Making Business Connections in the Post-Pandemic Era

Although the mediums through which people can make business connections changed after the pandemic, the need to make business connections and networks is more important than ever.

The following methods are some of the best ways to business connections digitally in the emerging hybrid workplace model era:

Maintain Your Digital Presence

To make business connections digitally, maintaining your business connections related to social media pages is more important than ever. LinkedIn and Meta/Facebook allow individuals as well as businesses to build business connections with each other virtually. 

Another great way to build one’s business connections is to add and follow fellow members in your industry. These types of business connections will seem the easiest and most lucrative in the short run. 

Attend Virtual Events

Another great platform to build business connections is to attend industry-related virtual events such as webinars and discussion forums. Preparing a precise introduction about yourself would be very helpful to make virtual business connections with like-minded individuals.

Virtual Business Cards

Digital business cards can help easily share information such as your name, company, position, email address, and phone number to make making business connections easier than ever. Adding your image to a virtual business card would go the extra mile when making business connections since people are more likely to remember faces than names.

Virtual Coffee Meetings

Even though you may no longer socialize regularly to make business connections, it doesn’t mean that you cannot keep up with each other virtually. Scheduling virtual coffee dates with colleagues can help people maintain a sense of normalcy in the hybrid workplace model era. Being able to collaborate and build business connections with people with similar interests can be helpful for employees’ overall job satisfaction. 

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone systems like RingCentral and 8x8 have been quickly growing in popularity for companies of all types and sizes, primarily due to the portability and cost savings a cloud-based phone system provides for companies both inside and outside the office environment. 

With a VoIP system, employees can access your company’s phone system remotely through an internet connection on desktops. VoIP providers can also help you port over your phone numbers to ensure that you have continuity in your business connections and that clients and customers can easily reach you. Additionally, VoIP also works through mobile apps, so employees can access it from their smartphones and tablets to keep communications and business connections intact while working from home. 

The initial chaos and uncertainty during the early days of the pandemic led many companies to shift quickly to a remote work model. While many companies have been embracing remote work more and more in recent years, this is a sudden, impactful change to business communications for many companies and employees to maintain business connections. Using video conferencing and chat can help you keep a sense of business connections and facilitate meaningful interactions and meetings internally and externally for your business. 

Video conferencing and chat tools can be a very effective and cost-friendly way to maintain business connections with colleagues, partners, clients, and customers. When you cannot meet physically in person, meeting on a video call is the next best thing to make business connections. There are several free video conferencing options that facilitate business connections like GoToMeeting which allow for video meetings and chat with limited numbers of participants.

However, as a result of the rapid shift to online work during the COVID-19 pandemic, many leading videos conferencing vendors like Zoom and Cisco WebEx are increasing their trial periods and giving companies access to remote business connection systems and tools for free for up to 30 days. 

Compare video conferencing software and reviews.

Keeping your team organized and synched on important initiatives and projects is always a key challenge for business connections and doing so remotely can add another layer of complexity. However, there are several great project management and business connections tools on the market, such as Asana, Trello, and Basecamp.

These online project management systems are very user-friendly and easy to set up with projects, tasks, and reminders to help you keep your teams on track while they’re working from home. These platforms are accessible online, so your teams can collaborate, share status and updates, and check tasks from their lists in a collaborative environment to maintain business connections. Compare project management software and reviews to determine which tools and features will benefit your company most.

In response to the crisis, cloud-based communication and collaboration software vendors are stepping up to meet the challenge and aid the sudden shift to remote work with extended free trials and other tools to help companies make business connections and make the transition to remote work as seamlessly as possible. 

If you need help choosing the best cloud-based tools for SMBs to support successful remote business connections, our team is here to help! We have relationships with all the leading software vendors, and we’re happy to connect you with vendors and set up complimentary appointments to get you the tools you need for operating your business connections remotely.