Maintaining contact with your LinkedIn Contacts

A while back a contact of mine on LinkedIn sent out an email updating his network on ways to stay in touch with him.  I thought it seemed like a nice way of keeping in touch with a large group of people so I decided to do something similar.

It was a great move and now I'm suggesting you do the same!

I have a LinkedIn network of around 5000 contacts.  Yes, I know lots of these people but I certainly don't know all 5000 personally.  Even if I tried really really hard I couldn't keep in touch with them individually.

So what I did was to put together an email with the purpose of:

a) reminding people we shared a network

b) updating them on what I do

c) suggesting ways they can help me

d) giving them all the different ways they can maintain contact with me

AND

e) yes the most important one - ASKING how I can help them!

Despite the fact that you are (probably) a recruiter and I'm a supplier I think you can do exactly the same thing.  Don't worry if you have a mix of "clients" and "candidates".  You can make sure the message you send is relevant to them all.    I'd suggest you:

a) remind them you share a network

b) update them on what you do (where your area of specialism is; maybe pick out a few details from relevant recent assignments)

c) suggest how they can refer colleagues, friends, etc to you for career or business expansion advice

d) give them details of your Twitter ID, Facebook group page, etc (as well as mobile phone number if you like to share that)

AND

e) Ask how you can help them.  Do they need interview advice, tips for psychometric testing, etc (find some web resources to point them towards)?  Do they want to know what you are hearing from others in their sector, can you help with salary benchmarking, etc.

It only took me twenty minutes to write the email (send me a note if you want to see the email I wrote) and about another twenty to send it (the technical bit comes in a minute) but I did have to be sure I'd have the time to respond to EVERYONE who responded to me.

I did get a pretty decent response.  Lots of emails from people telling me they liked the idea and they would be doing something similar as well as a few questions I could quickly answer.  I got a couple of business leads and re-formed some relationships with potential.  I got only one negative response; from someone who told me with a large network (10,000 +) they didn't have time to read emails like mine and would I un-connect from them!  Obviously someone who didn't get the concept of networking at all!

The technical bit (which was kindly provided to me by Mark Williams of (aka Mr LinkedIn) who is an Independent LinkedIn Trainer (He can be contacted at mark@etn-training.co.uk or via www.link2mark.co.uk)

There are two ways to send messages to your connections;

A)    Download their email addresses into a spreadsheet. This is a pretty straightforward process as follows;

1.    Click on "Contacts" at the top of the page. 

2.     Click on the "Export Connections" link in the bottom right area of the "My Connections" page.

3.     Leave the "Export To" field as it is defaulted.

4.     Enter the text you see in the Security image field (if prompted).

5.    Click on the "Export" button. The name of the document saved will be called "linkedin connection export....".

This will include all the email addresses allowing you to copy them and send an email to all (if you are doing this ensure you bcc them so they don't all get each others' email addresses).

B) Send messages to up to 50 connections at a time through LinkedIn (this will also be sent as an email).

This is my preferred method for the following reasons;

· Any message received within LinkedIn contains a direct link to your profile and this allows the receiver to see who you are.

· Messages are less likely to get lost amongst the masses of email spam that people receive from unknown sources.

· Messages can be more targeted by effective use of tagging

It may seem to be a downside to only be able to send 50 at once but I actually think it can encourage you to write a more targeted message and this in turn allows you to contact them more often (there are only so many ‘generic’ messages you can send!)

The key to this is tagging each connection correctly when you first connect. You can easily retrospectively tag your untagged connections by editing tags on multiple connections. All connections are given a default tag by LinkedIn (based on the reason for the connection) but you can create your own tags as well. i.e. Candidate (interim), Candidate (perm) Client (line) Client (HR), Current client, Target client etc or by other things such as industry sector or role. Connections can also have multiple tags ie client (HR) and Current client.

This video gives a clear explanation on how this useful feature works http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZFKR2ltffE

Once contacts are tagged you can then use the tagging to select specific groups to send messages to that are relevant to them.

The issue with both these methods is to avoid being seen as a spammer, any message that is unrequested and unexpected is officially a form of spam so the more relevant you can make the message the better.

Comments

[Justin Culver]

Great Blog Louise.
Nice to keep in touch
Best wishes
Justin Culver
Maven Training SE1

[Henk van der Duim]

Hi Louise,
Great post and a great way to keep in touch.
Best Regards,
Henk van der Duim
Ultranex