Does Staying-In-Touch Work? - 2

2011/06/03 11:18 Mailed Goddamn.pdf //

2011/08/10 11:14 mailed Lawyers.pdf //

2011/10/12 08:09 mailed Excel.pdf //

2011/10/13 15:39 I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. //

Does Staying-In-Touch Work?

You Betcha!

The four entries above are taken from the memo/comments field of a single contacts-database record.

In June I mailed a one-sheet 2-page flyer with an article I’ve written (about Goals, Objectives and so on)

Two months later I mailed another flyer, this one about using The Prospector to generate more revenue from existing clients.

While a third flyer was winging its way out, my contact sent me an unsolicited invitation to join his network.

Is it possible that two flyers (the third crossed in the mail) made contact?

Does Staying-In-Touch Work?

You Betcha!

There is a bonus here: If my objective was to “touch” this contact once every two months, I can now send an eMail and advance the follow-up date by two months; that is, my response to his LinkedIn invitation surely counts as “Keeping my name in front of him”.

Talk to Me!

Staying Ahead of the Avalanche - 4

My first week of “slack time”, but not really slack. I now have 377 contacts on my list. Two were due for processing today – instances where The Prospector alerted me to a promotion.

Those done I check the “follow-up due today”, and find none.

Makes sense. These past few weeks I’ve strenuously “touched” every contact and set their follow-up date to be 2 months ahead.

Now I have a sense of foreboding: Is this the calm before the storm?

I decide to check the distribution of my follow-up dates in an Excel pivot table:

weeks	Total
-38	1
-30	2
-28	1
-27	1
-25	1
-18	1
-14	1
-12	1
-11	1
-9	1
-8	1
-5	2
-1	2
0	31
1	18
2	22
3	35
4	20
5	7
6	13
8	2
9	39
10	81
11	59
12	29
13	5
Total	377

The average number of follow-ups per week starting at today (week zero) is 27. That means if I “touch” 27 contacts per week, I’ll stay on top of things.

The follow-ups prior to this week need attention. Are they inactive records? Did they slip through the net?

Given that every day or so I receive an “immediate” update from The Prospector, I should contemplate a goal of 30 contacts per week from now on. That would be 6 envelopes, emails or phone calls per day Monday through Friday.

Talk to Me!

Social Networking Automated!

I am feeling quite pleased with myself.

I have automated a large part of getting my social networking up to date.

Imagine if you will a database of contacts – about 350 companies and the same number of people.

That’s 700 contacts.

I’d like to (LinkedIn) connect with each of them and I’d like to (Twitter) follow them.

My proof-of-concept application - “Follow” - will work its way through my contacts database a half-dozen (or a dozen!) records at a time and determine the appropriate LinkedIn page for each contact, from which I can click on a button to follow them on Twitter, or click on a button to ask to be connected on LinkedIn.

I could automate that last part, but I’d rather retain some control over the timing.

The proof-of-concept takes a self-delimited string of names (,Shane Schick, Chris Greaves, David Webb, Cathy Nesbitt, Mona Albano, Brendon Cowans, Karen Granville Carole St. Laurent) and throws up a tab for each LinkedIn profile in my web browser.

Neat!

You can watch the video directly from My Videos Page (item #59) or via YouTube .

Talk to Me !

• LF> Very cool. What if my contact manager isn't in Word? Can it read an Excel file or a .CSV?

Yes it can.

My contact manager isn't in Word either; it's an Access database.

The application (well, proof-of-concept, strictly speaking) is written in Word/VBA which can "talk" with Access, Excel etc.

I have a Word/VBA database interface that communicates with just about everything including dBaseIII files and Act!(v6) databases.

Just so you know, I ran the p-o-c from just a character string:

Dim strPeople As String
strPeople = ""
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Shane Schick"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Chris Greaves"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "David Webb"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Cathy Nesbitt"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Mona Albano"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Brendon Cowans"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Karen Granville"
strPeople = strPeople & vbTab & "Carole St. Laurent"
While Len(strPeople) > 0
Dim strPerson As String
strPerson = strsplitat(strPeople, vbTab)
If Len(strPerson) > 0 Then
Call LocatePerson(strPerson, ie, os)
Else
End If
Wend

Since I already know how to hook up Word to an Access MDB I didn't waste time doing that.

I wanted to prove that, given a series of personal (or corporate business) names I could throw up, in a manner of speaking, a series of tabs, one for each person.

• FL> Just so I'm clear... one could feed in a list of company names and your tool, either as-is or with tweaks, would go out to LinkedIn and build a database of relevant LinkedIn contact info for each employee?

The answer is always ...

Yes.

This proof-of-concept level accepts a self-delimiting string (",Shane Schick, Chris Greaves, David Webb, Cathy Nesbitt, Mona Albano, Brendon Cowans, Karen Granville, Carole St. Laurent") and process it to the point of raising the LinkedIn profile page(s) in front of you.

I am pretty sure I have the skills to automate the follow-on stage, e.g. "Follow this person on Twitter", "Ask for a connection" - so why do it if I already know I can do it.

A more practical concern is that if I automate that end of it, I could blindly be following "Dave Web", the drunken downhill skier from Birmingham UK, instead of the Dave Webb I know, editor at itWorld.CA.

And therein lies a clue: I think that LinkedIn is being smart, and building the list by distance-from-M9C 2A6, which works for me, because most of my business relationships are face-to-face, local to YYZ. You, with your world-wide following/clientele, may find that the hits aren't quite so accurate. It's significant that the 8 I tested all came out 100% accurate.

I haven't tried it, yet, with businesses. Of course to "Follow.dot", they are just strings; it depends on how smart LinkedIn is.

The database end is also trivial, and I have to do that next.

• I need two new fields in the table, "LinkedIn" and "Twitter".

• Each day process 6 more records from the database.

• If a field is empty, go look for it.

• If not found, put today's date in their and revisit it later on.

• If a contact is found/made, follow/link it and put the appropriate link in there.

• After that first pass, just process the dated-fields in stalest-first sequence, or something.

Of course, even that wouldn't be a blind process; I ought not ask for a connection until I've made, say, three distinct contacts with the person.

Follow/link to a business is another matter; that can and ought to be automated.

I am now accepting beta-testers ..... but you beta be fast!