A Lesson In Networking

byMEisenberg

947 followers

9 years ago

Okay folks,

So something really awesome happened this past week, and I know it's about to give me a hugeee traffic boost. Listen up, there's a great lesson here.

First I have to let you in on a few details so you can understand the story better.

My website is about muscular dystrophy. I wanted my blog to be about muscular dystrophy help and support since I was born with it.

So, naturally, I'm on the mailing list of one of the local support coordinators--we'll call her Lisa--from the Muscular Dystrophy Association. In case you're not aware, the MDA is the top non-profit for muscular dystrophy in the US. It's the one that always used to have the Labor Day Telethon with Jerry Lewis. That information is going to be important in a second.

So anyway, I get an email from Lisa that says she will be hosting an online chat for young adults with muscular dystrophy, like me, so we can connect. I marked "going" on the email, but on the day of the chat I completely forgot about it until there was only 5 minutes left.

At first I thought, "Oh forget it. I won't get anything out of it at this point." But then I thought "Eh, why not?"

So I log in at the very end, and I realize one of the adulthood transition managers--we'll call her Amy--is there from MDA as well, and she takes down my information, saying she might be in touch.

Fast Forward one month and I get an email from the social media manager at MDA--we'll call her Cathy. She says that Amy passed my information along to her, and that I would be a good person to write on MDA's blog called Strongly. I nearly jumped out of my seat when I heard that.

This was the Muscular Dystrophy Association. This was no joke. Oh my gosh, could you even imagine the exposure my blog could get from this?! Insaneee!!!

I submitted a draft a few days ago, expecting Cathy to say she regrets to inform me that they can't use the blog post for one reason or another.

Instead, to my surprise she says, "Wow, Mark this is great!" And I nearly jumped out of my seat again. I can't believe my material--and the name of my website--will be on MDA's blog.

And it's all because I didn't take those five minutes of networking for granted.