HOLYOKE — Jason Turcotte, owner of Turcotte Data & Design, a website design and development business in Ware, was named the 2012 Director of the Year for Business Networking International (BNI) Western Massachusetts at the organization’s annual banquet held Jan. 17 at the Delaney House.

Turcotte served as a Director Consultant for the business networking group for two years, until mid-2012, helping 250 members in 11 chapters in the region by sharing stories of his experience, education and success with the organization. Previously, Turcotte also served as a BNI Ambassador for one year.

You may wonder how these two things would even be connected. After all, search engine optimization deals with getting your website the highest possible ranking on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. How does that relate to business networking, where if you're doing it right, leads to referrals.

I recently wrote an article called “When Is Free Not Free?” and in it I discussed a few free or low-cost methods people use for advertising their businesses… and why that’s not always a great strategy.

After writing that article I realized that a lot of times people take the same route when it comes to business networking. Now before I go on about this let me clearly state that there is nothing wrong with “free” or “low cost” networking. What I want to talk about is “low value” networking.

People love free things... love them! I know I enjoy getting things for free and am willing to bet that you do as well. However, when it comes to business, free is not always the best option.