Entrepreneurs Playground
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Stewart Sandham Premium Member Group moderatorThe company name is only visible to registered members.Group newsletter: What does connecting mean to you?
As promised, I am dedicating this newsletter to a thread that Darren started a few weeks ago.
https://www.xing.com/app/forum?op=showarticles;id=8470515
I thought this thread was very interesting and important for our activities in Xing. There were a lot of extremely well thought out and critical thoughts here, especially when dealing with people asking us to connect.
In this Newsletter, I am also including another EP challenge.
We all have contacts and wonder what they are good for. On my start page is a list called "What’s New in my Network." Amongst other things, it cheerily announces who in my network is now connected with whom. And a lot of people cry “WHO CARES?” What does it mean to you when someone is connected to someone else?
Who should you connect with? It depends entirely on what you do with your contacts! You can have a huge, useless list of people you never keep in touch with or you can have a small effective network of people with whom you regularly exchange ideas. (An appropriate size of course, depends on what type of business you have.)
One reason you have contacts is to contact them! If you have contacts that you never contact, are they contacts? Of course not!
Why did you decide to be connected to this person? To exchange information or ideas? To do business with them? Did you actually follow up on that? HOW MUCH BUSINESS ARE YOU MISSING OUT ON, JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T CONTACTED YOUR CONTACTS LATELY??? And if aren’t going to contact this person, do you really still want them on your contact list?
The challenge:
1. Contact your contacts!
I challenge you to send some sort of personal message to everyone on your contact list before the next newsletter in two weeks. It doesn't have to be long, maybe even just say hi. Copy / paste doesn’t count. Make it personal.
If you can’t do it, I’d say you have too many contacts! Or correct me if I'm wrong!
Let us know if you finish!https://www.xing.com/app/forum?op=showarticles;id=9230711
2. Purge your contact list
Were you honest with the challenge above? There are undoubtedly a number of people who you just couldn’t bother to write a message to... Make some sort of criteria for who you want on your list of contacts. Then delete the rest.
Criteria for your contact list:https://www.xing.com/app/forum?op=showarticles;id=9230680
Feeling too shy to delete a contact? Here's one way to do it tactfully:
before deleting a contact, send them a message saying that you were going through your contacts and have decided to keep only the people that you stay in regular contact with (this is YOUR challenge - don’t blame it on me!). If they want to stay in contact with you, then they should send you a note. Then give them a couple of days to respond. If they are interested in keeping in touch with you, by all means, keep them! If you don’t hear from them, you may as well delete them.
Other ways to tactfully delete a contact:https://www.xing.com/app/forum?op=showarticles;id=9230638
How to delete a contact:
From your “start page” click on >Address Book. There you’ll find business cards of all your contacts. To delete a contact, click on the symbol of the little orange man with a minus sign to the left of his head. The person will simply disappear from both of your contact lists.
Please feel free to start a new thread regarding your spring cleaning stories.
Looking forward to some interesting postings in the next few weeks!
Stewart
http://www.sandham-design.eu
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This newsletter has been written by moderator Stewart Sandham of the group "Entrepreneurs Playground".
Visit the group here:http://www.xing.com/net/ep/
Click here to cancel your newsletter subscription:http://www.xing.com/app/network?op=newslettercancel&name...
- 14 Apr 2008, 10:04 pm
