How Do You Establish Connections with People You’ve Networked With?

What’s the best way to establish relationships with your connections? It’s simple – put the time into it. A study from the Journal of Science and Personal Relationships states:

· It takes about 50 hours of socializing to go from “acquaintance” to “casual friend”

· It’s an additional 90 hours to become a “good” friend

· And it takes 200 hours to become a “close” or “best” friend

You have to be willing to put in the time and effort to develop deeper and more meaningful connections with people you’ve networked with. Just as the study shows, building relationships doesn’t happen overnight. But I promise if you do commit yourself to it, you will see positive results from it.

That’s why it’s called netWORKing.

You need to put the work into it and get to really know people and give them the chance to truly get to know you, too. Determine the value you can offer each other and the mutual benefits that can arise from your relationship. When you’re genuine and authentic you create a level of trust with your connections which leads to bigger and greater things. How do you do this? Here are some examples:

· Spend quality time with your contacts doing shared activities you both enjoy.

· Engage in meaningful conversations and have purposeful discussions.

· Introduce them to your own connections, especially if there’s something in particular one of your contacts can assist them with.

· Overall, create opportunities where you can both excel at building your relationship.

I hope you’ve found this insightful. Make it a great day and remember to always NetWorkWise.

This post originally appeared on Quora