Raise your game. Sign up now!
Read more first




Search iStadia Blogs:

Does iStadia Work for You? Networking

Views: 531 | 0 people like this | Print | | Flag
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

It's fascinating to watch the activity of our members and trying to find ways of helping them do what they want to get the most out of iStadia whether it's to try and get them more exposure, assist with self-promotion, get more business, find work or build their networks.

Some recent comments have made us rethink the way we see use of the site. Despite regular instances of networking and referral success most members have networks that consist of only three or four other members. With the basis of networking built on a desire to help others then I wonder what this suggests?
However it may be that members are relunctant to invite others on the basis of a perceptive inability to help anyway. It seems that another reason has surfaced in that there seems to be a reluctance (read shyness) to do this.

We have found that it doesn't matter who you are or at what level (student upwards) you can always help others, put them in touch with someone for some reason eg. it's always good to have contacts in complimentary roles. This can be a nutritionist for a sports psych, lawyer for an agent, coach for an athlete etc. and it doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be relevant now but should be looked upon as in investment. This is especially true if you think you might want to work with someone or need them to help you find a job. And all you have to do is send them a sitemail, it takes a matter of seconds. To help you do this, we provide you with a list of other members (on Mystadia when you sign in) that might be good to connect with. It sends a sense of value and community to do this. So go on, if you only invite one other member, it will increase most members networks by 25%. Click here to see a list of members.
You don't have to stop there, you can invite others from outside iStadia to be part of our expanding community - click here
Now many of you will have networks outside iStadia so to make this easier we will be launching a new application this week which will make it easy to import contact lists eg. from Outlook, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, LinkedIn etc. These will appear on the Networks homepage and MyStadia.

If you have any ideas as to how we can encourage members to build their networks as a genuine professional investment then we would love to hear from you.



Keith
Keith Irving
iStadia
Tags: building networks, istadia networks, networking, social networking, sport psychology, sport science, sports coaching, sports performance
Posted December 16, 2008 at 3:01 AM by keithirving | Permalink | Comments(2)

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Comments

Here's the problem I have with same-industry networking. While on the one hand, there is the ability to share best practise and perhaps learn some things, on the other hand, you end up having awkward conversations with people you are competing against.

Maybe it doesn't happen as much in the academic side of things. Maybe I need to embrace the concept of winning by sharing a little more, but at the end of the day, I don't want to promote my business or develop a reputation amongst other sports marketing people. In fact, the people who I want to talk to have almost nothing to do with sport at all.

I want to talk to brand people who don't understand sports marketing. I want to have a conversation with people who can bring best practise from a completely different industry and apply it to sport.

Sure there may be some complimentry roles out there. If so, great... I'll undertake to invite some people to the platform and give it a go. But how do I discover people. This is the essential element of the new web - the reason why services such as stumbleupon work. How do I stumble upon people in the istadia network?
Posted by PiloteSport | April 8, 2009 at 3:58 AM
Great to get this feedback; you raise some interesting questions. Sharing knowledge and experience with like-minded individuals is certainly valuable. If you are looking at promotion or building a business then the benefit of a network is to build contacts with complimentary skills and not as you say those that may well be competitors though collaboration is seemingly more popular these days.
We are currently looking at providing our members with areas of expertise that lie outside of their specific interests, ie. outside the sport, fitness and exercise sectors eg. PR, investment, media training, professional customer service/survey software, accounting, pensions etc. We would be more than happy to assist any member to find areas of expertise that they need.
However to deal with your specific point - branding, I guess searching the membership would be a first step. This brings up three names but one is specifically focused on branding and worth contacting even though they specialise in sport (Dynastar, The North Face, Sport England, Harlequins, Snow+Rock, London Broncos) - Garth Dawson (membername Madloop).

Keith

Keith Irving
iStadia
Posted by keithirving | April 8, 2009 at 7:17 AM

Post A Comment

You need to be signed into istadia.com to post comments

If you are not a member yet, registering is quick and easy! Click here for Quick Registration and keep up to date with what is happening, engage in some networking and access to iStadia’s expert community.

However if you are a sport & exercise professional or business and would like to promote yourself by building a detailed, search-engine friendly profile and posting content to attract potential clients, customers or employers, we recommend Full Registration.

Members login.

Keith Irving's blog: sport & corporate performance

March 2010
SuMoTuWeThFrSa
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031 

Search Keith's Blog



Online UK Job Search | CV Preview
Clicky Web Analytics