Building a network is necessary for growth in any profession, regardless of the industry you’re in. The connections that you make, both socially and professionally, can make a difference as to how successful you are in your current career and any future trajectories that your goals take you. Getting in front of important contacts is an essential part of any person’s growth, as connections can get you in doors that not having them might stay closed to you.

However, just getting in front of someone isn’t enough to establish and cement a relationship. Once that first contact is made, how you handle the follow-up is the next important step. Never rely on a first impression to cement your relationship with someone in your network, especially if they are an important contact. Just because you felt like there was a connection doesn’t mean they felt the same way. Follow-up is the way to finalize the bond and ensure you aren’t quickly forgotten.

The Art of Networking

Networking might seem scary at first, but there’s an art to it that makes it easier as you go. Once you develop and hone your strategy, the rest is easy. To do this, you need to set your goals so you have a direction to head to, otherwise, any unstructured attempt at creating contacts and establishing a footing in your career will be unsuccessful.

Part of this is knowing your mission and intentions. What professions are in line with yours, which ones overlap, and which ones have nothing to do with what you’re doing or where you want to go? When you know these, you can make plans for conferences to attend, people to connect to, and make other strategic decisions.

Another important part of this art is to know yourself. You don’t have to be an extrovert to be successful at networking. If you know how to listen well, you’ll get a lot farther than a person who dominates the conversation and refuses to allow the other person to engage. Get to know your strengths and weaknesses and bring those into your networking events.

Tips to a Good Follow-Up Strategy

After you’ve rocked a meeting with a new contact, you want to keep the momentum going. How you follow up with them determines the traction in your beginning relationship. Go ahead and give them a day or so to get back into their daily routines while you document everything you remember about them, and then use these tips to follow-up and add water to your growing relationship:

●      Don’t wait too long or step in too soon to contact them. A day after the event is a good minimum. Waiting two or more days gives them time to forget your conversation.

●      Refer to your list while you’re following up. If you wrote those notes while the knowledge about your conversation was fresh in your mind, you can confidently move forward using the info they gave you as a jumping off point and a way to develop an angle for how you’ll follow up with them.

●      Send them an email or social media message. Make sure whatever you write is personalized and has a meaning behind it. It should also be short and concise. Most professionals receive a lot of emails and messages in a day. Yours needs to stand out and also demonstrate that you’re respectful of their busy schedule.

●      Don’t give up immediately. Send that first email, but if you don’t hear back from them, give them a call. A lot of times, people plan to respond and get busy. There may be lots of reasons why you didn’t get a response. Immediately giving up loses a potentially good contact.

Meeting an important contact could be an event that changes the course of your career, and your life. How you follow up after that meeting is completely up to you, but a strategic plan of action could be the difference between losing that growth opportunity and having a new contact that will end up being a catalyst to a huge life change.

Use Impactio to Maximize Your Networking

There are times when you will be the person trying to create contacts, and other times when others will come to you as the expert in your field. When you network well and already have a strategic follow-up plan, you can maximize your contacts to their fullest extent. Using Impactio’s community of scholars is another way to increase your impact and scholarly reputation.

Impactio’s scholastic platform was designed specifically for experts, so you know that anyone you connect with through this program is going to be beneficial in some way. Researchers have access to a vast networking community of peers. When you’re ready to maximize your scholarly reputation and boost your network, use Impactio to hone your follow-up strategy and connect with others like you.