Outspoken Media | businessinsider.com
Let’s face it—running a networking event is hard work. This morning, the rest of the team and I are attending Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley #11 (SMBTV), a bimonthly morning networking event featuring local and national speakers who present on a variety of social media-related topics. We’ve collaborated with several companies in the area, includingEnable Labs, LinguaLinx, andMedia Logic, to organize and run the event. In the midst of finishing client projects and dealing with end-of-month responsibilities, running a networking meet-up can seem like madness.
To be frank, we didn’t decide to take on more responsibilities strictly out of the goodness of our hearts, although SMBTV is a great way to give back to our community. We see return on our efforts in the forms of branding, authority building, and most importantly, visibility to potential job candidates. The agency-to-talent ratio in Upstate New York is pretty daunting from a hiring standpoint, so we are eager to find opportunities to highlight our company and identify potential team members. In short, we’ve justified the ROI for our involvement.
Creating, organizing, or hosting a networking event can satisfy numerous business development needs in addition to building your team and giving back to the community. Before you jump in, start with a plan that helps you measure the ROI on networking events.
businessinsider.com22-year-old 
The company has been stagnant over the past five years, and lately it has been trying to mix things up internally to get it jump-started. For instance, it 
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