Business Networking Events Finders

“What?! I can’t list my event at Networking Event Finders?? Fine!… Take me off your list and I’m going to tell everyone I know NOT to use your site.”

Or they’ll say…

“But we DO offer 30 minutes of Free Business Networking before our seminar starts and during the breaks, so it’s a Networking Event and should be listed on your calendar at no charge!”

Or maybe…

“But you listed Joe’s event and my event is just like Joe’s event, only better!

You’re right. We did list Joe’s event as a “Special Event Promotion” – a paid listing. Networking Event Finders offers advertising and business event promotions for a small charge. Joe decided that it made business sense to have a paid promotion of his event in our Networking Calendar and Local Networking Guide.”

Networking Event Finders is a Business Networking Calendar that lists Business Networking Events in your local area. But that’s where our problem lies. What exactly is a Networking Event, anyway?

At Networking Event Finders, we have a very simple way to determine what a Networking Event is and what a Networking Event isn’t.  Here’s how we decide what a “pure networking event” is: What is the intention of the event and whom does it benefit? Below we reveal what, why and how events get listed in our calendar at no cost.

Making sense of our posting policies

When we were designing the blueprint for Networking Event Finders’ networking event calendars & local networking guides, we logged hours of research time looking at what other calendars, networking organizations and networking professionals were offering. We knew these points for sure…

• NEF would be a free business resource – Free networking events listings, and free to access the calendars
• NEF would not be a social networking site – where members promote themselves and their businesses.
• NEF’s networking events calendar would be “pure networking events“…no charity functions, no golf tourneys, no fun-runs, etc. We have our event posting policy on our event submission page… that everyone must read & acknowledge, before posting any event: NO Workshops :: NO Seminars :: NO Business Presentations :: No Charity Events
• NEF would not produce/host networking events…we report on the business networking industry at large, write about & express our opinions on issues that are important to the business networking community.  We provide a centralized location to find Networking events and supply a local voice for your networking scene.

Those were the ideals we started with a few short months ago and they have not changed.  Our traffic and number of visitors has grown and we are now starting to bring on local editors. But we have found that some people will blast right past the “NO Workshops” page to post their workshop, presentations and other  non-conforming events.  AND, they were calling them “networking events”.

As a result, we have fine-tuned our policies to better explain our niche and how we do things at Networking Event Finders. And yes, we know that any time business professionals gather in one spot…for a training or workshop, networking happens.

We provide free networking event listings for the networking industry. That would be:

• Chambers of Commerce
• Referral groups – large, international companies to small one-chapter “indies”
• Industry/Trade Associations
• Job/Career Fairs
• Expos
• Score/SBA Events

These organizations may be non-profit organizations, or for-profit membership supported businesses.

Here’s where we have had problems with many non-conforming events;

Business professionals whose core business is not the networking event hosting industry will often host events that include a presentation on their area of expertise and promote it as a networking event. We consider these events to be  “business development events with a primary intention of lead-generation for the core business of the host.

This is a very common and very effective business-development, lead-generation model. I’ve attended many such events and have even hosted one (Prior to Publishing NEF). There is nothing wrong/bad about them. These events are usually very professional and very educational, but for our purposes they are business development events, not “pure networking events“.

When anyone submits an event, it’s held for moderation/approval by the local editor or NEF staff. Events hosted by non-networking industry professionals including (but not limited to), coaches, trainers, seminar leaders, consultants, virtual assistants, accountants, financial advisors, attorneys etc. may be listed for very small $9.95 per event per month. One of the ways we determine if the event is a “pure networking event” or paid listing is: “How much time does the event host have on the agenda?” If the host gets more time than the average attendee or longer than 5-10 minutes for a 90 minute event (roughly 5%) – then we consider it a business development event.

We provide a massively huge nationwide free resource for the networking event industry – listing over 5,500 purely networking events.  The advertising support we get from coaches, consultants & trainers et. al. for promoting their business help us keep our networking resource free for the general business community. .

At Networking Event Finders

“We are a Free Business Networking Events Calendar and Resource for your local area“.

In conclusion….We are keeping to our original vision of Nothing but Networking.

We welcome the paid business development events because we know they are valuable to the success of the small business. There will always be events that don’t quite fit into either category (LinkedIn group meetings are a possible example) and will be evaluated on an individual basis.