In his book “never eat alone – and other secrets to success, one relationship at a time.” Keith Ferrazzi mentions that he pings constantly. What is pinging?
I know pinging from a submarine, “a high-pitched or ultrasonic sound whose echoes provide information about nearby objects and vessels”. Then there is a ping for a network, “which a remote host is expected to echo, thus indicating its presence.”
When you had/have a BlackBerry you may know “ping” as a free chat function with other BlackBerry phones.
Pinging as a method to keep in touch with your contacts was coined by Keith Ferrazzi:
“It’s a quick, casual greeting, and it can be done in any number of creative ways. It helps you to stay in touch with more people than you can imagine.”
Pinging can really help the business coach to build better connections.
My personal experience with sending short messages is that it works.
People like it that you have a personal response. They love it when you really talk to them.
I like to post short personalized birthday messages on Facebook.
And people really like it as you can see in this image (Dutch)
She responds with “Thank you Erno, very thoughtful!”
A friend of mine just recently endorsed a skill on my LinkedIn profile.
Since I had not spoken with her for a while. I sent her a short thank you message. This was her reply:
Erno,
What a pleasant surprise. a personal email!
….
How are you?
When you unsubscribe from my weekly emails
you can add a comment why you no longer want to receive my emails.
When you do, often I will reply with a short message.
When Harmke unsubscribed she added a comment. Her inbox was filled with newsletters and she needed to take action. She was on my email list for almost 3 years.
So I sent her a short message thanking her for following my emails for these years. And this is the message she returned:
Hello Erno,
great, you are the first person that responds personally, I almost have regrets about unsubscribing 😉 We know how to reach each other, online or offline at an event,
Good luck,
(translated from Dutch)
How is this pinging related to the latest changes in Linked?
Everything. LinkedIn added some great features on a personal profile that you can use for your contacts.
Let’s take a look at these new features. These features are so new, that it is possible you do not have these yet. Don’t worry you will get them too.
Do you see the change? Check the profile of Albert voor ‘t Hekke.
Did you spot it? See that link just next to “Contact info” => “Relationship”
This is all about your relationship with your contact. Now you can add some personal information to their profile that is only visible to you.
Let’s take the tour for the new LinkedIn features
First stop: You can add personal notes about your contact.
Second stop: your conversations with this contact will appear here once you have added a contact source.
Third and last stop on this tour: find more contact and synchronize information.
Wow, it is now a lot easier to find connections in LinkedIn with the address book of your online email solution, iPhone address book, Outlook contact, Mac Address Book contacts and Yahoo! Contacts.
You can also synchronize your notes on Evernote with your contacts and meet connections when you are on a trip. You can check who lives in the area.
One of the most beautiful new features is this one.
You can now add “Reminders” for your contact. A birthday call. A short message after a meeting. With this option LinkedIn begins to look like a CRM, a Contact Relationship Management solution.
Do you want to remember who introduced you and where you met?
Just add this information to your contact. When the introducer is also on LinkedIn you can add his/her name and you will see the contact. This is really helpful for me, I tend to forget this kind of information and I love working with LinkedIn.
To make your LinkedIn even more a CRM solution you can add tags.
You can create new tags. Is it a client? A lead? What kind of work did you do together.
In this example I added the tag “LinkedIn Makeover”, because that is what I did for Albert.
Let’s get back to finding new contacts in our address book
You saw this option in the tour but it is actually not in the “Relationship” tab for the connection.
It is a separate section in LinkedIn that may take you a while before you find it again. Okay, it cost me some time to find it.
When you follow these 2 steps you come to the section:
You can also use this link https://www.linkedin.com/contacts/manage_sources/.
Use this feature to find and connect with people that you already had contact with via email.
You can find Keith’s interesting book here Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time
Weekly video
Do you want better connections that will help you to build a great business?
Keep in touch with your contacts by pinging constantly
Use these new LinkedIn features to ping your connections.
Watch the video to learn more about these features.
Want to see more videos like this? Subscribe to this Youtube channel No1CoachingBusiness.tv
Just click the Youtube button below and you will get these tips automatically.
How do you keep contact with your connections?
Is LinkedIn important for you on this?
Will you use these new LinkedIn features?
Share it in the comments below.
I love to hear from you.
