You are an active user of most of the popular online networks and have configured your networks exactly the way you want.
By using tools as Tweetdeck or Ping you can send messages to your entire network in just one click. Imagine sending this message to your network : “Tonight I’ll be at the M4M Networking event at Ter Elst congress center in Edegem. Looking forward to a great guestspeaker”.
This message will be visible as your status message on all networks you are using.
On one of these networks, e.g. Facebook, someone is commenting to this status message : “Long time since I saw you. I might have a possible client for you. Can we meet in the bar of the congress center an hour before your event ?”.
If you missed this comment, you have a problem !
The contact that wanted to refer this client to you won’t try this again if you don’t react. It is very important to configure your networks to bring important messages to you as fast as possible (e.g. an email on your Blackberry or iPhone). Non urgent messages should be avoided.
To make it simple :
- Comments to status updates might be important or at least interesting. You want to see these as fast as possible.
- Notifications of new messages in forums or groups you are following are less important. You don’t need to see these as fast as possible, you can read them when you have time to spare.
Configuring your notifications correctly can save you a lot of time and will make you use your emails more efficient.
This is a very simple networking tip, but often I get very enthusiastic responses from people who ask themselves why they haven’t done this before.
