Business Networking & Following Up On a LinkedIn Connection
Shortly after I joined LinkedIn and posted my profile, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a telephone call from Flyn Penoyer. He proceeded to tell me that we had just connected on LinkedIn and he wanted to learn more about what I did and explain to me just what he was working on as well. That conversation, on a Saturday afternoon, has developed a life-long connection between myself and Flyn! I consider him to be one of LinkedIn’s finest gurus and I hope you do too! The following is an article that he has posted on his blog and I encourage you to subscribe to get more of his information. He also has an awesome membership sight where he provides such great education on using LinkedIn, so be sure to check that out too! When he asks, just tell him Carol Deckert sent you! You’ll hear the smile in his voice!
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.
Telephone: 408-296-6880 408-296-6880
Please connect with Flyn!
I thought that I knew quite a bit about LinkedIn, however this tagging feature was new to me. After reading Flyn’s article, I can certainly see how valuable this tool could be! What are your thoughts on this tool? Please be sure to post them in the comment section below and thanks so much for reading – I appreciate your support!
Carol
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Subscribe to It!
Mari-Lyn
on March 2nd, 2010
I used to send our a monthly Linkedin Digest and of course gave people an option to unsubscribe,, however a new guy just joined my network and didn’t want to receive my digest. Reported me as spam to my IP, Couldn’t
bother to just unsubscribe.
Now, there are better ways to keep in touch, I send out
periodical notes or wishes.
I like Flynn’s suggestion – My question has always been
Quality or Quantity?
Carol Deckert
on March 2nd, 2010
For some reason people associate success with quantity and don’t think about what they have accomplished to do that. Quality is so much better, I would rather have 10 people who I connect with on a regular basis than to have 10,000 just to make it look like I’m in demand!
I think that was awful that your subscriber reported you as spam. Don’t they know that’s what the unsubscribe link is for?
Thanks for reading and for commenting!
To Your Netweaving Success!
Carol