Use Social Platforms As Your Web-Wide Contact Book
Cut the paper cord — toss your business card collection. You know you have one, and it’s not helping you at all.
No more address books. No more contact files.
Here’s something you can do to organically grow your networks online, increase ambient awareness of people you’ve run across in person, AND keep that entropic clutter to a minimum.
Get that inert stack of biz cards on your desk. You’re hoarding them to contact those folks when the need arises, or when all your ducks are in a row, or something. You’re waiting for the day the card will work.
Why wait for that cold, cold, day? Instead, find and connect on (multiple) social sites with each of those acquaintances. From now on, do this within a week of meeting the person so there’s a good chance they recall who the heck you are and accept your connection request.
Then toss the cards.
Believe that you will be able to find these people without the physical card.
Believe that you don’t actually need their phone number or fax or street address — it’s all findable! (And some of that info should actually be on a need-to-know basis, anyway, not the first thing you hand over to a new acquaintance.)
The flipside of all of this is you should be making your own contact details findable by the people you want to be found by.
Know that by connecting ambiently via online networks* with these people you might have met only once in passing, you’re taking a small action that will help bring them closer for mutual benefit now, and in the future. They’re going to get to know you over time. They’re going to start to triangulate your shared social and interest connections.
Look at you. You’re using social platforms like a web-wide contact book.
*If you freak at the thought of requesting a low-pressure connection online at the most appropriate sites (that’ll depend on you and the contact and their own connection policies), then how were you intending to reach out to this person in the future when you actually have something to ask or propose?
