Business networking groups and online forums can be an effective way to get your marketing message out to other small business owners. In South Africa, there are a number of groups which meet regularly.

All of the groups have some form of online presence. They generally require you to create a user profile so that you can post text and images to the site.

Here are the ones I have personal experience with:

Networking Groups
Inner Circle
Inner Circle meetings are held regularly in Johannesburg, Midrand and Pretoria. They focus on finding synergies between businesses, and help to set up strategic alliances or joint ventures between business owners. Meetings generally attract 20 to 30 people. There is a R100 charge per meeting. The online presence is a Ning social media site, with around 300 members. Highly recommended.

MyGenius
A national business owners membership site, which claims to have 13,000 members. Paid membership is R95 p.m. There is a free membership option. MyGenius members meet in small groups, usually 10 or fewer. There is no charge for meetings. The online system is a sort of social network, running with quirky home-grown software.

SA Business Hub/Majestic Coffee Groups
Majestic, in association with SA Business Hub, coordinates regular coffee group meetings throughout the country, where business owners meet to discuss their challenges and work together to become financially sustainable. Attendance is free. There are usually between 6 and 12 people at a meeting. There is a sort of online presence at MajesticInteractive, but all it lets you do is publish “informative and educational” articles, without links. Why bother?

Online Forums
TheForumSA
TheForum is a free forum for business owners. Fairly active, with 297 signed-up members. You need to be a member to post, but you can read most of the forums without signing up.

BusinessWarriors
Business Warriors is Peter Carruthers’ paid membership site. The forum is lively and interesting. The paid structure means that people are more willing to speak their minds.

Social Networking sites
ecademy
A high traffic international social network for small business owners. Plenty of South Africans here. There is a 3-tier membership structure – free, Power Networker and Blackstar.

Collabor-Eight
Another South African Ning-based social networking site. 143 members.

< a href=http://www.businessnetworkonline.co.za>Business Network Online
I’ve just joined this network. It’s a social networking site, with around 330 members.

Other resources:
Of course, the ‘traditional’ social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc let you contact people based on their location. A new entry is GatorPeeps, which is Afrigator’s ‘Twitter-like’ microblogging platform.

Another possibly useful resource is Meetups.com which lets you contact like-minded people by geographical area.

If you are in any kind of B2B enterprise, you should at the very least visit the websites I’ve listed above. The contacts you make can be invaluable.

Top Business Networking Groups is a post from: IdealMedia.co.za