Business Networking and Following up on a LinkedIn Connection
The secret to business networking is building valued relationships. The process of building value is much like the concept of first impressions in that immediate action is best.
A connection of mine recently sent me a copy of his new follow-up to any one connecting to him. In the note he provided a number of values to his new business networking connections including five or six names of people he recommends connecting with.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the above strategy. However, it can be empowered by giving less more often. By giving one or two names or value items in the first message and then sending another some time latter and so on, you get much more bang for your buck. Someone seeing your name and getting value from you once is great, but if it happens three times they’ll never forget.
When I asked him why he had not split up the message in the first place he indicated he had no way to track the folks. It occurred to me that there is a LinkedIn solution to this. Its not the greatest but it would work.
Using the tag feature of your connections list you could simply tag them with a date represented by number 030110 followed by a letter representing the message thus: 030110B.
You could then send your first message, tag the connection and use the tag to know when to follow up – if you scheduled them all for Friday’s for example you could make retrieval and follow-up a bit easier.
Though this is not the most streamline version of a follow up program it is a workable one that has the potential to make a huge impact on your business networking activities.
Though I have focused this on LinkedIn, the method is sound for any networking activity or social and business networking.
Your comments and sharing of this post are appreciated.
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