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I finally had one of those “ah ha” moments recently. You see, a year or two ago I was given some advice that I had misunderstood, so it never really made the sense it does now. Nor was it put to good use. What’s that bit of advice? Chew my food at least 45 times? Eat only the white snow? Nope. It is advice that I’m sure you have heard, or maybe have given out yourself…

Network with colleagues, network with acquaintances, network with fellow “name-your-hobby-or-career”, network, network, network!

Of course that makes perfect sense, but for me, all these years in web design and SEO, I’ve been a bit selfish. You see, I’ve always thought of networking as long as I got a major benefit out of it. I always made sure that my design or SEO services (and recently website hosting) would be - at the very least - mentioned, and at the most - prominently made priority in that working relationship. Bad Martin…bad.

Now within the current year, social networks have been heavily used for search engine optimization. And these social networks are great for…well…networking. But I’ve realized that’s more than optimization, it’s building trust and solid working relationships. Even if you give “Link Love” without getting it back in return - that’s ok…

So I’ll see you at Stumble, or digg me up, I’ll see you at Reddit, blog and Technorati me, and so on and so on…

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