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Finding and Building Community

One of the major challenges that many freelancers and small business owners face is the isolation of working alone, or with a very small team. As you work through the normal day-to-day issues that all small business face, you may not have anyone that you can talk to when you need to vent or work through these issues.

One of the ways you can mitigate this isolation is by getting involved in your local industry community. We talk about this in our article: 4 Strategies to Keep up With Industry Trends, but we think it is important to explore a bit more, from a different perspective.

Networking is an important part of building your business. We don’t mean networking as “show up to a mixer and hand out business cards”. We mean networking as something more personal, like taking a competitor or complementary service provider out to lunch or for a beer.

Some of the main reasons to network include:

1. Keeping up with what your colleagues and competitors are doing can help keep you on the cutting edge.

2. Getting to know other people in your industry means that you have resources you can go to if you need additional expertise or help on projects.

3. Everyone needs a sounding board, commiserator, and someone to share their successes with.

In some ways the 3rd reason is the most important. Feeling connected is an important part of the human condition. While you likely have many other people in your life that you can talk about work with, they will not have the same perspective or understanding that a fellow small business owner will have.

So, how do you find a community that you can be a part of?

Connect on Twitter

Be active on Twitter with other people in your industry. Ask questions, make comments about other peoples Tweets, be positive and get involved in conversations. The internet allows you to connect with so many people, take advantage of it!

Attend Local Meet Ups

Many of the people you connect with on Twitter will be involved in specific user groups that meet up regularly. These groups give you the opportunity to get out of the house, put a face to a name (or Twitter account :P) and chat about your experiences. These are places where you can talk about challenges you are facing with other people in similar situations, share your successes and failures, and talk about the nerdy things that you are most passionate about with people who will appreciate it.

Attend Local Industry Events

You will find that many of the people that you converse with on Twitter and who attend the meet up groups will also attend local conferences and presentations. These are good places to network, meet new people and expand your community even further (not to mention gain relevant knowledge).

There are many advantages to working for yourself, but it is important to know that you are not alone and that there are many others who are in similar situations. At first it may seem kind of weird conversing with total strangers, but you will be surprised how fast they can become regular resources.