Most of us cannot climb the corporate ladder alone. We need the support of friends, colleagues and mentors who want to help us reach our goals. What we need is an engaged network – people who hear from us regularly, like us and are invested in our success. The best thing we can do for our career is build a strong network.
So why do so many people hate networking?
Time. Shyness. As a consequence of the first two, many of us don’t think about networking until we need something. Walking into a room where you don’t know anyone, is uncomfortable. Reaching out to a neglected contact for a favor doesn’t feel right. Networks are about relationships, and relationships are reciprocal. The secret to making networking more effective and far more comfortable is to keep in touch with your network and gradually build on it – so you know a few people in the room and they are happy that you’re there.
What do you do if you haven’t stayed in touch with most of your network?
That is the beauty of this summer. We have all been neglectful for a long time. We had to be. It was the law! We have all spent too much time in too small a social circle. Acquaintances who haven’t heard from most people in a long time, will certainly be happy to hear from you.
Getting back in touch doesn’t mean overloading yourself with cocktails and coffee meetings; remember, some people are not ready to get back to face-to-face meetings. There are a lot of options.
Three easy ways to reconnect with your professional network
- Scroll to the bottom of your messages (email, LinkedIn etc.) and send brief messages to the people you haven’t been in touch with for a while. Even at a rate of one / day, you will have reinitiated contact with 40+ people by the fall.
What kind of messages can you send?
A quick hello: “Hi. I was just going through my mailbox and came across your name …”
Catching up messages: Prepare an email to tell people what you have been doing and how you weathered the lockdown … and ask how they have been.
Share useful information: Forward an article that might be of interest. “I saw this article and thought you might find it interesting …”
Send a birthday message: or better yet, call or leave a voice message. (People like when you remember their birthday.)
Acknowledge a milestone or work anniversary: Did you see one pop up on LinkedIn. Instead of hitting ‘like’, send a quick private message or email – it’s more personal and that tiny bit of extra effort will be appreciated.
2. Dedicate a few minutes a day to making better use of social media. Yes. Just a few minutes.
- Scroll through your social media feed with the purpose of acknowledging the contributions of your connections: Like, if that’s all you have time for, but try to write a brief comment or send a private message. If the content is interesting share it with your network.
- Pay special attention to original content: If a contact has shared some of their work, a blog post, article or video, fawn over it! They have worked hard on it – Thank them for sharing and tell them why you like it … and do them the favor of sharing it.
- Follow people you admire or find inspirational: Often their feeds will be well curated and full of high quality, interesting and shareable posts. Tip: for great articles and white papers that you can share with your network, try following some consultancies.
3. If you are ready for some next level networking, here it is. Go through your professional contacts and divide them into categories that tell you how often to contact them, based on how close you are, how close you want to be and how important they could be for your career. This can seem a bit mercenary, but it helps you focus your limited time, and it keeps you from becoming a nuisance to people who likely only see you as a distant contact.
Core contacts: These are friends, close colleagues, mentors and potentially important business contacts – people you would like to be in closer contact with.
Interesting but more distant contacts: These can be people you have an established relationship with, who you just need to ‘ping’ from time to time to let them know you are thinking of them.
Acquaintances: These people might be colleagues from years gone by, people in different geographic areas – people you want to keep in touch with, but whose professional paths aren’t currently crossing yours.
Here’s one way to segment your network:
For more about the concept of segmenting your network, check out, Never Eat Alone, a fantastic networking book by Keith Ferrazzi.
This summer may be the best network building opportunity we have ever had. I can’t think of a time when people have ever been so universally craving contact.
I wish you a relaxing summer of reconnecting.
I am a Strategic Marketer & Scientific Writer and I work through my company, Savoir Dire Scientific Communication. I am proudly the Head of the Basel Communicators’ Network.