Easy to develop - A little challenging to maintain
~ Worth their weight in GOLD! ~

While many of you undoubtedly have a million contacts and huge lists of email addresses, the question I pose for you is this: What are you really doing to maintain, or better yet, IMPROVE your relationships with these contacts (better said: PEOPLE)?

I’ll be the first to admit it can be a challenge to maintain your relationship, yet alone improve them and create more. I find I have to remind myself to work at this all to often.  It can be time consuming, especially if you have a lot of contacts.  But by taking a little time each week just for maintaining and developing your relationships you will discover it’s rewarding on so many levels.

Before I go on you need to remember all relationships are a two way street.  Meaning, don’t expect to get if you’re unwilling to give. If someone reaches out to you for support or help with anything you need to be prepared and eager to give of yourself.  Some people may screw you, sure, but some will go that extra mile and it all works out in the end.

Another thing I want to add is don’t waste your time on losers, nay sayers, or anyone negative. And don’t base your opinion on their current levels of success (i.e. Loser? Winner?) on the amount of money they make, but the amount of POTENTIAL they have.

And with that, here are a few tips and resources I have to make the whole process of building and maintaining your relationships a little less time consuming, a bit more fun, and absolutely more personal.

Greeting cards

I know, you’re thinking “duh, who couldn’t figure that on on their own?”.  But I have a feeling this is one that’s overlooked far too often. And just so ya know, I’m not talking about “ecards”, I’m talking about “real” cards.  There’s a plenty of services that will send REAL, TANGIBLE, cards out on your behalf. The one I use is called SendOutCards.com. They’re cheap, easy, and it really is nice to receive something in the actual mail.

This is one sure way to impress just about anyone.  AND, an attractive and well worded card could very well end up on the fridge or desk of the recipient (at least until they get tired of looking at it) and this provides you with offline marketing - that’s a tough thing to come by/create in this online world. And every singe time they look at it, they’ll think of you!

SendOutCards.com also has an affiliate program if you purchase their “Entrepreneur Package”. By doing so the costs of your cards also drops, but it’s expensive at $398. If you are planning on sending out a LOT of cards this could actually be the least expensive way for you to go.  Too rich for my blood though and the link above is NOT an affiliate link… maybe someday.

And of course there’s always online cards. While this will have less impact than a real world card, it is better than nothing. I’m not going to go over your options, that list is way too long to post here.  Just remember to use your favorite service and send out some cards to at LEAST a couple people each week. I would suggest you find a service that doesn’t require the recipient to login to anything to receive the card and make sure the service doesn’t send the card (or anything else) as any sort of attachment.

Your very own email

Again, another no brainer right?  Well yes and no. My suggestion to you is to reply to EVERY email you get (well, you don’t need to reply to asdfh@yahoo.de trying to sell you “male enhancement” products…lol).  But do try and make a point of replying to every singe ligit email you get. Don’t forget to check your spam folder at least once a day to make sure none have slipped through the crack.

If you’re a popular person, and get million emails a day, tough titty - reply to them all anyway. You don’t have to make it a long reply, a simple “Thanks” or “No thanks” will suffice. To further save time, you can cut-and-paste email addys and send a bulk reply. So if you have a lot of people asking for something that you’re not interested in, send them all a “Thanks anyway, but I’m not interested”. I am however gonna take a guess that most of you can handle the amount of emails you get on a daily basis.

Another thing that you should ALWAYS include is your signature (Name and URL at the very least).  This is always good for branding and if you have a weird email address the recipient will always know who it was from, when they first receive it and if they’re look back through their emails months later.

I like to take it to the next level sometimes. I have my Outlook set up to include my sig automatically (so should you), and then I sometimes add “Ty” below the text in my reply. I know it’s a second signature and some may disagree that this is necessary, but I think it adds just a touch more personalization. I think it lends a feeling of “wow, I’m so important (s)he added a personalized signature”.

You can always just send out emails to random people in your contact list with the simple, but powerful message: “You just crossed my mind and I thought I’d drop a line to say hi!  Hope all is well.”  Obviously this is just an example, but if you express to them that you were thinking of them, that’ll help create more of a connection between you.

Social sites

Like the emails, if you have contacts on social sites like FaceBook,com, MySpace.com, StumbleUpon.com, etc. take a second to leave ‘em a nice comment or send them and private message (comments are better though because they’re public and this only helps in your branding effort). If you wanna step it up a notch, leave them a graphical comment (although this could get really time consuming).

Skype - Google Talk - or any instant messaging client

Just like email and social sites - it only takes a quick message.  If you notice someone online simply send them a note like “hey, jI noticed you were online and wanted to say hi!”.  If you don’t have time to get into a conversation you could add “don’t have time to chat right now, just wanted to say helloooo”.

I like Miranda for an IM client. It’s compatible with just about every IM service there is, and with it’s modular plugin design it’s forwards compatible with services that aren’t even out yet! Oh yeah, it’s free too.

Your Phone

The title of this one pretty much sums it up. Use your phone and give your contacts a call every now and then. Although, it really is best to have a specific reason to be calling.  If you receive an email that requires a response and if you can find the time, call them with your response. Hearing your voice will make you a “real person” to them rather than a anonymous internet contact.  If they’re on Skype, you could use that instead of the phone (if you know them to text chat rather than voice chat and you’ve decided this person needs to hear your voice - cal them on a regular phone)

Meeting in the “real” world

One of the BEST ways to develop and maintain relationships is by meeting and working with people in the real live world. I know, tough concept to grasp huh? If you have the time and resources conferences can be a great place to meet and network with other like minded people.  You can also do a search on Criagslist.org to find tons of free and local networking events in your niche.  These local meetings/networking parties can be great for starting, maintaining and building relationships.

Its all up to you

There are a million other ways to build and maintain relationship and I don’t want this post to turn out to be a War and Peace novel (too late). Just be creative and try not to let it slip your mind to remain active in all your relationships. The more GOOD relationships you have the better, especially if you’re trying to be successful in blogging, or ANY business for that matter!

Stumble