Make Twitter Your Networking Essential

Pre-networking event advice usually consists of making sure you've got enough business cards with you. Now I love business cards, especially if they look (and feel) good, but once you hand your's over to the person you've just been networking with, what really is their 'shelf life'? Is it just until they hit the bottom of the other person's bag?

By all means take business cards with you but don't just rely on them alone. A great tool for making (lasting) connections when networking is Twitter. If I've been chatting to someone who I really want to be able to keep in touch with, I'll usually round off the conversation by asking "are you on Twitter?". Most events have got some form of free WiFi so make the most of it and 'follow' them there and then. Hopefully, they'll have their notifications switched on and will 'follow' you straight back. Anyone who I've ever asked has been only too happy to oblige if they are on there, with most of them returning the favour.

Through making connections on Twitter, it's easy to "remind" people you're there by simply 'retweeting' them or replying to something they've tweeted. With an e-mail you've actually got to have something worth saying before you can send them one. Then the person has to take the time to read it and respond - if you're lucky. Twitter's brief and doesn't take up a lot of time. Tweets were obviously designed with only 140 characters for  reason!

If you've got LinkedIn, great, but I wouldn't recommend using that over Twitter when face-to-face networking. You can always go and look someone up on there afterwards. Chances are, if you add someone on LinkedIn, you'll become one of their 500+ connections and end up back at the e-mail hitch again because essentially you're just giving them access to an online version of your CV. Twitter is much more interactive and sociable.

I remember having a look back once to my first ever tweet, it read something along the lines of; I'm not sure why I've got Twitter but we'll see how it goes. Now I know exactly why I've got Twitter! Thanks to the people I've met since, I now wouldn't be without it. Looking through my Twitter now, most of the people I'm following/are following me (minus companies) are people I've met through events and have 'networked' with and it's been really valuable for keeping in touch with many of them.

Next time you go somewhere where you'll be networking with people, take your business cards but don't forget to have your Twitter account to hand as well.