Sending an Important Email? Check Social Media First

iStockphoto by BigNazik

Before you hit “send” on a critical email, do one thing.

And no, it’s not editing for brevity, spell checking and proofreading. Those are a given. For every message.

There’s another strategy that can increase the impact of your message – whether you’re asking someone for a favor, inviting them to speak at an event, requesting a reference, or making any number of asks. This simple strategy could tilt the scales toward a positive response.

What is it?

Check your recipient’s latest social media posts.

Why?

Here are 3 big reasons.

You may see recent updates that change your approach. Maybe your recipient has started a new job, been promoted, received an award, or spoken at a conference. Those are great accomplishments to congratulate the person on, in a genuine and authentic way.

For my regular readers, you know I advise never to send someone spam (a.k.a., an unsolicited pitch for business or a job) immediately after connecting in LinkedIn. These messages generally aren’t worth the time to read and respond to, especially the jargon-filled ones where it’s difficult to know what the person or business actually does.

But someone recently followed up his pitch for a meeting with a note that said, “I just noticed it looks like you left your company recently. I apologize for not checking that first. Congrats on your new venture! That sounds exciting.”

He had actually looked at my LinkedIn profile, I assume, and saw that I recently launched a business, The Carrelle Company. Born on Labor Day 2018 from this blog I began on New Year’s Day 2015, the company helps people grow their careers and businesses through digital branding in social media.

His message was kind enough and human enough that I decided to respond. His is one of the few pitch messages I’ve ever answered. The door is cracked open in a friendly way. That wouldn’t have happened if the sender hadn’t looked at my social media.

And who knows what might transpire in the future. We’re all connected and on paths that could converge in the future, in ways we can’t even imagine today.

You may learn something that helps strengthen your relationship. When someone you’ve worked with previously reaches out to you to ask what’s new, find out what they’ve been up to before you respond.

A few years ago I got a note like that from Karie Willyerd, who recently became Chief Learning Officer at Visa. She had been a fabulous speaker I’d invited to a few DIRECTV leadership events when I led Corporate Communications.

Was I ever glad I checked her social media before responding. At the time she had just released a new book called Stretch, about lifelong learning and future-proofing your career. That gave me the opportunity to congratulate her in my reply and learn more about her ideas.

In addition, you may gain insight into what’s important to your recipient, and you may be able to appropriately connect your interests with theirs. Maybe you share a passion for a charitable cause, have a colleague in common, or are reading similar books.

But don’t go overboard. Someone sent me a message recently that was over the top with praise for my blog, including examples from multiple posts. It was a bit jarring a few paragraphs later when the pitch for new business emerged. It had an inauthentic tone, and it did not motivate me to respond.

You may find out there’s a better time to send your message. Are you seeing beautiful vacation photos on Instagram? Ones that aren’t hashtagged as #latergrams? Then you might hold your message until the person returns home. They could be more receptive then.

Maybe they’re in the middle of a big work event and they’re sharing it in social media. That could mean they don’t have time to give your message the attention you’d like. When you do send your message, you could mention the event and your impressions of it, along with your congratulations.

Or maybe they’re dealing with a challenging personal issue like a family member in the hospital. That’s another reason to hold off on your message. If your message is urgent, at the very least you can acknowledge the situation and offer your support.

One caution – take a light approach in your message so it doesn’t appear that you’re cyberstalking the person or feel like you’re invading their privacy. Be friendly, sincere and brief.

There’s mostly upside to knowing your audience, what they’ve been doing lately and what’s important to them. This is what their recent social media activity can tell you.

How has social media helped you improve your email effectiveness?

Make the Most of LinkedIn Mutual Connections

Are you making the most of the mutual connections feature of LinkedIn profiles?

Mutual connections appear in the highlights section of profiles, right under the summary at the top.

It’s one of the first things I view, especially when I’m meeting someone new or working with someone for the first time.

This is all part of having a comprehensive social media savvy strategy in navigating your professional path in the corporate world. (Opinions in this blog are my own.)

BEFORE YOU VIEW MUTUAL CONNECTIONS’ PROFILES

Here’s a quick tip before you view the profiles of mutual connections. Set your browsing profiles option to “private.” That way, your name won’t appear as someone who’s viewed a profile.

There may be instances when you want people to know you’ve viewed your profile. Sometimes it’s a good way to indicate interest. But in most cases, it’s better to view profiles in private mode.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN MUTUAL CONNECTIONS

How many mutual connections do you have? This indicates how closely or loosely connected you are to the person. If you have many connections in common, you’re both part of a well-developed community.

If you have only a few connections in common, this person probably adds more diversity of thought to your network. He or she may be someone you want to get to know better.

Why? Cultivating a diverse network is a key leadership skill for the 21st century. Roselinde Torres shares why in her TED talk on What it takes to be a great leader.

Torres says that “great leaders understand that having a more diverse network is a source of pattern identification at greater levels and also of solutions, because you have people who are thinking differently than you are.”

How many of them did you expect to see? Assess how many are people you would have expected to see connected to this person. This will help you answer the next question . . .

Who’s NOT there who you would have expected to see? In other words, who’s missing? And why do you think that is? Most times, it could be a simple oversight.  But there could be other reasons you might want to contemplate.

What organizations and affiliations do you have in common? What are the common employers, professional associations, community organizations, schools, and so on. Again, fewer common organizations could indicate greater diversity in your network.

Which ones are unexpected wild-card connections? This is the most interesting question. Who surprised you? Who made you wonder how your connection knows this mutual connection?

These connections could be the boundary spanners among groups in your network. They’re the people who may be able to connect people and ideas across multiple networks. And they could be people you can reach out to when you’re looking for a “needle in a haystack” type of person.

Karie Willyerd, the author of The 2020 Workplace and Stretch is one of those boundary spanners. It’s a surprise and delight when her name appears as a mutual connection to someone I never would have guessed she knows. She’s role modeling her own advice about cultivating a broad and diverse network.

MAKE THE MOST OF MUTUAL CONNECTIONS

Understand the broader social network. Mutual connections tell you more about someone’s network and how it intersects with yours. This can form the basis for conversation starters about how you know each know the mutual connection, what work you’ve done together, and what you might do together in the future.

Recently I was thrilled to be invited to join the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors as the representative of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. An accompanying role is on the USC Annenberg Alumni Advisory Board.

As I’ve approached the process of meeting more than 75 fellow alums, knowing our mutual connections helps to seed conversations, find common points of interest and generate ideas about our work together to further the alumni experience.

Get to know a new leader, boss or client. When an important new person enters your professional life, see what mutual connections you have in common. Use the 5 questions above to quickly evaluate the common connections.

Then decide if there are a few trusted people you might ask for advice and insights. Here are a few starter questions you might want to know about:

  • What’s important to this person?
  • What’s their leadership style?
  • Who influences them?

See opportunities for collaboration. Work gets done in cross-functional collaborative teams, whether it’s inside your organization or outside of it in a professional or community group.

Your mutual connections could point the way to already-existing relationships that may make a new collaborative effort even stronger from the start. If you’re putting together any kind of cross-functional team, this can be one more data point to assembling a high-performing team.

What are the ways you make the most of your mutual connections?