Monday 29 June, 2009Keeping Up With Your Contacts

Anyone who has ever posted a profile online or has been involved with online dating quickly learns one thing: it is imperative that you keep up with your contacts.

What this means is that an email or two just won’t cut it. Sending a short: “hi, what’s up?” or a tickle or two while awaiting a response, is akin to standing in line at the motor vehicle department for a long while, only to find out that you were in the wrong line all the time. There are some people who send out hundreds of emails or ‘tickles’ without following up and then they wonder why they haven’t heard anything in response. 

Keeping up with your contacts is a vital piece of online dating and meeting. You have to remember that you are communicating with another person at the other end, both in listening to them and in expressing yourself. Communication between people doesn’t always flow easily when two people are face-to-face, and sometimes trying to keep up a correspondence with someone you don’t know may seem a bit overwhelming. You’re not sure what to say, or what to ask. Relax, help is on the way.

Don’t forget that when you are sitting in front of your keyboard about to write to someone, you have all the time in the world. Going back to their profile and reviewing what they have written is an excellent way to start the ball rolling. You can start a conversation from the information that they’ve already written about.

I have heard complaints some people have made in meeting people online and more often than not, what we have found behind the scenes is that these people did very little in keeping the lines of communication open through correspondence. Many of them have thought that because they had listed themselves on a website, with an interest in a particular area, that the emails would just start flowing in. As in real life, you wouldn’t just walk into a party and expect everyone in the room to come over and introduce themselves to you, would you? Of course not. That would be completely unrealistic.

Think of some friends in your own life. Did you get to know them by just nodding to them or saying ‘hello’ once and then never speaking again? No, you took the time to introduce yourself and share something with that person that promoted conversation. Same thing with online communication.

There’s another benefit to keeping up with your contacts. Your contacts will invariably tell you about someone else that they may have been talking to and found funny or wise and may say to you: “You should talk to this person.” This in turn brings another person closer to you and gives you an opening in getting to know someone else. You’ve expanded the circle of people you communicate with and one never knows where that will lead.

So keep up with your contacts. It’s one of the basic keys to online success.