Your humble cell phone now has the power to connect you with every one of your business contacts without awkwardness or annoying them, regardless of how long ago you last communicated.

What happens to the business cards we get at networking events?

Admit it, most of us barely stay in touch after we meet at such events. Now that Twitter is fast becoming a mainstream communications tool, it is likely that the person whom you just met already has an account. It may not be an active account and she may be wondering what the big deal is, but none of that is important.

Add that person on Twitter while you are talking to her

• If you don’t have a mobile Twitter client, you can send a txt message to Twitter, assuming that your phone is SMS enabled for Twitter with “follow HERNAME” to 40404.
• If you have a Twitter client, just add the person as you normally would.
• Look up her bio while you are at it.

If she’s not on Twitter and curious, you can sign her up for Twitter from her cell phone

• She simply needs to send “follow YOURNAME” to 40404
• Twitter will respond by asking her to enter her desired username.
• She will reply to that SMS, hopefully the name is not taken. Remember to tell her that she can change her Twitter username at any time, so it’s not important what it is initially.
• Your contact will now have a mobile-only Twitter account and will begin to receive your updates via SMS.
• If you are a high volume Twitter user, be sure to tell her how to discontinue receiving your updates on her cell phone (I wouldn’t want to follow me via SMS!)
• Your contact can complete the signup process via Twitter website at http://twitter.com/account/complete
  
• By the way, this SMS signup process will probably be the coolest thing anyone has shown her so you’ll have bonus attention points
• Your new contact will now also remember you as a trusted Twitter expert. Experts get more referrals.

By connecting to your contact via Twitter, your connection will be stronger and you will avoid:

• Writing a “Hi, we met at such and such party” e-mail
• Getting bounced or silently caught by her e-mail spam blocker
• Having to come up with reasons to write to contacts who fell out of touch
• The torture of writing e-mail newsletters. Face it, they are painful and incredibly time-consuming, and worse yet rarely read.

Which do you think is more valuable – a list of 10,000 business contacts from stale business cards, or 1,000 mutual connections?

• I think the 1,000 people who know you well on a daily basis are far more likely to do business with you.
• By adding value to the network, you will continually show up on their radar screens as the expert in your field.
• When someone needs help within your area of expertise, it is likely that you will be contacted first, regardless of your price.

If you have those 10,000 stale business cards, run them through a business card scanner today. Now you can re-connect without:

• Writing the awkward “Hi, we haven’t talked in a while” e-mails that smack of desperation
• Writing a memoir of what happened since your last connection
• Having to explain how you met in the first place
• Having them think about whether they want to reconnect to you

If you are like me, you scanned those cards into Outlook and there is no way to directly import contacts into Twitter from Outlook. Workaround:

• Create a new empty Gmail account or you can use your existing account
• Go to your Outlook
• Click Contacts
• Click File -> Import/Export
• Click Export to a file
• Click Comma Separated Values (Windows)
• Choose the right Contacts folder
• Save the file where you will find it
• Go to Gmail
• Click Contacts
• Choose Import
• Complete the import procedure
• Go back to http://twitter.com/invitations_find_on_other_networks
• Choose G-mail
• Let Twitter find out who among your contacts is already on Twitter

You won’t reconnect with everyone, but a significant portion of your contacts will be in the system and that number will continue to rise.

• Re-run the process every week to find newcomers
• You will make an even stronger impression if you are one of the first Twitter users to follow them
• If your Twitter stream is valuable, most will follow you back
• Some may even  remember you and reach out to you
• You will have many easy opportunities to reconnect via @replies method if you can can add value to the other person

Remember, these are TARGETED followers. You already made a great impression on them once since you have their card. Once they remember who you were when they first met you, they are even more likely to buy from you.

Bonus side effect: your overall followers number will skyrocket!

About the author

Leonid S. Knyshov (@wiseleo) writes about social media and other topics of interest on http://Knyshov.com

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Twitter by Leonid S. Knyshov