Chapter 10: Strategic Networking in Public

Early in my career, networking meant collecting business cards.

You'd go to a conference, shake hands with as many people as possible, exchange cards, and stuff them in your pocket. Then you'd go home, enter the names into a spreadsheet or a CRM if you were organized, and hope that one of those contacts would eventually turn into something useful.

The digital version was LinkedIn. I remember the era when your connection count was a status symbol. You'd send connection requests to everyone you met --- and plenty of people you hadn't --- chasing that moment when your profile would stop showing the actual number and just say "500+." As if hitting that threshold meant you'd made it. As if quantity of connections translated to quality of network.

It didn't.

I collected hundreds of connections and business cards over the years. I can count on one hand the number that turned into meaningful professional relationships through that kind of cold, transactional networking.

The relationships that actually mattered --- the ones that led to job offers, partnerships, collaborations, and opportunities --- came from something entirely different.

• • •

The Shift: From Collecting to Filtering

My approach to networking now is almost the opposite of those early conference handshakes.

I'm selective. Deliberately so.

I tend to ignore my LinkedIn direct messages. Not because I think I'm too important to respond, but because LinkedIn DMs have become the equivalent of cold calls --- an endless stream of pitches, partnership proposals, and "just checking in" messages from people who have no context for who I am or what I do.

Instead, I instruct people to reach out through my personal website. Kenny-kane.com has a contact page. It's not hidden, but you have to care enough to find it.

Recently, a vendor reached out about Firmspace --- not through LinkedIn, not through a cold email to my work address, but through my personal website's contact form. They'd done their research. They'd found my site. They'd followed my preferred path.

I told them their approach earned them preferential treatment. And I meant it.

That might sound elitist. It's not. It's a filter.

When someone takes the time to find your website, navigate to your contact page, and write a thoughtful message, they've already demonstrated something that a LinkedIn DM never proves: they've done their homework. They know who you are beyond a job title. They've seen your work, your writing, your professional identity as you've defined it.

That's the digital ecosystem working as a networking filter, not just a visibility tool. The same infrastructure that makes you discoverable to search engines and AI systems also filters the people who reach out to you. The ones who find your website have already self-selected as people worth talking to.

• • •

Your Published Work Is Your Networking

Here's the realization that changed how I think about professional relationships: every blog post, every book, every public piece of work is a networking event that runs twenty-four hours a day.

The CEO job at TCF came from a five-year friendship with the founder. But when I showed up, my blog posts had been printed out and shared among the team. The relationship opened the door. The writing proved I belonged there. That's Chapter 2's story.

The BigCommerce ambassadorship came from writing about their platform. The Practical Ecommerce column came from the BigCommerce work. The Forbes council came from the accumulated body of published content.

Each of those opportunities came from the same thing: someone encountered my work in public and decided to reach out. Not because I'd handed them a business card. Not because I'd sent them a cold LinkedIn message. Because my published work did the networking for me.

That's what I mean by strategic networking in public. You don't need to work a room. You need to work in public. Document what you're doing. Share what you've learned. Let the work speak for itself.

The people who resonate with your thinking will find you. And they'll reach out through whatever channel you've made available. Which is why your digital ecosystem matters --- it determines who finds you and how they contact you.

• • •

Real Connections, Not Manufactured Ones

Not all valuable networking happens through published content. Some of the best professional relationships in my life started in the most unexpected places.

I recently appeared on a podcast called Mallett & Michelle --- friends from Central Texas who live about thirty minutes from me. How did I meet them? On Bourbon Street in New Orleans during St. Patrick's Day. Not at a conference. Not through a LinkedIn introduction. On Bourbon Street.

That relationship turned into a podcast appearance that became one of the most honest conversations I've had about my work. The episode, "Grabbing Life by the Balls," covered cancer, leadership, AI, writing, and the operating philosophy that connects everything I do across three organizations.

What made the conversation work wasn't networking strategy. It was genuine connection. They knew me as a person before they knew me as a CEO. The friendship came first. The professional collaboration followed naturally.

But here's where the ecosystem matters: after the podcast aired, I wrote about it on my blog. Not a promotion --- a reflection on what we discussed and why it mattered. That blog post now lives on my site with proper tags, linking to my books, my organizations, and the themes that run through my work. The podcast episode is referenced in my Wikidata sameAs properties. It's been absorbed into the digital identity system.

A single conversation on a podcast, born from a friendship that started on Bourbon Street, became a permanent piece of my professional infrastructure.

That's not something I could have planned. But it is something I could capture and connect to everything else.

The experience gave me pause about podcasting as a medium. The soundbites that came out of that conversation --- about leadership, about building things that last, about showing up and paying attention --- were sharper and more natural than anything I'd write alone. It made me think seriously about developing a podcast of my own. Not as a networking play, but as another spoke in the ecosystem. Another way to document real thinking, have real conversations, and create citable, discoverable content.

• • •

The Reciprocity Principle

The networking philosophy I've landed on comes down to one word: reciprocity.

Early in my career, networking was about what I could get. Connections. Introductions. Opportunities. It was transactional even when I pretended it wasn't.

Now, networking is about what's in it for both sides.

When I write a blog post about rebuilding the TCF website, I'm sharing knowledge that helps other nonprofit leaders. That's value I'm putting into the world with no expectation of return. But it also builds my authority, feeds my digital ecosystem, and makes me discoverable by people who need exactly that kind of help.

When I appear on a podcast, I'm giving the hosts content for their audience. They're giving me a platform to share my story. Both sides benefit.

When someone reaches out through my website with a genuine question or a thoughtful proposal, I respond. Because they've demonstrated the same respect for my time that I hope my work demonstrates for theirs.

The transactional networkers --- the ones who send mass LinkedIn messages, collect connections like baseball cards, and measure success by follower counts --- are optimizing for a game that stopped working years ago. The people who build genuine relationships, create value through published work, and show up authentically are the ones who generate opportunities that actually matter.

• • •

LinkedIn: Useful but Not Central

I should say something about LinkedIn specifically, because it's the platform most people think of when they hear "professional networking."

LinkedIn is useful. I maintain my profile. I keep it consistent with my website, my Wikidata entry, and my other platforms. It's connected through sameAs properties in my schema markup.

But LinkedIn isn't the center of my networking strategy. It's a spoke. A place where people can verify my professional identity before they reach out through my preferred channels.

The problem with making LinkedIn your primary networking platform is the same problem with building your career on any platform you don't control: the algorithm changes. The features change. The norms change.

When I started on LinkedIn, it was a professional directory. Then it became a content platform. Then it became a place where people post motivational stories and engagement-bait that has nothing to do with their actual work. The signal-to-noise ratio has shifted, and the inbox has become unusable for anyone with any kind of public profile.

That doesn't mean you should abandon LinkedIn. It means you shouldn't depend on it. Keep your profile current. Make sure it's consistent with your other platforms. Use it as a verification layer. But don't build your networking strategy on a foundation you can't control.

Build it on your hub. Build it on your published work. Build it on genuine relationships that start in unexpected places and grow into something real.

• • •

Networking as an Ecosystem Output

Here's the frame I want you to take from this chapter: networking isn't something you do separately from everything else in this book. It's the output of the system.

When you have a website that houses your best thinking, you attract people who value that thinking.

When you have structured data that makes you discoverable, the right people find you.

When you have a blog that documents real work, professionals in your field encounter your ideas.

When you have books that establish your authority, readers reach out because they connected with your perspective.

When you have a Wikidata entry and a Knowledge Panel, your credibility is verifiable in seconds.

All of that is networking. It's just not the kind you do at a conference with a stack of business cards. It's the kind that happens while you're doing your actual work.

The most valuable professional relationships I have didn't come from networking events. They came from Bourbon Street, from blog posts, from published columns, from documenting what I was doing and letting the right people find it.

Show up. Pay attention. Build things that make life a little easier for the next person who comes along.

That's the networking strategy. That's always been the networking strategy.

The only difference now is that you have the infrastructure to make it work at scale.

• • •