U.S. MID-ATLANTIC: Beltway Networking - An Evolving Business Networking Site

by Bruce Newman, U.S. Mid-Atlantic Bureau Chief
(New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, DC)

I recently ran across Beltway Networking, a rapidly evolving business networking site that covers three states (Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia). With over 3,000 members, it is growing rapidly and constantly adding new functionality to its site. For this article, I spoke with its enthusiastic and dedicated founder, Chris Doerr. To Chris’s credit, he preferred that I focus on the site and its capabilities and minimize his role in its creation and development.

Chris, when did you start Beltway Networking?

Beltway Networking was launched on February 14, 2007 – Valentine’s Day. The launch date has nothing to do with my love for networking, it was just a coincidence. I wanted to launch on a Monday and February 14th was a Monday.

What was your motivation to create the site?

There are so many networking groups in the Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia area that I found myself spending a lot of time visiting many different websites to find events I wanted to attend. In some instances, I even missed networking events because I found out about them after the fact. To solve this problem, I created Beltway Networking – a central site where all networkers can visit and discover their next networking opportunity.

What is the main function of the site?

The main function of the site is our event calendars. We provide three separate calendars: one for DC, Maryland and Virginia. This allows visitors to search for events by geographic location. Along with the calendars, we also provide business articles, tips on networking and connecting with other members through our Networker’s Forum. All of this information and services are available at no cost to all our members.

Why is your membership free?

One of the main goals behind networking is providing a resource for all members and a dependable means to obtain quality referrals. It is our belief that people should not be charged for that referral; doing so would violate our operating paradigm as a free resource for all networkers.

Chambers of Commerce are notoriously reticent about listing their events with external sites – sites that are not their own. Did you also find that to be the case?

Yes, we did. Chambers were slow at first to use our site. However, having now been around for more than two years, Chambers have increasingly used it to promote their events and increase attendance.

It is also important to note that we’re not in competition with any Chamber, business group or lead share for two reasons. Most importantly, we don’t host our own events. Secondly, we support all business networking opportunities by promoting them as best we can.

Beltway Networking is a useful resource for any organization conducting a network event – and it’s a free service. Event postings stay up forever – one feature that helps distinguish us from other event listing sites.

Do you do any follow-up of events to measure their success?

We don’t do any event follow-up for several reasons. First, that would be judgmental, certainly not where we want to be. Second, how do you even define success? It’s very subjective. If one person comes away from an event with two excellent contacts, they may consider the event to be highly successful even if it was sparsely attended.

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While we don’t evaluate the events, last year we conducted our first ever Networking Group of the Year contest. This was an open competition for all networking groups and Chambers of Commerce. Nominations were submitted by our members during the month of October. In November, the ballot was posted on our site and members were allowed to submit their vote for one of the nominees. Out of 26 nominated networking groups competing for the award, BNI Maryland received the most votes.

Besides the calendar of events, what other functionality do you provide?

Our goal for Beltway Networking is to be the ultimate resource tool for business networkers. We offer several useful functions that we are constantly improving and new capabilities to help our members. Visitors to the site can gain expert advice on networking, learn about why and how they should network, and read articles written by some outstanding professionals.

In these trying economic times, people are increasingly looking to use social networks as a part of their employment search. To help them, we offer free job postings and position wanted ads on our site. Similar to the event calendars, a job posting or position wanted ad will remain on the site until the poster gets a job, the position is filled or the poster asks us to remove it.

We also offer a Networker’s Forum. This allows members to chat with one another to ask questions, share leads or offer networking advice.

Visitors to our site can also select our recommended Book of the Month to gain further knowledge on networking and business.

That is quite a number of functions. Since they are all free, how do you generate income?

We generate income from several sources including advertising. We’re very grateful to our advertisers.

Another area that generates income is a section on the site called Rent for Your Event. For a small fee, businesses can promote their goods and services to inform the networking community about their offerings and how they support networking events.

Finally, we have established an affiliate relationship with Amazon.com for our Book of the Month.

Do you plan on expanding your coverage into additional states?

Not at this time. First, we’re very busy expanding the site’s capabilities and reaching out to the many networking groups in our demographic region. Second, we need to be more profitable before we can seriously consider expanding.

What are your site analytics?

We average over 3,000 unique visitors a month. That’s very good considering we have only been around for two years and we’re in a niche market with a limited geographic footprint. What is interesting is that on average, visitors click through 14 pages of content on each visit – significantly greater that the industry average. That really says a lot about the value of the content and service we provide.

In the two years you have been in operation, have you noticed any changes in technology?

We have noticed a huge increase in two social media sites: Facebook and Twitter. Currently, we use Facebook extensively, almost like a second website. We have over 2,000 Facebook friends and we use this site to provide them with a listing of upcoming events and our featured articles. Our Twitter presence is small but growing. We are still trying to figure out how we can leverage Twitter to increase our exposure and connect with more people.

What additional functions do you envision on Beltway Networking in the near future?

We want to make Beltway Networking a positive experience in which people constantly access the site for information about a multitude of things. Think about all the stages involved with networking and events – that’s what we want to address.

Having a goal of being the ultimate resource for business networkers is aggressive, but it is one we can achieve.

Chris Doerr can be reached at beltwaynetworking@beltwaynetworking.com Their website url is: http://www.beltwaynetworking.com/ .

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Bruce Newman, a consultant guru is the mid-Atlantic editor for The National Networker and the Vice President at The Productivity Institute, LLC which matches the consulting needs of companies to the expertise of rated outstanding consultants. Rated outstanding consultants provide excellent value and productivity – in both the short and long term. Finding consultants can be a very time consuming job and once you find one, how do you know how good they are? At The Productivity Institute, we do the work for you - at no cost to you! And, we constantly rate our consultants to ensure that their work remains outstanding. Find us at: http://www.prodinst.com/ .
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