Maintaining Your Connections After a Conference

Who doesn’t love a good conference? You’ve likely come home with a notebook full of ideas, a backpack filled with great giveaways and a wallet full of business contacts you’ve met at the great event! While we can’t take the giveaways off of your hands or tell you what new tactic to start implementing in that notebook, we can give some guidance on how to maintain the connections you made. Here’s what you need to know to stay relevant and take your first impressions to the next level.

Get Organized

Hopefully, you’ve gathered business cards from all of the contacts you encountered. If not, you likely made notes about who to contact post-conference. You will want to be sure to have all of this information stored in one place with notes about each person. Describe the conversation you had with them while it is still fresh in your mind. Even a week from now, you may be getting some of your contacts confused when there’s not a face to put to the name. Think of this as your cheat sheet to build on until the next conference!

Get Social

If you aren’t on social media now, you are going to want to make sure you have an established account on the professional site LinkedIn. Here’s a great reference to get you started. Start looking up all of the contacts that you made and get connected!

Get Retrospective

Now that you have your social accounts established, it’s time to get posting about your conference experience. Hopefully, you were posting about the conference while in attendance, but days and weeks after the conference are still a great time for you to post. Even if you aren’t the world’s best writer, you can still write a post about what you learned and loved at the conference. Who was your favorite speaker? What are you planning on implementing first? We recommend having this written no more than two weeks after the event. Be sure to utilize the conference hashtag! Your contacts will see that you are invested in your industry beyond the conference walls.

Get Real

DO

Reach Out: Now is the time to reach out to the people you met at the conference. Grab your notes and personalize each email message that is sent. They have met a lot of people at the conference as well and a little refresher of your conversation is thoughtful and helpful. This can even be done over the phone!

Ask: If they are a strong contact or someone you want to collaborate with, don’t be afraid to simply ask them to meet in person to collaborate or to simply stay in touch.

DON’T

Hound Them: Give it a few days to a week to reach out to the contact. They’ve been gone from work and likely have a lot to get caught up on. Don’t make yourself another a nuisance. Reach out personally 1-2 times and if you do not get a response, let it be but stay active in your interaction with them on social media.

Be Fake: It doesn’t matter if they are the CEO or an entry-level employee, you need to be kind, respectful and yourself.

These are all ways to maximize the value of the conference throughout the year. To learn more helpful information about what we can do for you, visit our website today!