PAX is over, now what do I do?
If you are a streamer and you were fortunate enough to be able to attend PAX, TwitchCon, GDC or any of the other awesome gaming conventions, we hope you had a great time and were able to meet some amazing people.
So many great friendships come out of meeting people in IRL at events like these. I have made some great friends at these events.
Another important type of relationship that you should be trying to build is your business network that includes other streamers, sponsors, publishers, agents and other people working in the industry.
So, you have taken a huge big step and made it to your first convention or maybe even your first few conventions. You partied a bit, walked around the floor and saw some great products and games, met other streamers, hung out and had an excellent time.
Now, the con is over, you are tired and have finally made it home. You have a ton of swag and hopefully some contact info like business cards or have connected on social media. What now?
Your first step is clean off your desk so you have some room. Pull out all of those business cards, flyers and whatever else you collected at the event that has contact information on them and start organizing them in a way that works for you.
I like to divide things as people I know or we clicked, people or organizations I might want to do business with soon and everything else.
You more than likely don’t have a CRM program so good old Google Docs will do! I like to use spreadsheets.
Make it so you can easily organize everyone the way you want and then you won’t need those business cards lying around, unless you like to keep that kind of stuff.
I used to keep all of the business cards I collected, but I ended up with a huge cardboard box of them and honestly, I probably won’t ever look at them again, unless one is really awesome and I can take inspiration from it.
Then what you want to do is start reaching out to the people you met. I like to do it about a week, or at least a few days after the event, just to give myself and everyone else time to chill for a bit. Don’t want to wait too long, you want it to be fresh.
I tend to send out more personal things and write individual emails to people I really clicked with.
If I’m going to be sending out a TON of emails, I try and follow the 3 sentence rule. The 3 sentence rule is that you can pretty much say everything you want to say in an email in 3 sentences or less. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule but if you generally stick to it, you will get emails out faster than you would have believed. I don’t like reading long emails and I would imagine other people don’t either, especially when they have a bunch of emails to get through.
I like to also follow people on Twitter that I have recently met and drop a short, friendly “Great meeting you at …” tweet.
For business related emails, I group them by what type of business it is, like a publisher, sponsor or potential collaborator.
I do have a few things that I copy and paste that I put in almost all of these types of emails, but again, I like to be personal and write something specifically for them and that does take a bit of time.
One thing that is important to remember is to be professional in your business emails. If you are wanting to work with, for, or get sponsored by a company, they will respect your professionalism.
Make sure and follow up with emails you sent out that didn’t get any response. Just a quick “Hi, I’m just checking in since my last email.” will work. Don’t be pushy. Remember, they are going through a bunch of emails all the time and being rude will stand out in a negative way.
If you do get emailed back, make sure and respond promptly to move your relationship further. Don’t just ask them what they can do for you, make sure and tell them what you can do for them. Show them you have incentive and are willing to work hard.
I’ve worked with some influencers that just don’t put in the effort, are never on time and barely respond to emails and I’ll tell you this, those are the kinds of things you remember about someone.
This industry may be huge, but at the same time is quite small. Word gets around and people talk.
You don’t want to be known as one of THOSE streamers.
