# What Is Networking, and How Do You Build a Network? - URL: https://girisimcikafasi.com/en/blog/what-is-networking-how-to-build-a-network/ - Published: 2023-07-28 - Updated: 2026-09-29 - Category: Personal growth - Publisher: Girişimci Kafası In 1604, the Dutch painter and writer Karel van Mander pointed his young colleagues in a direction in his "Schilder-boeck" (The Book of Painters), a collection of artists’ lives: painters’ travels lead above all to Rome, because that is the chief school of painting. In the years that followed, Dutch and Flemish painters crossed the Alps and flocked to Rome. What were they to do in a city whose language they did not speak and whose rules they did not know, and inside an established art market at that? Around 1620, the solution they found was to set up a club of their own. They called it the "Bentvueghels", which in the Dutch of the time meant roughly "birds of a feather". Joining the group involved a ceremony. The newcomer paid for the feast himself. At the end of the revelry, which sometimes lasted twenty-four hours, everyone walked to Santa Costanza. The painters called this fourth-century building the "Temple of Bacchus" because of a relief on the sarcophagus inside. The most important moment of the ceremony was when the new member was given a nickname. Poking fun at Pieter van Laer’s awkward appearance, they called him "Bamboccio", the puppet. The nickname stuck so well that the street and everyday scenes van Laer painted, and the painters who followed him, came to be known as the "Bamboccianti". Jan Miel, with a play on his surname, became "Honingh-Bie", the honeybee. Some of the names members carved into the walls of Santa Costanza can still be seen today. The group lasted about a hundred years. Historians see it as both a drinking club and a social and professional network for Dutch artists in Rome. Its ceremonies mocked the city’s official academy of painters, the Accademia di San Luca, and the Church. In the end, Pope Clement XI banned the ceremonies in 1720 and the group broke up. ## A nickname, not a business card The Bentvueghels’ secret was that they did not just put their members on a list; they gave them a name. A nickname meant "we know you, you’re one of us". In a foreign city, that sense of belonging was both something to lean on and a door that opened. That is also the essence of what we now call networking. ## What is networking? Networking is a web of professional relationships built on mutual benefit and trust. Information, opportunities and recommendations circulate within it. The business cards you collect at an event are not the network itself; at most they are a list of relationships you might build. The network forms at the moment those people remember you and are ready to put in a word for you. ## How to build a network ### Give first The newly arrived painter paid for the feast out of his own pocket. In business too, the first step is usually to offer something: an introduction, a resource, an idea, honest feedback. One-sided relationships soon fall apart. Do not start asking before you have thought about what you can offer the other person. ### Start in your own field, and do not leave your competitors out Your first circle is the people who do the same job as you. Building good relationships with competitors may feel strange, but they know the industry’s problems best, and one day you may need to sit at the same table. The painters in Rome did the same work in the same city; even so, they shared the same table. ### At events, ask rather than tell Go to your industry’s meet-ups, conferences and professional communities. Once there, ask questions instead of trying to talk about yourself. People remember the person who listened to them. A good question stays in the mind longer than a good pitch. ### Host your own table Sometimes the fastest way to join a network is to start one. A small breakfast, a regular reading group, a series of online conversations. The person who brings people together naturally ends up at the centre of the network. ### Follow up and remember The value of an introduction begins with the short message you send the next day. Do not forget what you talked about, the book you recommended or the introduction you promised. You can find out how to keep this follow-up going online in our piece on [LinkedIn marketing strategies](https://girisimcikafasi.com/en/blog/linkedin-marketing-strategies-7-ways-to-grow-your-network/). ## The strength of weak ties The English word "network" appeared in the 1550s and described an arrangement of thread or wire woven like a net: "net" plus "work", in the sense of weaving. Using it for relationships between people is much more recent. As a verb, "to network", in the sense of exchanging information and making contacts, only took hold in the early 1980s. By then the sociologist Mark Granovetter had already published a surprising finding about how networks work. In 1973 he published "The Strength of Weak Ties". In a study of professional, technical and managerial workers who had changed jobs, he asked a simple question: how often were you seeing the person who told you about your new job at the time? The answers were the opposite of what you might expect. Only 16.7 per cent had heard from someone they saw often. 27.8 per cent had heard from someone they saw rarely, once a year or less. The majority heard from acquaintances they saw occasionally. Granovetter’s explanation was simple: your close circle already knows what you know. New information comes from distant acquaintances, from bridges that open onto other circles. For the painters in Rome, the Bentvueghels was exactly that kind of bridge. ## A final word E. M. Forster opened his 1910 novel "Howards End" with a two-word epigraph: > "Only connect..." Forster actually meant it as a call for people to unite the two halves within themselves, the everyday mind and passion. But the phrase left the page it was written on and took on a much broader meaning. A good network is a bit like that: every bridge you build to others also introduces you to sides of yourself you did not know. So how many people around you do you see once a year who could one day change your life, and when did you last write to them?