Strengthen Relationships with Social Media Connections

What is your approach to meeting in person with people you are connected with on LinkedIn or other social media sites?

Do you reach out to them one by one and set up a face to face appointment?

Do you invite a group of connections to an informal networking event?

Recently a friend of mine decided to invite 80 of her connections on LinkedIn to an informal networking event.  Even though she was at least loosely associated with most of these people, only 2 of the 80 invitees wrote back they were coming.

She cancelled the event.

We talked afterwards about why there was such a low response to this networking opportunity. There are likely a number of reasons that could have contributed to this low response. Here are few that come to mind:

• Undesirable time of day or day of the week
• Inconvenient location of the event
• No specific purpose listed for the event
• Only one invite sent and no reminders
• Event only sent via LinkedIn and not via any other mechanisms

Naturally the person who set up this event was disappointed and asked me what was the point of being on LinkedIn if so few people were willing to come to her event.

We discussed that for her, it might be more effective to reach out to key people – folks who could potentially be likely to refer business to her – and set up one-on-one visits with them.

Where would LinkedIn come in then?

What I have observed is that when I stay in touch with these kinds of folks via LinkedIn, I am more apt to have a better chance of them saying “yes” when I invite them to meet in person.

For me, one-on-one visits for 45-60 minutes are very productive, with the reinforcements of commenting of their posts on LinkedIn every now and then before and after we meet. If the person lives out of the area, a phone call can also serve this same purpose.

The referrals may not start pouring in right away, but the likelihood of them happening eventually has increased.

Now it’s your turn.

What ways have you used to build your relationships with folks you know just a bit and want to know better?

Have you hosted a face to face networking session and targeted people you know via LinkedIn? What was your response?

Do you meet in person or over the phone with these people?

Your ideas are most welcome.

Joyce Feustel, Founder of Boomers’ Social Media Tutor, helps people relatively new to social media to become more effective and comfortable in their use of this medium.  Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com