This post is as much about asking for advice as giving. I’ll give you what I’ve got (so far), but sincerely hope to hear from people who are much smarter than I am about this so we can all learn something… My problem? I’m addicted to connecting with people. As far as I know, there is no 12-step program for this and as far as addictions go, I guess it’s pretty tame. However, my quandary is, after meeting hundreds of new people last year, what do I do with all of this information?
Social media facilitates quicker and more plentiful networking opportunities than were ever available before. In my job, I advise businesses on how to use social media tools to promote their businesses. I feel responsible for delving into this matter so I can advise them better on what to do when a social media campaign start working very, very well. The following are a few tools I’ve come up with. Please let me know if you have better ideas on how to manage data. Thanks in advance!
I use ACT! by Sage (2009 version) as my contact management database. I consider this the home base for my database. This is a good “tickler” file and I am able to sync it with Peachtree accounting software which is helpful so I avoid double entry when a prospect becomes a billable client. Just a few clicks and they can be exported from ACT! into Peachtree. (It works the opposite way too.) I am interested in what I see in the ACT! 2010 version–there are built-in connections that allow you to see information about a contact’s LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profiles. Seems very handy–may need to pay for the upgrade to give this a whirl…
I use Microsoft Outlook 2007 for most of my business email. I just added a tool called xobni that allows me to see social media information about people I email. I just downloaded the free version today–so far, I like what I see. How will I use this tool? I’ll give you an example. Sorting through email this morning, I saw an email newsletter from Lorraine Ball, a woman I met at the Social Media Summit in Indianapolis on December 30th organized by Amy Stark. Lorraine and I exchanged business cards; she was on the “ball” enough to add me to her email newsletter list. I read one of her last posts, a short segment with Robby Slaughter, another person I met at aforementioned event. Robby’s advice was good and Lorraine sent it to me, so I want to include this woman in my LinkedIn network. I was able to send Lorraine a request to connect on LinkedIn directly from my email. We’ll see if she accepts…
Another tool I began using recently is the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar. This has been very helpful so far. It has some of the same features as xobni, but does some different things for me as well. Kristi Daeda wrote a nice post on how to use this, so I’ll just borrow a quote from her:
Lastly, when you’re reading an email, in the top right corner you’ll see a new icon:
When you hover over that icon, you can see info about the email sender on LinkedIn, including their number of connections, recommendations, and their LinkedIn status.
Very convenient to have this information all in one place. My favorite feature with this add-on, however, has got to be the Grab Button. It saves me a lot of time– I can highlight address/contact information in an email, hit the button, and have the information automatically populate a new contact. Pretty cool. These contacts are now saved in my Outlook Contact database where I can now export them to ACT! if I want to.
More to come in future posts…
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