Improving and developing your professional network
As we’re approaching the end of the year and looking forward to the New Year (really, really hoping that 2021 will be much more of a positive one!), I thought I would share with you some ideas on improving and developing your professional network.
The Christmas break is a great time to put a little focus on your networking and develop a strategy for the new year. Even if you’re currently in a role and not actively looking to move onto something else, it’s still good practice to keep up to date with some professional network ‘house-keeping’.
Prioritise who in your network you want to keep in touch with
My suggestion is to group your connections into categories, for example: recruiters, consultants, potential clients and employers, influential colleagues, and friends. Then figure out how best to allocate your attention - there may also be people you keep in touch with for no other reason than you enjoy their company or have similar interests!
Show your interest
Think about the different tools in your arsenal to stay in touch – email, phone calls, coffee dates, social gatherings (when restrictions allow!) and sharing content – and how you can best use these to nurture your relationships. The key to maintaining a professional network is to ‘be in the orbit’ of the people you’re trying to cultivate so that, if they require your assistance at some stage down the road (or visa versa), you will be front of mind. Perhaps you have seen some news or read a useful article that a former colleague/employer might enjoy, or you recently connected with a mutual contact. Although, bear in mind that you should avoid only contacting your connections in a time of need!
Be strategic with social media
These days you can easily stay connected to people from your past forever, but be cautious that an over-reliance on social media to maintain your professional network can be detrimental, just like a phone call is not the same as chatting in person. You can, however, really use social media to your advantage. You might, for instance, share relevant posts with your contacts on Twitter, repost content they’ve created on LinkedIn, or re-tweet blogs and articles they’ve highlighted. However, sometimes it’s best to take the conversation off-line; if you notice that a friend was just promoted or had some other success, celebrate by giving them a call (from time to time, it can be nice just to hear someone’s voice!) or sending a little note of congratulations.
Don’t forget to take some time to create your own content or share your own views too. LinkedIn and Twitter are the perfect platform to share your top tips, talk about topics you’re interested in and lend your support to social issues. These platforms will really help to bring your ‘personal brand’ to life, and help you connect with those people and organisations with similar perspectives.
Offer to help
Another way to remain in good standing with your contacts is to look for ways you can be helpful to them. Perhaps a contact is struggling to help their daughter find a work experience placement and you know a good company that is advertising places – offer to make a connection. Perhaps a former colleague mentions they are thinking of trying out a new piece of comms software and you have a connection you could put them in touch with.
Share your successes but don’t go on
Although it’s good for your network to know about your professional successes and promotions, you don’t want to gain a reputation as a bragger! A milder form of self-promotion is to simply inform your network about what you have been up to in a way that provides information that they may not have access to. Also do report on your team’s successes and team member achievements.
Review your network from time to time
Every six months or so, I recommend doing an ‘audit’ of your connections. Look at your list of contacts and ask, ‘is it still accurate? Who should I add? Who has moved on into new roles?’ and introduce people you’ve just met to others in your network, which gives you an opportunity to learn more about the both of them.
I hope you enjoy a relaxing break over the Christmas period, and manage to find a little time to develop your networking strategy in between the mince pies and Netflix! Here’s to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2021 – we look forward to working with you all.
Published by Tanya