The OC Networking Guide

• Orange County, CA Networking Events Calendar for This Month
• Orange County, CA Networking Events Calendar for This Week
• Today’s Orange County, CA Networking Events Calendar
• Add your Orange County Networking Events

• Orange County, CA Business & Networking Regions
• Orange County, CA Networking Venues
• Orange County, CA Networking Groups

Orange County Networking Introduction and Orientation

The Orange County, CA Networking Guide is a promotional site for organizations that produce networking events. As mentioned before, we Are NOT a social networking site and we don’t host our own networking events. And lastly, we are not a Community Calendar – no charity fundraiser, no golf tournaments or Bar-B-Ques. In other words…

Nothing but Orange County Business & Networking Events

Business Networking has three types of content. Networking Events, Networking Groups & Networking Venues. Let’s start with….

Networking Events. Our networking events are grouped by the type of group hosting the event. You will see these choices in the search functions and on the calendar:

• Referral Groups/Chapters – Exclusive category weekly membership based groups. They are chapters of a large multi-chapter for-profit company or small, independent groups that may or may not be non-profit.
• Commercial/Business Events –Workshops- seminars- trainings presented by the host of the event. If the host has more presentation time than anyone it is usually a commercial event. These are paid inclusions.
• Association Events – Trade/industry chapter meetings. Usually held once a month and organized by volunteer management. Non-profits
• Women’s Events – Most Categories will have women’s groups as well. Monthly groups and associations will often welcome men. Weekly referral groups will not.
• Open Networking – No restrictions or eligibility requirements. Open to all business people.
• Special Interest Groups – all participants have interest in a common issue (but are not an association) (Investing, Real Estate, Green businesses, etc.)
• Service Groups – Rotary, Kiwanis & Lions. Toastmasters would be in this category as well.
• Featured Listings – Basic listings are free, but to stand out from the pack you can get a Featured listing starting at $9.95 a month. See Subscriptions
• Chambers of Commerce – That community champion of small business. Cities, communities and even nationalities have their chambers and networking is an integral part of them. Most events come in the form of a Breakfast, Lunch, Mixer, Award Dinner, or Expo
• Large Expos, Trade Shows, Conferences. These are often industry or affinity related.
• Online Networking – Human nature being what it is, they meet online, but then they want to meet in person. There’s MeetUPs and now TweetUps
• Corporate Events – Mainly targets executive or C-level participants.
• Alumni Groups – College & Universities I think that is self-explanatory enough
• Job Fairs – In this economy, they are popping up all over the place.

Networking Groups - Who knows how many thousands of networking organizations there are in the world? For our purposes we will refer to them as groups. It’s a shorter word and fits in Twitter better. This catchall term covers any entity that holds a networking event. This includes Chambers, Associations, referrals groups, etc.

Networking Venues – I wish I had a dollar for every time I have been asked if I knew of a location to have a meeting, workshop, or mixer. In this section you can find the locations others are using. Finding the right Venue for your event is not easy!

Basic Site Navigation

We have three major components to the site: The website, which is a blog format, the calendar and the forums.

Business Networking Calendar: The event listings tell the basic who what when & where. The URL in the listing then takes the visitor to the group’s page on our website. This has much more information about the group and their other offerings, if any. There is a link from that page to the group’s own website.

Business Networking Website - We chose a Wordpress blog format for its ease in keeping the information fresh, current, relevant, and most importantly… Search-ability. More on that in a bit.

Business Networking Forum – The Calendar and Networking Guide Website lists Orange County, CA Events & Happenings, but. when you go the Forum you will interact with the whole global community. Anything that you post in the Forum will be propagated throughout our global network. The feed will scroll on the front page of every Networking Guide we have. Post in the forum and you have entered a global discussion. Hence the Market Globally – Connect Locally™ tag line.

Search-ability

The Search bar in the upper right corner will be your best friend on this site. We have hundreds of events on The Orange County, CA Calendar. Search will help you sort through them all. Our events are search-able with these identifiers:

• Orange County, CA Regions: We’ve organized each calendar into geographical regions
• Orange County, CA Venues: You want to find your friend’s group that meets at the Sizzler? NO problem.
• Orange County, CA Group Category
• Article Key Words

Editor/Bloggers

Our local Editors and Special Correspondents are the ambassadors to the business community. They put a local face and personality to your Networking Guide. They know the communities, they know the people. They will keep you informed. We have started to add to our family of Editors nationwide.

Subscriptions

We are much more than a static networking events calendar which lists networking events. We are a fully integrated Web 2.0 platform promotional site that leverages Email, RSS feeds, Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing to promote your groups and events globally. We have no competition in that arena. The increase in traffic we have achieved in our first three months shows us that we can produce for our groups a significant verifiable increase in visitors. Basic Listings are free and there is no charge to the visitor to access our resources. However, if you want your chapter to stand out from the crowd or you are the owner of a networking organization wanting to add chapters, take a look at our Subscriptions.

Networking Event Finders History

The Orange County, CA Networking Guide is the flagship publication for the global network NetworkingEventFinders.com. It began in 2001 as a column of 5-6 events in the newsletter Mindy sent to her coaching clients. It was a non-commercial labor of love for 7 years….and it got bigger and bigger. In June of 2008, it was a fortuitous combination of timing, technology and “thinking out-loud” to the right person that started the project of creating a global networking of Guides & Calendars. Six months of 18 hour days got us to this launch.

We have tracked our Alexa ratings from the beginning and it is a point of pride to say that we have not spent one DIME on advertising, or PR, yet our rankings have steadily grown 5,100% since the first day of our web presence. See this Alexa Page. At this writing we have not yet put out a press release, or implemented the majority of our planned marketing. Instead, we have designed and constructed the site to maximize organic Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing.

We invite you to submit your comments, suggestions, even Rants & Raves in our comment box on the Contact Us page or in the Forums. We are here for you. Let us know how we can best serve you.

Until Our Next connection.
Orange County, CA Networking Guide Staff