Networking in London, without the awkward events

Large events put a lot of people in a room for a short time. You meet dozens of faces, swap a handful of details and remember almost none of them a week later. For most people, that's tiring rather than useful.

Work contacts grow the same way friendships do: by seeing the same people more than once, in a setting where talking is easy. So the aim is not to meet as many people as possible. It's to find a few places where you keep running into people in your field, and to follow up properly with the ones you click with.

London has more small, regular gatherings than any other UK city. These are the kinds of places where useful conversations happen naturally.

Remote work has made networking harder for a lot of people. Without an office, there's no corridor chat, no team lunch and no one to introduce you to the person three desks away.

The fix is to rebuild a little of that on purpose. Pick one or two places near home where people work: a coworking space, a library with study tables, a café that's full of laptops. Go regularly, at the same times, and say hello to the same faces. If you live in Hackney, Islington or the City, you'll find plenty of people doing exactly the same thing.

Local matters more than it used to. When people work from home a few days a week, the person in your field who lives ten minutes away is much easier to see regularly than someone across town. A small group of nearby contacts you see often can be worth more than a long list of people you met once.

It's also worth putting your local area on your professional profiles. People are more likely to suggest a coffee if they know you're ten minutes away.

A thirty-minute coffee with one person is worth more than an evening in a room of a hundred. It's easier to ask, easier to say yes to, and you get a real conversation.

Keep the ask simple and specific: who you are, why you'd like to talk, and a time and place near them. 'I've just moved into product design and saw you work nearby: would you be up for a coffee near Old Street one morning next week?' gets far more replies than 'can I pick your brain?'.

Most networking fails at the follow-up. Send a short message within a day or two: thank them, mention one thing you talked about, and do anything you promised, like sharing a link or making an introduction.

If you meet several people at once, jot down a line about each one on your phone on the way home: their name, what they do, and what you talked about. It makes the follow-up personal, and it means you'll remember them properly when your paths cross again.

Then keep in touch lightly. Share something useful when you see it, congratulate them on news, and suggest another coffee a few months later. A network is just a set of people who remember you kindly, and that takes a few small touches over time.

Apps can take away the hardest part, which is finding someone nearby who also wants to talk. On PingMee you choose what you're open to, and networking is one of the options. Post a status such as 'Anyone in marketing near Shoreditch up for a coffee?', see people nearby who chose networking too, and send a ping. If they ping back, a private chat opens for the two of you.

Because PingMee only shows an approximate distance, never your exact location, it works well for meeting people around where you live or work without giving away where you are. See how local networking works on PingMee, and meet somewhere public the first time, as you would with anyone new. Our safety checklist covers the basics.

If you want somewhere to start, try this. In week one, find one meetup in your field and one coworking space or library near home. In week two, go to both. In week three, ask one person you met for a coffee. In week four, follow up with everyone you've spoken to and book the next meetup.

That's a handful of hours, and by the end of it you'll know more people in your field than most big events would give you. If you've just arrived in the city, our guide to your first month in London has more ideas for meeting people outside work too.