Reactivating Relationships Online

A good friend of mine who is starting to investigate LinkedIn as a connection tool asked me the other day if it’s worth including former colleagues who aren’t particularly relevant to her business. She’s made a shift in her consulting company to focus more on social enterprises, so she wondered if it was worth inviting into her online network old contacts who are still toiling away in the corporate world.

The answer is, “Absolutely!”

First of all, if you haven’t been in touch in a while, you really don’t know if someone is relevant to your current goals or not, so you shouldn’t make any assumptions. But here are six additional reasons why linking with former colleagues online is a smart move:

1) While they may not be relevant to you, they may know someone who is. We often forget that—even when we’re connecting one-on-one—the power of networking is in the other relationships that both parties can access through one another. Perhaps their future father-in-law is a senior executive at one of your target companies, or their best friend just received $20 million in venture capital to get more help to expand her product line.

2) They could be relevant right now to someone in your network. When we network, we’re not just networking for ourselves. Effective networkers are always on the lookout for ways they can help the people they know. A client of yours might be in need of a great copywriter, and the one you used to work with may be itching to jump to a smaller firm. Putting those two in touch will put you in good stead with both.

3) They could become more relevant to you in the near future. You never know what career changes people are considering or where they might be moving to next. That guy you knew in the IT department might be working on a start-up venture on the side that could be the perfect complement to the services you provide.

4) Connecting online is a low-pressure way to re-establish the relationship. LinkedIn and Facebook are less intrusive than traditional outreach tools like e-mail or phone. When you send someone an invitation to connect, you can (and should!) include a short note to re-establish the relationship, and they can acknowledge their desire to connect with you with one simple click. If they feel like replying back with their own short note, they can certainly do that, but they don’t need to.

5) You can keep up with each other unobtrusively. I spoke with a contact today who I haven’t seen in almost four years, but because we are connected on Facebook as well as on Twitter, and I update my status frequently, I’m able to stay on her radar screen and she’s up to speed on the major things I’m working on.

6) The connection is more permanent. People change jobs and e-mail addresses, but as long as you’re both active members of the service, you can reach out to one another any time. In effect, you’re connected forever.

So many of us spend the majority of our networking time trying to meet new people and expand our networks. While you should never stop adding new connections, the ones you’ve already made can be a rich resource. Extending your relationship online will allow you both to tap into each other when the need arises.

Liz Lynch is founder of the Center for Networking Excellence and author of Smart Networking: Attract a Following In Person and Online (McGraw-Hill, 2008). Connect with Liz on Twitter at @liz_lynch and get your free Smart Networking Toolkit at http://www.smartnetworking.com/.