Social Networking Skills

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Many of us attend great networking events collecting cards from wonderful people and then what do we do with them? Often they sit in a stack on our desk until the stack gets so tall it starts falling over and poof - there went some of your great networking contacts into the crack between the wall and your desk. How does this happen?

Of course the most common excuse I hear is “I don’t have enough time.” Yet we take the time out of our busy days to go to these events which are usually not free so why wouldn’t we take the time to reap the benefits of attendance by capturing our new contact information? The second most common excuse is the kicker - I have a card, can’t I just file it in my Rolodex? NO! Does filing a card in your Rolodex allow you to include that new contact in a mail merge? Does filling a card in your Rolodex allow you to have quick and easy access to the owner of the card’s phone number or email from your smart phone? Does filing a card in your Rolodex allow you to learn more about your network as a whole? Does filing a card in your Rolodex help you schedule a follow-up action with the new contact? Of course not.

Probably the most straight forward answer to this question is you keep up with your networking by scheduling meaningful follow up activities in a system that you will use with discipline. Using a Call List is imperative. Note, I did not say a To Do or Task List - no, you need to use a Call List. Everyone who networks needs to have a Call List that they access on a regular frequency (daily for people with business development responsibilities) else networking is pretty much pointless. A good contact management software will not only incorporate a call list, but it will help you remember what you’ve discussed with your contacts in the past and the reason you wanted to get in touch with them again.

You may also want to consider a newsletter or a blog. You can ask the people that you meet at networking events if they are interested in subscribing and then add them to your list. If you do use a blog, make sure to allow comments so that you keep an active conversation going with your network. And, by all means, connect with your contacts on a social networking site like LinkedIn, Xing, or Plaxo. They will see your posts and when you make changes to your profile. Likewise, you can see the same thing for them which will also give you a good prompt to reconnect.

One final important point, follow up with new contacts as soon as possible to cement the connection - even if it is just a short 2 line email saying it was nice to meet them. Otherwise when you finally get around to adding the new contact to a mail merge list, they may not remember who you are and mistake your newsletter or mass communication as spam.

Copyright 2007

Misty Khan is President and CEO of Advena Artemis LLC. To learn more about Advena Artemis and our HuntressPro add-in for Microsoft Outlook, please visit our web site at http://www.HuntressPro.com

Hopefully this article will inspire you to increase the return on investment of your networking activities. If you would like some more tips regarding how to use Microsoft Outlook to manage your follow-ups, check out my blog at www.Arrow-Tips.com.

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