Thursday, August 26, 2010

Take Acton #7: Manage those Connections

Now, more than ever, we have more connections than we know what to do with. It used to be that we would collect business cards and they would create such a great looking pile on our desk or in a shoe box. If we were really motivated, we actually got the contact information from each card either manually entered or scanned into whatever database we were using. If we were really on top of things we were using a database like ACT  or Goldmine  or some other CRM  that would help us manage all of our contacts by keeping track of all e-mails, meetings, phone calls, etc.

Now, we not only have the business cards from folks we meet at “live” networking events, but we have all of those contacts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Plaxo, etc. It is quite overwhelming. THEN, if you are a parent, you are on the mailing list along with 20-60 other parents for choir, lacrosse, soccer, girl scouts, etc. And although they are not “business” contacts, they are still folks that could potentially be in your database. Never under estimate the value of a contact. I hosted a workshop a year ago and invited some moms that I knew from my book club and kid’s sports. I hesitated because I didn’t know that they would even be interested. Three of the moms on my list showed up to the Goal Setting Workshop. They each had dreams that they wanted to work on and this was a great opportunity to test the waters. So I have decided to never make decisions for my contacts. If they don’t want to get my e-mail, they will let me know..

In an ideal world, if you were starting at zero and just beginning to build your LinkedIn and Facebook profiles and contact list, I would tell you to add each contact’s information to your excel or CRM software as you added a new contact. i.e. Bob Smith asks you to be a connection on LinkedIn, you accept and then you add his contact information to your database. Here is why you have your contacts in two places:

You can send private e-mails to your contacts on LinkedIn and Facebook but on FB you can only send to 20 at a time and you can’t BCC – you can only CC – so when someone responds to your email, everyone is copied and it is irritating to all. On LinkedIn, you can send to 50 at a time. You may have other options as a paid member but I haven’t checked that out. You can invite people to events and send updates via your “wall” or profile. However, when you have a database that you send e-mails to – for example a newsletter, you can monitor how many are opening, unsubscribing and they can reply to you privately rather than a group.

Facebook does have the ability to create lists. I have lists for family, close friends, parents, corporate folks, networking folks and 10 other groups including one called “I don’t know these people” Although this comes in handy when you want to set up your privacy settings, it doesn’t help with sending any kind of bulk messages because FB doesn’t let you send to more than 20 at a time and some of my lists have a couple hundred in them.

One solution is: if you have a Yahoo account, you can scoop up the e-mail addresses from your contacts in FB assuming their e-mails are public. It gets you the names and e-mails but then you have to resort.

Why all this fuss? Our contacts are the most valuable asset we have. They mean money in some cases or a future connection to people we can help or people who can help us (for jobs, recipes, volunteers, donors, clients, etc). So if you can find a way to manage the contacts, you are a super star. Ideally you would have a MASTER database that has every contact you know. You would create various categories to help with sorting your contacts. The Categories include the “group” they would belong to – some contact may belong to more than one group.

For example, you could have a group called Family, a group called Party, a group called Networking, etc. One person could be in all three groups. Your Uncle Bill would be in Family but since he owns a business, you may have him on the Networking list because you want to include him on your newsletter and future business events and then he is on the “Party” list because you want to make sure that he is always invited to your parties.

You will want to have a column/tab for how you met them, first name, last name, phone, e-mail, address, city, state, zip, male/female. Then if you have a more advanced CRM, you may include a notes section, follow up section, dates that you made contact, their birthday, anniversary, etc. The way to break down the list is endless. You want all these categories so that you can sort. For example, sometimes I host a woman-only workshop, so it would be great if I could send an e-mail to only and all of the women in my database. I can’t do that unless I have been categorizing them like this along the way.

Also – something to keep in mind is that LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and others OWN your information. So if for some reason you are booted off FB for spamming or something happens to FB – you could lose your contacts.

Overwhelmed? There are workshops and how-to’s on setting up your database and a woman I have known for about 6 years, Lori Feldman, is a master at databases. In fact she is an ACT guru and calls herself the Database Diva. Visit her site to see when her next workshop is or to have her help you.

Your Take Action step today is to enter those business cards into some kind of database, CRM or spreadsheet.

Happy Connecting and share your ideas on how you manage your contacts.

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