

  • Know what you want from the experience: having an idea of what you’d like to gain from conversations at networking events or conferences can make it easier to achieve those goals. Try to keep your main aims in mind when you’re talking to someone. Promoting a book or article is what we’ll focus on here, but this advice also applies if you’re looking for collaborators, encouraging people to come to your presentation, or any other networking goal.
    • While keeping your goals in mind, make sure that you stay open to those of the people you’re talking to. Networking is a two way street!
  • Know your environment: are you at an event that is specifically for people to mingle and network? Is it a formal or informal event? Are the people at the event in your discipline? Asking yourself questions like these will help you to judge your tone, conversation topics and how to approach people.
  • Don’t be afraid to start conversations: easier said than done for a lot of us! If you’re at a networking event or a mixer though, everyone is there to meet new people and have conversations. You’ll often find that people are really grateful to you for saying hi and getting them past the awkward stage of trying to find/decide who to talk to. On top of this, being the person who starts the conversation gives you more of a chance to steer it in the direction that you want it to go.
  • Prepare some questions in advance: a short list of basic questions that will be relevant to most people at the event can be really helpful for getting a conversation started. It also helps to avoid falling into a lull of talking about the weather instead of finding out interesting things about what other academics are studying.
    • Try to keep your questions open-ended (‘what are you looking forward to at the conference?’ rather than ‘are you enjoying the conference?’ for example) to encourage a conversation rather than a series of yes or no answers. ‘What are you studying?’ is generally a great question to get people talking to you.
    • Make sure that you’ve got answers prepared for all of your questions – people will probably ask them back to you!
  • Have an ‘elevator pitch’ for your article/book: a quick, snappy summary of your recent article or book is perfect for these sorts of situations. Don’t worry about going into too much detail at this point – it doesn’t need to be a full formal presentation – just have two or three sentences that let people know the gist of your work. This leaves room for them to ask questions, which will give you the opportunity to make your paper as interesting as possible for them.
  • Follow up afterwards: the final tip for networking is to make sure that you have a way to follow up later. This could be arranging to meet later in the conference, getting the person’s twitter handle, giving them a business card – the options are endless. Following up helps to make sure that your connections last and aren’t forgotten in a sea of ten minute chats from that event. If you’ve been talking about your article or book, why not ask for their email address so you can send them a link to it.

Where to now?

Networking | Edinburgh University Press