Growing Your Social Capital

1) One person must be a domain expert in your industry.
Brian Magida is the Senior Director, Performance Marketing at Warby Parker. Warby Parker is an eyewear company that sells eyewear at a reasonable price but still provides great quality products. They are able to sell glasses wholesale so that they are not tagging on extra fees for their customers. He is the domain expert in the eyewear industry because he knows best the type of customers that we are trying to target. He is not one of the founders of Warby Parker but he does an important job when it comes to customer research and knowing what the customer needs and wants in their product most. I found Brian and contacted him through LinkedIn and having him in my network will be very helpful because he would be able to connect me with so many different people within the eyewear industry. He would also help me learn the ins and outs of the business, showing me what service customers expect the most. 

2) One person must be an expert on your market.
Arie Tom is the Senior VP Marketing at GlassesUSA.com. GlassesUSA.com is a large online eyewear retailer that provides a wide range of styles and brands for their customers. Arie would be an expert on the market because they are targeting those in my market as well but instead of having their own brand, such as Warby Parker, they are selling known brands, such as Ray Bans. I also found and contacted this person through LinkedIn. Through this exchange, I was able to learn more about B2B buying because they retail other eyewear brands and so they have to learn to keep good relations with the businesses they have business with. Having a network with this person will be great because if I wanted to sell my product through a third party, I can create a business relationship with those in GlassesUSA.com. 

3) One person must be an important supplier to your industry. This would be someone who is selling products and services to other organizations/firms in your industry.
Toby Winters is Outside Sales Representatives at Oakley. Oakley designs, develops, and manufactures sports performance equipment, especially eyewear. Oakley is pretty well known eyewear brand as they have a wide range of styles from sunglasses to prescription glasses. I found and contacted Toby through LinkedIn as well. Oakley not only sells their products through their own website, they also sell their products to other eyewear businesses for them to retail. Thus, Toby would be an important supplier to my industry. 

Finally: Reflect.
This experience will shape how I participate in any future networking events because I should make sure to network with people who are a part of the same industry that I am seeking my business in. It might seem as though that is obvious, but through this targeted networking, we would be able to gain opportunities that we would never have if we connected with people who don't have business in the same industry as your business. This experience did differ from my networking experiences in the past because I have networked with others face-to-face rather than online and I have never really done targeted networking where I found someone with a specific position to network with. Though, I do realize that this is something that many people do and I think it is a great way to network and connect with others with the same market within the same industry.