5 Tips to Boost Your Communication & Networking Skills

Life is a social experience. You can be the smartest and most talented individual there is. Still, if you cannot get along with people and form-critical relationships, you will find career-building a nearly impossible task. Love it or hate it, networking is one of the most tried and tested ways to move up the career ladder. And with that in mind, here are five tips that will help you take your communication and networking skills to the next level.

1. Learn the Art of Writing

Expressing your ideas in person can be nerve-wracking, so a tremendous intermediary step is to hone your craft at critical essay-writing. Choose a topic, any topic, and write a short composition displaying your opinion and prescription for the issue. For guidance, you can consult an essay writing service like EssayPro and see how they perform the task. Eventually, a hybrid strategy of personal input and that from the service can create the optimal piece of communicative persuasion.

2. Socialize Over Drinks

Some call it “liquid courage,” and well, they might be onto something. Don’t always be stuck-up and robotic – live a little bit. Take a Friday night out with some coworkers or friends and try to spark up a conversation with strangers. This is key!

You have to get outside of your comfort zone and talk to people that you haven’t met before. See if you can get someone’s number, especially if you come across someone from your industry. Who knows, you might end up making a fool of yourself – but this is good, as you can learn from the failure. Or, you might end up making lifelong friends on the way! 

3. Take as Many Job Interviews as You Can

Even if it seems like there is nary a chance that you would accept a given job offer, go ahead and do the interview for the experience. The job’s lack of importance will allow you to relax and develop your speaking skills and experiment with new communication strategies.

Tinker with your method of answering questions and see how that affects how often you receive an offer at the end of it. Pro-tip: record yourself on your smartphone so you can listen back to see how the interview played out in reality, unfiltered by the flaws of human memory. Just don’t publish that audio anywhere! It’s not your business.

4. Curate a Social Media Following

This can either be anonymous or done under your real name – it’s up to you. If possible, using your real name is preferable as you will be able to parlay relationships made online into real-life action seamlessly. There are oodles of apps, forums, and websites that you can choose for this, but the standard option would be one of the major platforms: Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, or Tik Tok.

And if there’s an industry or interest-specific forum out there which tickles your fancy, all the better. Make sure to post on the platform of your choice consistently, interacting with other users, and using audience-building tactics. For example, finishing posts with words like “Share this if you agree!”, “Tag a friend!” can help you bring more engagement.

Bolstering your social profile and accruing clout will have theoretical benefits for the real world and perhaps actual benefits, as well. More and more people are launching projects and collaborations over social media.

5. Visit Networking Events, Conferences, Workshops, and Presentations

I know – you think it’s tedious. You see “Graphic Design Workshop and Meet-and-Greet” on the calendar and think to yourself: “boring!” You don’t want to subject yourself to three hours of pompous colleagues rambling on about the success of their recent projects and giving their often unsolicited advice to everyone. But trust us – you are not alone in feeling this way. This can even be used as an icebreaker to spark up a conversation with someone at the event.

“Ugh, these speeches drain the lifeblood out of me.”

“I know, right!” 

And regardless if you enjoy work-related events or not, they are absolute gold mines in terms of networking opportunities. You’ll find business partners, people who had your position in the past and got promoted, friends, enemies, and everything in between. You just need to open up and get talking. The best-case scenario is if you give a public talk! This provides maximum exposure and will have curious compatriots chomping at the bit to get acquainted with you afterward. So get out there and start communicating!