Want to learn how to do remote networking right?
At NoHQ, we will be sharing some communities and groups that engage regularly in online networking for you to expand your presence. In this blog post, you’ll learn:
- Some communities to join that are related to remote work and beyond
- How to use blogging as a networking mechanism
- How to use Twitter to connect with like-minded folks online
Remote work communities and online groups to join
Unable to return to large scale events, virtual networking and online communities have taken over as the best networking opportunities. With so many remote communities and online groups on the rise, how do you find the one that suits you best?
You can narrow down the search by determining your niche. What kind of people do you want to meet? Should they have the same hobbies or profession as you? Are you looking for groups that foster close-knit communities with high engagement rates?
Depending on the type of community you want to join, you can filter your search and decrease your choices. Here are some examples of larger online networking communities that have high engagement
- Indie Hackers — More focused on tech entrepreneurship, but is also a general platform for people in tech and beyond to talk about the process of building their side projects.
- NoHQ — Community of remote work enthusiasts with tons of information on building successful remote strategies with actionable guides, tools, and advice from leading remote-first organizations.
- Weekend Club — A weekend coworking club filled with other ambitious entrepreneurs, and is also a great platform to obtain helpful feedback, a support network and stay motivated.
Facebook remote working groups:
- Virtual Workers of America — A platform used to share details on various remote work opportunities and meet employers.
- Freedom Hackers Mastermind — Platform to network and get your business questions answered by other users within the community.
- Remote Workers — International community of remote working professionals that come together to share knowledge about remote work, handy tools for working remotely, networking, and discovering new remote-friendly locations.
- Remote Work & Jobs for Digital Nomads — Portal for digital nomads and startup founders, great for networking and looking for remote work opportunities in startups.
- Work at Home Heroes — A group created to provide helpful suggestions, guidance, help, and recommendations for work from remote working professionals.
Subreddits:
- r/remotework — Great for remote professionals looking for job opportunities, engaging with other users for suggestions, recommendations and guidance.
- r/digitalnomad — Useful for people looking to work on the go, ask for tips and recommendations on travel planning and settling in unknown destinations. Great for individuals seeking advice to balance their career and nomadic way of living.
- r/workonline — Prominent remote work community to seek advice from other experts and professionals, find online jobs and hire remote workers.
- r/managers — Great for tips and advice on guiding remote teams and boosting employee morale.
- r/business — Stay updated with the latest news and events with interesting articles on business trends and applications.
Facebook industry groups:
- Digital Marketing Questions — Group targeted at digital marketing professionals (or people who want to learn) — SEO, PPC, social, Analytics — to ask questions, network, and share relevant industry content.
- The Startup Chat Mastermind Group — A group for you to share your questions, ideas, and proven tactics with other successful entrepreneurs and business owners. Join other entrepreneurs and learn venture building techniques through this community.
- Productize Community - A group of people who want to launch online productized businesses.
Slack communities for networking
Slack groups are the future of networking. It reduces internal communication time and breaks barriers to finding the people you need when growing a business. A compilation of various Slack chat groups and communities can be found on Standuply, but here’s a short list of groups for various interest categories:
Building and expanding your own audience through writing
Being part of a community with too many members may seem intimidating and make it difficult to network. As a result, many are trying their hand at building their own close-knit communities that are moderated to ensure that all the content is relevant to the members.
A blog is a great way to share your fleshed-out thoughts about remote work and other topics to other people willing to read what you have to say. As we’ve mentioned in a previous blog post, writing is a great skill for every remote worker to have, as it enables them to better communicate online.
Here are some great blogs that have managed to build a big audience online:
- Product Lessons by Linda Zhang
- Ribbonfarm by Venkatesh Rao
- Tom Critchlow
External linking to authoritative references adds value to your content. It does not steal the limelight from your blog post, although it directs users to another page. Apart from that, there are various ways to reach out to other bloggers in your niche. For example:
- Inviting others to write a guest blog post for you and vice versa.
- Commenting on and curating other blogger’s posts — Add value to other blog post conversations, sharing with your viewers new information you have gathered from other bloggers and linking them.
- Gathering inputs from a few bloggers for a group blog post — Send emails to contributors with a word limit on a specific topic that you are researching or planning to write about and link back to their website in your post.
- Conduct professional interviews with influencers within your niche for a blog post. This is a tactic to grow your audience fast by leveraging other people’s networks and it also allows you to start discussions within your niche.
Expanding your reach is great, but without engagement, your community will not be lively. If you have not already been doing so, give these blog engagement tips a shot:
- Give others the rights to repost and share your content by crediting your source.
- Schedule friendly interactions with readers to get to know them better and find out what they are looking for, how to cater to their needs better, etc. These online networking sessions allow you to meet people from all around the world.
How to use Twitter for remote networking
LinkedIn is saturated with salespeople. Twitter is the home for many remote workers wanting to meet other like minded folks. So how do you use the platform for remote networking?
Optimize your bio. Explain why people should follow you and the value that you bring. Here’s a simple example.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff is the founder of Ness Labs, a community and platform for mindful productivity, and she’s built her following from using Twitter. As you can see, her bio is full of information, but her profile photo still looks personable. Following her example, you need to:
- Keep your profile photo casual. A selfie or fun action shot will do. Some even opt for an illustration avatar of themselves.
- Show what you’re up to.
- List the topics you’ll be tweeting about. This helps people decide whether they should follow you or not.
Be human. Build in public and show your journey.
Source: Marketing Examples
Showing the behind-the-scenes work helps others relate and build trust with your audience.
Interact with key influencers.
Follow and comment on at least 10-20 influencer posts daily. Twitter’s algorithm hates mass following so follow not more than a dozen hourly. The main aim is to leverage on their large following to increase your visibility. When commenting, ensure that your comments add value and can act as a standalone tweet. This can be a tip, advice, addressing an issue, etc.
After repeatedly doing this and monitoring your engagement with influencers, cut out those who ignore you and continue engaging with those who engage back. Once your tweets have started gaining traction, start scheduling and automating your own tweets with social media management platforms.
Create great content through Twitter threads.
Start off your tweets with attention grabbing openings or cliffhangers. You can use a tool like Tweet Hunter to make the process of typing and scheduling tweets a lot easier. Show your personality in the body of the tweet. Include numbers if any to show the scale and magnitude. End off with a simple call to action (like, subscribe, repost, etc.)
Creating threads is a useful way to create content on the platform. Every new tweet under the thread surfaces the whole thread. Threads keep all the tweets on the topic together, which makes it easier for your followers to find, and read. It also makes it easier to refer back to yourself. As such, people prefer to stay on the platform and read content there because of its convenience.
Commenting in treads and linking to relevant content that you have posted before helps to reach new audiences.
Still unsure of which community to be a part of?
Take your time to explore various communities and if none of it suits you, there’s always the option of starting your own. It is great to set aside some time each week trying to catch up with old friends and making new genuine connections online. In the long run, this will become a great leverage for growth and bring about new opportunities regardless of your current profession.
