A Video featuring a new technology called Li-Fi (Light Fidelity) promises connections up to 100 times faster than Wi-Fi. According to researchers, the new alternative technology transmits high-speed data using visible light communication, which would reach speeds of 1 Gbps, which is about 100 times faster than a standard WiFi.

Networking is a must if you plan on expanding your business
and making it a success. Garnering contacts within your market
that can further develop your business and increase its reach
is an absolute necessity. While quality network can
help your business greatly, networking sloppily and ineffectively can hurt
you just as much. Here are five very common and crucial mistakes that
business owners need to avoid when beginning to network online.

Confusing networking with selling
It is absolutely crucial to remember that networking and selling is not the same thing.
Sure, networking can eventually lead to sales, but selling your wares or services is not
the immediate goal of networking. You are looking to establish a relationship that
could eventually lead to monetary gain, not the other way around.

When you are networking, you should be trying to establish a relationship that
is helpful to both parties involved. If you are doing nothing more than pitching
your product or services, it becomes clear immediately that your intentions are
selfish and it, more often than not, comes off as if you are trying to get something
without offering anything in return.

Talking about yourself too much
Networking is always a two-way street – it’s not a forum for praising yourself and taking control of the conversion. When you are talking to someone you would like to establish a business relationship with, be sure to show interest in them as well. Of course, you want to let them know about what it is that you are doing, but you also want to offer them a chance to talk about themselves too. Hogging the conversation and focusing on yourself will not give off the impression that you are truly interested in cooperating. Takes some time to let the other party talk about what they do and show them that you are interested in more than just promoting yourself.

Forgetting to follow up
If you have already established a contact, you need to continuously follow up and keep in touch with that contact so that it remains a successful networking relationship. Send emails to your contacts regularly to check up on them and engage them in friendly conversations even when you do not need anything from them and you don’t have anything business-related to discuss. Remember also that overdoing it can be just as bad as never following up. It is important to find a middle ground where you are talking to these people regularly and meaningfully but not spamming them with requests and pointless chatter every day.

Spreading yourself too thin
It is important to treat every networking contact with respect and to try and establish a smaller number of quality relationships rather than accumulating too many contacts and not following through with any of them effectively. Less is more when it comes to networking, especially if your business is small and you do not have enough workers at your disposal for maintaining quality networking contacts with a huge address book of people. Pick and choose your contacts wisely and try to focus on establishing a small core of quality contacts instead of a large list of people you have flimsy relationships with and can’t keep up with on a regular basis.

Abusing your networking relationships
This last mistake should go without saying, but it is so important that it should be mentioned either way. An example of abusing your networking relationships would be signing them up to newsletters or chain mails without their approval, spamming them with impersonal promotional emails endlessly or even worse, giving their emails and contact information to others in return for money or any other services. These types of practices will earn you a reputation as an untrustworthy business person and as someone that everyone will want to avoid. Do not waste all of the hard work you have put into establishing these networking relationships with such practices. If you want to put these people on your mailing lists or introduce them to other people within your network, make sure that you receive their approval for doing so first.

This is a Guest post from:
David Lazar is a regular blogger at PDF Converter blog. With a background in journalism,
he specializes in writing blogs on a variety of topics, including freelancing, careers, finance

Google+ or Google Plus is the latest thing on the
social networking arena.  It currently stands as
the second largest social networking site.
It was launched on the 28^th of June 2011 and integrated
a number of products offered by Google.

But Google+ is not just another social networking site, with its features;
it helps businesses establish their identity and network.

Features of Googleplus ( Goolge+ )

Since its launch in 2011, Google+ has upgraded and enhanced its features to now include –

1. A clean and neat layout with easily accessible features.
2. An information stream similar to pinterest with an option to have a single or multiple columns.
3. Create and join communities or Circles, based on similar interest levels.
   Here you can even join as a brand.
   You can have multiple circles within you contacts and share information with specific circles.
   This enables you to decide your target audience.
4. Google Hangout, which has now replaced Google chat or Google Talk
   and can also incorporate text, voice and videos.
5. Data can be shared across all Google Applications.
   This helps businesses already using Gmail, GoogleDocs,
   etc to seamlessly share information.
6. Google+ automatically creates hash-tags for your content similar to twitter
   and then when required, you can search for content based on these hash-tags.

There are 41 such features including games and chats that you can check and use based on your requirements.

Googleplus and other networking websites

Now, having said all this, is Google+ just another “Facebook” or LinkedIn? No,
there are a few similarities and a few differences –

1. The layout of Google+ is similar to Facebook and so, it is easier to use, for people
   who are familiar with Facebook.
2. Google Plus may appear to be a form of professional networking like LinkedIn,
   but, LinkedIn is good to catch up with people and look for job opportunities, but Google+
   is useful for businesses to increase their presence and contact their current or potential customers.

Considering that it has features provided by leading networking sites like Facebook,
Linkedin and Twitter, as well as enhancements of its own, it is currently
the single most important networking platform.

Advantages to businesses –

1. You can join Google+ as a brand and connect with potential customers as
   well as existing customers who are on Google. The “Circles” feature enables
   you to target specific groups of customers.
2. If you have a widespread business, employees everywhere can be contacted via Circles and Hangout.
3. Google Hangout allows conference calls, meetings and video conferences. It is easy to use and unique to Google+.
4. A Google+ page can have one owner but around fifty managers and so, updates to your company’s profile page are easy.

The main advantage as can be seen is that your business can use an existing well-established
platform of Google and its Applications and twist it to suit your needs.

Conclusion

No matter whether you are big or small, Google+ is the place for you. So, you can start today
by creating an account for your company or brand. Then you can create a page for yourself
with attractive content and then Hangout in your Circles using Google+.

Thanks the TIB Team

In recent days Google have rolled out a
major upgrade of their Google+ platform,
which includes no less than 41 new features.

We believe these new enhancements coupled with their
communities feature has turned this platform into the
single most important networking platform for business today.

Google+ is the 2nd largest social networking Platform gloablly

Its estimated that 500 million people have already
created Google Plus accounts and of these some 135 million
are active, to contrast this Facebook claims to have 701 million
active users, so Google+ has now become a very
significant player in the area.

Because of this we believe it should be a priority now for every
business to take advantage of Google + to enhance their on-line
profile and build new business to business relationships via
social Networking tools like google+

Some of the new or enhanced features of Google + include :

• A cleaner, neater layout where all the enhanced functions are easily accessible
• A pinterest style information stream that can be customised for
  single or multi column layout to cater for new devices.
• Automatically incorporating hash-tags into posts and then
  providing similar or related content on demand.
• Adds animations to sharebox and post cards and image enhancement tools.
• The new hangout app that takes over from Google chat/talk
  and can incorporate text, voice and video communications.
• Ability to easily create and join communities.

Join the Business Support Network Google community

To take advantage of the new Google + developments we have created a
Business Support Network community page where our existing members
can migrate to quickly.

Also as Google + has also placed a significant emphasis
on using hash-tags to categorize their content just like twitter our
existing regional Business network hash-tags will be a perfect fit
and will help our followers proper on this new a fast growing
Business networking channel.

So what are you waiting for?
come on over and join us there

Please note there is a regional category for all of our
9 regions and the Global network, so you can interact
at any level of business: local, regional or international.

Thanks:
The Business Network Support Team