The Power of Follow-Up: How to Maintain and Nurture Your Network for Long-Term Success
If you approach it in the right way, building an effective business network can help you cultivate lasting relationships, enhance your credibility and grow your business.
But a lot of small business owners don’t find networking easy.
Have you ever come back from an industry event with a dozen business cards and a real sense of positivity about the conversations you’ve had — only to get back to the demands of ‘business as usual’ and struggle to prioritise getting in touch with the connections you’ve made?
You’re not alone. It’s the reality for a lot of small business owners.
But that’s where the power of an effective follow-up process comes in. And that’s what we’re going to look at in this post.
We’ll start by discussing the two things that often prevent effective follow-ups, and then look at some practical tips for the short-term follow ups after a networking event, and some helpful hints for nurturing your network in the long term.
What often prevents effective follow-ups?
In the world of networking, it’s often the long game that pays off.
It’s not realistic to expect success from turning up at one event, with the people you meet immediately sending business your way!
The initial connections you make are actually only a small part of your success with networking. The things that help you really use networking to its best advantage are the follow-up and nurturing.
But these are often seen as less important and are often overlooked or rushed.
From my experience, I believe there are two main reasons that makes the follow-up from networking less effective than it should be for many small businesses:
- It simply doesn’t get done when you return to a busy office.
- It’s seen as a one-off ‘task to be done’ rather than an ongoing process to embrace.
Let’s tackle each one separately.
Follow-ups not getting done?
If this first reason resonates with you, we’ve all been there — myself included!
It’s funny how often I seem to agree to an industry event two months in advance, start really looking forward to it…and then the week it’s being held, it feels like I’m playing ‘whack-a-mole’ in the business with a hundred different things cropping up. I’ll still go to the event, have a great time, meet some amazing people, but when I get back I feel like I’m playing ‘catch up’ for the time I’ve spent away from the office. My mind isn’t immediately on the follow up. And that’s completely natural.
Implementing an effective follow-up process is something I’ve really had to train myself and hold myself accountable for. It’s really important, as here’s the kicker…if you don’t honour the follow ups you say you’ll make at an event, it can actually negatively impact your perceived credibility.
Let’s turn the tables on it a little bit to illustrate.
You get talking to someone at a networking event and they are full of enthusiasm about your business. They say “you’re interested in learning more about AI? I know a great consultant who can help you understand and implement it. If you want, I’m happy to make some introductions?”. You nod enthusiastically, say thank-you, hand them your business card, and then…nothing.
The reality is, they are probably in the same boat as most of us and are just super busy. It’s nothing personal. But what perception would you have of that person? Maybe that they are ‘all talk’? Or don’t follow-through on things they say they’ll do?
Don’t be this person! Always honour the follow ups you say you’ll make.
Follow-ups being seen as a ‘task’ rather than a value-add process
The root cause of this also stems from being busy, where you make the follow-ups, but it’s seen as ‘something to get done’ rather than an opportunity to start building meaningful relationships and demonstrate your value.
Let’s say you went to a networking event and came back with 7 business cards after some great conversations.
You’re busy, you’re rushing, but know that follow-ups are important for your credibility and for the success of networking.
So you package it up as a ‘task’ rather than a process, and send 7 rather generic emails along the lines of:
“Hi, it was great to meet you at the event yesterday.
Your business sounds really exciting. If you ever need any support in (your area of expertise) think we’d work really well together! We’ve got more info on our website (www.example.com)
Let me know if you’re heading to the next event, it would be great to catch up some more”.
You hit send on seven emails. Job done. Follow ups sent. Super productive.
Except…it’s a closed email. It puts the onus on them to get back in touch with you for anything to happen, and it doesn’t add much value.
What I find to be far more effective is to personalise the follow-up emails based on the specific conversations I’ve had with someone at an event, and try to add some value based on the opportunities or issues they mentioned.
To illustrate:
“Hi (name) it was great to meet you at (the event).
Did you make it to that (final talk) you were hoping to get to?
After we chatted I went to a seminar on (x) which was really useful. The slides were shared online afterwards (www.linktoslides.com) — they are worth looking through if you’re interested in the topic!
When we were chatting, you mentioned you were potentially looking at bringing your Google Ads and Meta advertising in-house.
If you’re looking at upskilling your internal team, there’s some great training and accreditations that are available on:
I’d be happy to chat through the different accreditation programmes in more detail if that would be helpful — and you know where I am if you need interim support on the social media side of things! 🙂
Are you happy if I add you as a contact on LinkedIn?”.
It takes more time. And you need to be able to recall your conversations effectively (this is where I find my notes app on my phone really helpful!).
But it’s a far better way to demonstrate value and show that you’re genuinely interested in helping and building a mutually beneficial long term relationship with the people you’ve met.
In The Short Term: Tips For Following Up After Networking
If you’re looking for some quick tips on how to follow up in the days following a networking event, these tips will put you steps ahead of most people!
Time it right!
My personal opinion is that sending an immediate follow-up on the day of the event looks a little over-eager — even if you’ve got a bit of time on the train journey back! I’d generally look to send my follow-up emails around 1–2 days after I’ve first connected with someone. This is usually recent enough that they can still remember you, but not so quick that you look over-keen!
Personalise your message
This is really important so people don’t feel like they are receiving a ‘cookie cutter’ message. An absolute necessity is including their name — but one of the things I tend to do is mention one of the topics we’ve discussed, or reference something they said they were going to in an evening. It just shows you’ve been actively listening and makes a good impression.
Make sure you offer something of value
This could be as simple as sharing a relevant article around a topic you discussed, a link to some valuable resources based on a topic they showed interest in, or even offering to introduce them to a helpful contact.
Try to end your message with a way to keep the conversation going.
This could be an open ended question about a relevant topic, or asking if it’s okay to connect on LinkedIn. Some best practice guides suggest asking if there’s a good time for a follow up call — but I’d err on the side of caution with that. For me it’s a bit too much too soon. But use your own judgement. If a call would provide mutual benefit, there’s a clear reason for it and you got a good vibe from the initial meeting — it might be right to suggest it.
In The Mid-Long Term: Tips For Nurturing Your Network
Sometimes you strike gold, the stars align and you make a mutually beneficial business relationship after meeting someone once and sending a single follow-up email
But most of the time, the contacts you meet from networking take a little bit of nurturing to help them develop into powerful relationships.
This is why you need to look at effective ways to nurture your network in the long term, and where the following tips can be useful:
Set aside time each day for network nurturing
Almost everyone I speak to that works in a small business is stretched for time. It’s often not possible to complete your full to-do-list in a working day…and it’s usually the ‘non urgent’ things like nurturing your network that take a back seat.
So my tip to make sure you take the time to nurture your network is to carve out some time early in your day to focus on this task. Maybe before everyone arrives in the office or your emails start coming in thick and fast. Just 20 minutes a day soon adds up and can reap great rewards.
Quality over quantity
Let’s say you’re able to set aside 20 minutes per day to nurture your network. This isn’t going to be enough time to engage with 100 people consistently.
Be selective about the contacts you’ve met that you see the most beneficial mutual relationship forming with. And also think about personal vs professional motivations, and how that fits with your objectives for networking.
For example, there may be a couple of people you’ve met at networking that you really get on with personally — but there isn’t great alignment between your two businesses. It’s your call whether you want to continue to invest your time in nurturing that relationship. It’s not ‘wrong’ by any stretch of the imagination — if your motivation for networking is just to meet great people, nurture away! And you never know where the next unexpected lead might come from…
But if you are stretched for time and your motivation for networking is to grow your business, you might want to think about investing more in nurturing connections where there is more likely to be mutual business benefit.
Post on LinkedIn
If part of your initial follow-up process is to ask if it’s okay to connect on LinkedIn, 8 times out of 10 the answer will be ‘yes’. By connecting on LinkedIn, you’re more likely to see each other’s posts in your feed.
This is where having an engaging LinkedIn profile and regularly posting valuable content can be helpful. By seeing regular posts from you, your connected contacts are more likely to keep you front of mind for opportunities.
Engage with others LinkedIn posts
In addition to posting yourself on Linkedin, you might want to consider engaging with the content posted by people you want to nurture relationships with. You’re able to set up notifications from people that are important to you in your network, so you never miss a message!
But try where you can to add value in the comments you make. There’s only so many times you can say “Nice post!” or “Agree with this” before people think you have no opinions of your own!
Share content and resources you think would be valuable.
If you know that a contact in your network is interested in a particular topic, if you ever come across a valuable resource — consider sharing it with them. Try not to second guess yourself into thinking ‘they’ve probably already seen this’ — in most cases they will appreciate the effort.
Ask about attendance at other networking events
If there are certain people you’d love to catch up with again in person, ask them if they are going to the next networking event that you’re attending. It doesn’t take too much effort, and they might not even be aware that the event is happening — so you might be doing them a huge favour!
Looking for support and advice around networking?
I’m not going to misrepresent anything — I wouldn’t consider myself a networking coach or mentor and it’s not a formal service that I offer — but I do know one if you’d like an introduction!
However…I have done a lot of networking over the past few years, and have built processes and approaches that work for me, which I’m happy to share with anyone!
Also I offer a follow up package to help you master it!
