In my last blog I wrote about how to build a powerful personal network. I'm guessing you now know who your most powerful contacts are, so how do you go about keeping them, and benefiting from their special personal traits?
You probably don't need reminding that relationships only exist when something happens between people. So if your key contacts are not necessarily people you see every day, how do you maintain a useful contact without artificially creating conversations.
It is really easy.
First of all, don't forget these people are the sort you will probably enjoy contact with or certainly benefit from, so time invested will reap a return almost immediately. So how do you make best use of your own valuable time on your network?
Get Your Five A Day
There are probably about twenty or thirty key people in your powerful network. Aim to have some sort of contact with five of them each day. That way you will probably be able to keep in touch with all of them each week.
Sounds a lot? It shouldn't because contact can be anything from a phone call to a two line email.
The point is that by the simplest of contacts they know you were thinking of them in some useful context.
I Saw This And Thought Of You
Remember the Post Office advertisement with the strap line 'I saw this and thought of you'? In the ad someone was surprised and delighted by a card or letter in the post from a friend (or contact) who had thought of them - a really effective campaign based on the simple pleasure of knowing someone was thinking about you.
Next time you come across an interesting on-line article, news story or piece of research, pause for a moment and ask yourself 'who else would be interested in this?' if the answer is someone in your powerful network, send it them!
Simple.
Share the Social Media Love
Social media can be a curse or a blessing. If you can resist the time-thief temptations of Facebook games (Note: there are also many other equally good ways of wasting your time on-line) social media can make the job of showing your contacts you are interested in them and like their work a simple one.
Your contacts probably have similar interests as you - do they have blogs? Or do they use Twitter or Digg? You can invest time effectively by keeping up to date with their work, but also making sure they know you value their opinions by commenting on blogs, re-tweeting their work or using 'like' functions on Digg or Facebook.
Told you it was easy.
Finally you might be at the start of a project where you need the help of your power network contacts to get your idea out there. My advice is to start early by arousing their interest - ask their opinion, let them engage with your ideas, they won't be able to help themselves once they get interested, it's in their nature (remember why you identified them as powerful people in your network?). To use an old-fashioned phrase, court them, they will repay you.
One final thing - the idea of networking is not manipulation and exploitation, people soon see through that. You are good at what you do so be prepared to share and be a part of someone else's powerful network. Don't make networking all for your benefit - people who court you might have less to give in return but the nature of networks is that ideas, power and influence circulates for good.
Be a generous networker.
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