More than 50 people—some confident in their networking skills, others a bit shy—turned out for a discussion panel on “Leveraging Your Network To Advance Your Business” at Omaha’s Straight Shot accelerator on Wednesday. Panelists included Kelly Hoey, co-founder of Women Innovate Mobile and CMO at Cuurio, and Adrienne Graham, business growth strategist for Empower Me!. The event was moderated by SPN’s own savvy networker, co-founder and community builder Jeff Slobotski. Here’s a few of the networking tips the audience learned during the hour-long event:

Networking is about building relationships

Graham: It’s about leverage. It’s not quantity or quality. It’s a lot about building a relationship and not just asking for things, but giving and volunteering yourself and time and making connections. If you’re not connecting those dots, you’re being selfish. Hoey: You have to look at it as every activity you undertake on a day-to-day basis is networking. And no one likes it. People who say that they like it are lying. You have to think of those tiny activities as networking opportunities because sometimes they are the most important—those coffees, those going out and meeting community.

Don’t bombard people with pitches

Graham: Get to know people before you pitch them. Networking is give and take, and sometimes you don’t have anything to give to someone (higher up the food chain), but find commonalities with that person.

Use the tools you feel most comfortable with

Slobotski: With all these social tools, you can literally be connected with anyone at any moment. But there’s this law called Dunbar’s number. The law is that humans can only really maintain 150 strong relationships in their lives. You can have 5,000 Facebook friends or 500+ LinkedIn connections, but you can’t keep up with them all. Hoey: I don’t have a system. They’re all up in my head, but I do use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, the usual suspects for networks. And I will cull out the list from time to time. If I have no freaking clue why you’re in my contacts, you’re out.

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Frequency of catching up depends on the relationship

Graham: There’s only a few people that we go back and forth. There are certain people you want to keep in touch with and you feed those relationships more. It all depends on what’s mutually beneficial.

On getting past the superficiality of connecting

Graham: You need to have relationships with people in your life where you can just pick it up right away without the small talk. But the people who want to pick your brain? You have to set stringent guidelines. If I answered or obligated myself to every request, I’d have coffee every minute of every day of every week. I always ask them why do they want to meet? At same time you have to treat people with respect no matter what. You never know where they may be in the future. Hoey: I put everything through a “why” filter.  Why do you think I can help you? “Well so and so said you could.” Not good enough. I try narrow it down to if I can help them over email or phone call. I’ve even done speed mentoring where you sit down with someone for a 15 minute slot and we just jump right in. Get rid of the pleasantries, too. The networking foreplay. Take control of the conversation. Say, “This is what I’m doing, what do you need?”

Follow up often. It pays off more times than not.

Hoey: Emails often go unanswered because people get a lot of email. Give it time, and if you don’t hear anything, send another. If at some point it doesn’t get responded to, just leave an open email without an ask. I’ve had people email me five months after my initial email saying, “Thank you for staying in my inbox.” That person went through a job change and finally got back to me. Sometimes stuff just goes on in their lives and they can’t get to it. Sometimes just connecting with them on LinkedIn and your updates occasionally popping up in their feed is enough for them to remember you.

Meeting someone outside your network who you admire

Hoey: Watch what they’re doing. Are they going to events? Speak at something? If you have an opportunity, go there and try to meet. If not, send an email saying you enjoyed their talk and there was a crowd around, but do they have some time.

On networking up

Hoey: You can benefit from everyone around you, not just people above you. I did a marketing series with Apple and it all came about from a 24-year-old I was mentoring at the time. I gave her some career advice and introductions, but had I taken the attitude of “I only want to talk to your boss” it never would have come together. You never know the value they can provide, who they are and where they may go. You want diversity in your network. Men tend to have shallow, broad networks while women have deep, narrow networks. You’re not going to get things from deep and narrow networks.

Never assume a potential connection is interested

Graham: Check your ego at the door. Research before you do a sales pitch. I may not even be the person you need to talk to. Also, I hate name droppers. Hoey: I hate the “drive and dumps.” Emails that mean to connect two people but you have no idea why they want you to be connected. Never let courtesy take a backseat.

Best advice

Slobotski: Sometimes a handwritten note is best with all these digital tools. Imagine getting a personal note on your desk. It’s the little things like that that add up. Don’t forget the old school tools of pen and paper. Pick up the phone, start a blog or radio show to get to know people outside your network Graham: Before there was social media, I would call people I thought were interesting in magazine articles. Just because they are in a different state doesn’t mean they won’t be responsive to you. You can’t be afraid to reach out to people in other states or countries. Now you have that access. Just reach out and do it. The worst they can do is say no. Hoey: I practiced law before I went into marketing. But it took me two years to transition from being a lawyer to a firm manager. It took lots of research, reaching out to make new contacts, doing informational interviews to find out which conferences they attained, committees they sat on, things they belonged to. It took me two years to build those new relationships. If I wanted to know what’s going on in the Omaha startup scene, there’s an easy newsletter to sign up for. Follow someone on Twitter. See who they follow. What are they talking about? Reach out to them. Looking for a shortcut? There’s not one. It takes time and energy. Graham: I started a radio show to get know people outside out of my network. People would come on willing to talk to you to get that exposure and I made a lot of friends out of the interviews. It’s a good networking tool.