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Being new in a city, industry or opening up a new entrepreneurial venture can be scary. Who do I talk to? Who should I follow? How do I find interest groups? These are all extremely valid concerns.  But there are tools to help you get in touch with people around you.

Evaluate your online resource options:

Take a peek at the social media tools that you currently have. Here are some standard options:

• LinkedIn – a place to start observing and gathering professional contacts
• Facebook - a place to connect and share with people in your life
• Twitter – a micro blogging site
• Brazen Careerists – a social network for Gen Y professionals (even if you aren’t Gen Y, it’s a pretty cool platform)

These are just a few options that are at your finger tips. Now, where to start…

First, take your LinkedIn profile and do a local search on the keywords that you are interested in. You can search by people, company, jobs, answers, groups and more. If you are looking for people in your network (or connected to your network) you can see who has the keywords in their LinkedIn profile.

From here you can see what activities and events people are talking about. This is a key way to tap into a new community or group. You have to start somewhere, might as well be where the conversations is right?

Follow people’s activities:

This is a great way to not only make connections, but also see what people in your (hopeful) industry are doing and posting. From here, check and see if they:

• Have a blog or website? If so, subscribe to their RSS updates, email newsletters or add to your online reader. This is a great way to see postings of events and relevant updates.
• Do they tweet? Twitter can give you a heads up who is doing what… all the time. That’s powerful. Is the CEO from that new venture looking for a consultant or a coffee buddy?
• Have their contact options posted. Do they suggest a platform that you haven’t seen yet? This is a great way to check out where the ‘pros’ or ‘movers & shakers’ are having conversations.

While on LinkedIn, take a peek at some of the groups that people are members of. Are there some in that you could learn and benefit from? I was invited to a group on LinkedIn and haven’t looked back. While all of this may seem like stalking 101, I hope that you can see how you can use these steps to better situate yourself for offline networking.

Gather information by observation:

Once information is gathered, start following conversations. Take a peek at their:

• LinkedIn updates. This gives you an idea on company/industry movement and people’s professional activities
• Twitter feeds. You can see what people are posting and how they are interacting with others. Keep in mind that they may not been tweeting about topics related to their employment/industry.
• Conversations. How are they interacting overall? Sometimes this can give you a feel on if they are formal, informal or non-responsive.

How do you network and connect online to offline?

Kristina is based in the Twin Cities and eats and breathes social media. Her love for technology’s influence on culture can be found here.

Tags: employment, Facebook, LinkedIn, networking, offline, online, Strategy