Networking is great for business owners, but how can you do it most effectively? The challenge isn’t how you can find more opportunities to network, but how to talk about business in an unobtrusive way. If you can learn this, you can turn any social situation into one that can benefit your business. Here are a few tips:

Hone your conversational skills. Your networking strategy will fail before it begins if no one enjoys talking with you. Great conversationalists ask leading questions, listen intently to answers and add their own personal stories to the mix. If you can do these things well, everyone you speak with will rate you as an amazing conversationalist and rate their conversations with you among the best they had all night.

Make friends with introducers. At every event there are people whose primarily skill is helping to connect individuals to others who share their interests or background. These are the people who always come to a moment in their conversations where they say something like "oh, you do _______? You should talk to _____." This moment can come from anyone in any conversation, and usually it is a result of having a great genuine conversation (see above) and adding enough details about yourself that you can make it likely people will want to connect you with others.

Respect the nature of the event. Every event has a format, whether it has some kind of performance and then time to mingle, or a cocktail hour to start the evening before adjourning to tables for dinner. Be sure to respect the type of event you are at. If it is a networking event, clearly you can talk about your company and what you do right away. At a more personal event, you need to select who you are talking to and adapt how you talk about your company and what you do to the situation.

You should feel comfortable networking in every situation. Just make sure you avoid becoming that person at an event who won't stop trying to sell his or her company at every moment.