15 Ways to Network Remotely When You Work From Home

Are you sitting at your home office desk missing the adrenaline rush of going to a big in-person conference, fun networking event or professional mixer where you’d be sure to meet new people?

First of all, be thankful that you’re cozy at home and maybe still in pajamas (lucky you!). The good news is that because you’ve found yourself at this guide, you’re already set up to be networking better while working from home.

Think about it.

A professional network is something that should happen continually over time, whether naturally, or with a lot of wholesome effort. Gone are the days when shaking hands or meeting in person meant that you could form a meaningful connection with someone.

Some of the best networking we’ve both done has been online, while we’ve been working remotely. Nowadays, it’s more convenient, if not ideal, to form a virtual connection with a fellow professional in a social or professional network that only exists online.

You can do it all from your home office or wherever you’re based for the day, if you’re working remotely and traveling.

Have you considered all the ways you can expand your network while working remote? I’m excited to show you how I’ve grown my networks extensively from the comfort of our home office and from coworking spaces around the world.

Ready to expand your horizons and learn how to boost your professional network, all from home, or remotely? Let’s see these proven methods.

Join professional Slack groups and communities

I can’t say enough good things about joining professional Slack groups and virtual communities.

I first heard about Slack when it came to hearing about Dan’s remote work journey with Remote Year. This was back in 2016, when I wasn’t sure what Slack was, or the wonders it could do for anyone professionally.

Slack is a tool that we detail in our ways to stay connected while working remotely guide.

While many organizations and companies use Slack as their platforms for communication, sharing ideas and working on projects, Slack can also be used to bring people together, no matter where they’re based.

Private professional Slack communities

Remote Year is a network that uses a Slack community for anyone currently in the program or for anyone who has completed it. While it serves as a way for the trip participants to manage events, ask questions and find travel advice, it also serves as a huge way to find jobs, make connections with someone in a different cohort whom you’ve never met and a way to pick up side jobs posted in the #jobboard channel.

If you’re not part of a private Slack community due to a shared experience or a Slack platform from your company, start with the heaps of free Slack communities that you can join in order to meet new people.

Free professional Slack communities

I started off with the “Ladies Get Paid” (LGP) Slack, which I detail in some of our remote work articles. Ladies Get Paid started changing my life because it’s a free online community for women all over the world, and there are 48,000 women and counting.

The best ways to benefit from a massive Slack community is finding job postings in the job board, sharing work opportunities and connecting with professionals in Slack channels that pertain to a certain industry. For instance, there are ‘channels’ for professionals in design, development, product, writing, tech and more.

Other Slack communities I’m a part of range from women’s professional groups, to open communities founded by companies like We Work Remotely or Kettlespace, and some grassroots networking groups like Remote Woman.

Say “yes, yes, yes” to online professional events

If in-person networking events are no longer a part of your life due to schedule, family, obligations or your location, start saying yes to online events.

When I started working from home, I began signing up for all types of webinars I’d find through the Ladies Get Paid Slack community.

And I mean all types of webinars. I was the webinar queen during spring 2020. I was attending a webinar a day.

These online webinars focused on all types of work, from all types of experts: marketing, leadership, pivoting business and financial topics.

I started learning all types of things. I peeked into Eventbrite, where I found an infinite universe of free professional webinars that streamed from all over the world, from Los Angeles to London.

The best part of online events is that some are specifically for networking!

If you’ve ever been in a Zoom webinar and been put into a ‘breakout room,’ this is a function of Zoom webinars that allows participants in a big audience to form intimate connections. It lets them have a chance to have a moment to shine in smaller groups.

Use these breakout rooms for networking, and you never know who you’ll find. In fact, recently I attended a travel event hosted by Konrad from TripScout, to find that my friend Jen ‘walked into the Zoom room’ a few minutes after I had joined.

It’s a small world out there!

Use your social media channels to make professional connections

If you’ve ever heard someone say, “Yeah, we met on Instagram,” and you think it sounds crazy, well, this might be the networking style of the future.

We’ve certainly (and I’ll speak for both of us) made friends over the Internet.

It’s not a ridiculous thing to do anymore.

In fact, social media, especially Instagram, is where professionals use their accounts as portfolios for products, art, photography or professional services.

I know for a fact that my friend Marisa of @theneonteaparty met her web designer over Instagram.

They connected and became friendly, and a year later, she wound up designing Marisa’s entire website and consulting on her brand vision.

If you want to connect over social media, make sure your social media account demonstrates who you are and is transparent about your business, your goals or your professional skills.

If you prefer that your social media remains private, start a public account for your business itself. From there, use a business account to learn about your audience, and lastly, engage with your audience on Instagram in a meaningful way.

This will be an amazing way to build your professional network virtually, completely online. It’s one of our best networking-from-home tips.

Join “Instagram Live” from companies and organizations you look up to

Instagram Live is now what you could call a webinar-at-your-fingertips.

It’s true to some extent, though: well-known professional figures go “live” on Instagram and field questions from the audience. It’s a great opportunity to ask them how they got their start, their recommendations for the industry, how to move a career forward and more.

It’s great to follow up with the personalities who go “live” and shoot them emails after the live sessions are done.

You really never know if there’s a strong connection to be made, especially if you’ve asked thought-provoking questions or contributed meaningfully to the chat.

This is a remote networking idea that can truly start a spark.

Follow up with the leaders of webinars

I’ll tell you a bit about something that happened to me fairly recently.

I’ve been joining webinars on all sorts of professional topics from the Female Founders’ Collective (FFC).

These consist of weekly (or recently, daily webinars within a single week) from professionals in self-help, personal finance, marketing and branding.

At the end of each webinar, it’s always helpful (to yourself and to the other listeners) to ask a meaningful question.

If there is not time for the speaker to answer all questions, they’ll probably give out their personal email as a way to contact them afterward and continue the conversation.

There’s nothing bad that can happen when you reach out to the leader or speaker from a webinar, and as you see here, it’s a great way to network from home.

Use your alumni community on LinkedIn

Using your high school, college or continuing education university network on LinkedIn is now easier to do than ever before.

When you’re looking at jobs in LinkedIn’s job listings, the website shows you “9 alumni of your university work at this company,” for example.

If you have the time, reach out to a few of the alumni suggestions and ask politely for an inbound referral to their company’s hiring managers.

Oftentimes, fellow alumni don’t say no to this type of favor. If you received a similar message from someone who graduated from your college, you’d probably feel inclined to help out!

I’ve used this method of networking before and I wholeheartedly recommend it, because it takes little effort and you also never know who works where.

Ask for informational interviews over Zoom

Maybe you hadn’t yet considered asking for virtual/remote informational interviews.

I can’t say how popular it is to ask for informational interviews nowadays, but I know that some industries welcome this type of outreach.

An informational interview, in my own words, is asking to interview a professional who is a leader in an organization at which you’re interested in working. Or, if you’re looking for a career pivot, asking an individual in your ideal type of role how they got their start.

If you work from home, or even more realistically, if you’d like to schedule an informational interview with someone who does not live where you live, consider asking for an informational interview over Zoom.

I even have a friend who recently did this a few times. The first step is making the ask, to build out your professional network.

If you want to be cordial, you can send the interviewee something like a gift card to a local coffee shop instead of buying him or her a coffee in person.

Attend a virtual job fair

What is a virtual job fair? Is it a job fair that you attend online while you’re working from home?

I went to my first one this year, just to see how this idea works for remote workers or anyone who wants to work remotely.

When I signed up for a virtual job fair, I first received a schedule of five different companies that would present to the ‘virtual job fair attendees’ at different times throughout a three-hour schedule.

Based on the types of companies and the types of positions they were hiring, you could sign into the continual webinar platform and hear from the hiring managers being interviewed by hosts about company culture, overall goals and types of qualities candidates should have.

In an era of remote jobs, remote companies, remote teams and taking remote interviews, this could be the new type of job fair.

Always remember to follow up with the hosts or hiring managers if their contact information is made available, even if it’s just to say hi and that you found their presentations useful.

This is a time when networking virtually can really help, and it’s a great thing to do if you want to build your professional network from home.

Offer to host a webinar with your professional skills

When the remote work revolution first began, we wrote this guide to working remotely from home for the first time.

It proved useful for many professionals who were transitioning from offices to remote work lifestyles.

Around the time that we published the work from home guide and our evergreen guide on how to create your home office environment, I was asked by both Ladies Get Paid and my university to lead webinars on the topic.

I was delighted to do so, and proceeded to lead two webinars on the benefits of working from home, how to stay connected while working from home and the difference between working remotely or working at home.

I also touched on remote work topics like healthy habits for remote workers, including at-home fitness ideas to try.

Why was this a great way to network remotely and online?

Not only was I introduced to the leaders at both organizations who assisted me in tailoring my webinars to each audience, but afterward, I received kind words from professionals who had attended. Still today, I have social media connections to these professionals.

Join professional or industry-based Facebook groups

As Facebook can probably tell you, there’s a Facebook group for everything.

Seriously, though, aside from fly-fishing and groups about knitting, there are Facebook groups for essentially every topic. We’ve lucked out in providing value and getting questions answered in those for remote workers.

Remote work and digital nomad Facebook groups range from several hundred members to several thousands.

The incredible thing about asking a question such as, “What are the best cities for remote work?” is that you may receive hundreds of replies.

The other thing that may not be obvious from joining Facebook groups about professional topics is that people do tend to post jobs or look for freelancers to help out with projects.

We’re members of Facebook groups about blogging, marketing, branding and more. While some members are more active than others, the bottom line is that you get back what you contribute to groups like these for networking.

If this is right up your alley, or you’re looking for remote work gigs, connections or ideas, start joining any type of specific Facebook group about your chosen topic today.

Join Lunchclub

Lunchclub will connect you with like-minded professionals with an AI algorithm. You can input information about yourself and information about who you are looking to connect with.

We started using Lunchclub and it’s a fun way to be paired with strangers who may become successful professional connections for you. It’s like online dating, but for professional reasons.

This is a modern way to expand your professional network while working remotely! The company’s motto is “Your network is waiting for you.”

It checks so many of the boxes. We wish it had been invented sooner!

Check out Lunchclub

Host an online social event within your organization or company

Some companies consist of a small staff, like small companies of a team of five.

Some companies may have hundreds, if not thousands of employees, and at the end of the day, you’re bound to not know them all.

If you want to network within your company’s distributed teams, offer to present on a topic. Host a webinar, host a gameshow over Zoom, or host a speed-networking event with another coworker.

These are all great ways to stay connected remotely within organizations, and there are so many ideas to try so that you can always be meeting someone new who’s on staff.

Who knows, maybe you’ll get to meet that coworker in person at a future in-person company retreat.

Use Reddit to connect with professionals in a similar industry

For a lot of people who work in tech or related fields, Reddit may be your favorite way to network while working remotely.

Reddit, if you’re not familiar with the website, is a place to post questions and get answers, or to share photos and information. It can be pretty eclectic, or sometimes, incredibly helpful, as people from around the world can publicly give opinions on a subject or help solve a problem.

What I didn’t really know until now was that Reddit has forums for talking about different professions, naturally.

You can use Reddit to connect with other professionals in your field of work, and you could gain substantial knowledge and expansion of connections in this way.

Reddit is a platform with an extensive amount of potential, so if you’re ready for a dive, try it out for networking from home.

Watch YouTube videos about professional topics

…and reach out to the YouTuber.

As these experts are typically well-connected, it can’t hurt to ask if they know further professionals in the field who’d be happy to help you with some type of project, creative outlet, specific type of knowledge or further connections.

I’ve done this in the instances of YouTube video-makers who have provided specifically-valuable videos from which I’ve gained knowledge or skills, like cooking ‘shows’ or YouTube channels.

As people are always looking for an excuse to connect, it doesn’t hurt to reach out to YouTube stars via the email addresses they list in their “About” section of their channel page.

Especially if they are just starting out, they may be looking for collaborators, either in the same field or in an opposite skill set. You can offer your skills, or feedback on their videos and sometimes ‘make a match’ (professionally) through this networking idea.

Use the professional or social network you already have

This may sound silly, or obvious, but the fact here is that among people you know, it’s hard to keep track of who works where or who changed into which career.

Among even my friends and family, I sometimes lose track of who has skills in what and who’s an expert at some professional skill. I also forget who got new jobs, who got a new degree, who made a career change and who started a new business!

If you have a desire or need to learn a new skill or find a job, start small: reach out to immediate family and close friends, asking if anyone knows a graphic designer (as a quick example). Also, use LinkedIn and peruse your news feed to see who’s up to what and who has professional updates.

If not, ask if close friends and family can ask their networks the same question.

You may wind up with a meaningful connection who may change your life, just by networking.

Remember: some of the best networking can be done while working from home. Thanks to all the technology and creative ways to communicate virtually that we now have at our disposal, you have the professional world at your fingertips!