Prepare to Meet Your Peers and Follow-up at the Women Owned Law Symposium

Prepare to Meet Your Peers and Follow-up at the Women Owned Law Symposium

In a few short days, you will gather with your peers for the annual Women Owned Law Symposium.

Prepare now to meet the people attending the conference. Think also about how you will follow-up with them, whether you meet them for the first time or you re-connect at the event.

Before the Symposium

  1. Consult the membership directory  to identify the members who align with your practice or are potential referral sources. Look also for members who are in your state. Drop them a quick note to say you look forward to meeting them. Perhaps mention that you will wear a distinctive colored dress or jacket (NOT black or navy).
  2. Have plenty of business cards.
  3. If you have a small branded item, bring a supply to give away. A pen with your law firm’s (or company’s) name is always a welcome memento. I have a business-card-sized list of tips for an interview with a reporter, with my contact details and website URL.
  4. Set an auto-reply on your email that you are at a conference and will not be checking email until late in the day.
  5. Practice your elevator pitches: one for attorneys and one for general audiences.

During the Symposium

  1. Turn off your cellphone.
  2. Do not check email.
  3. At the breakfast, sit with attendees you already know, so you can catch up.
  4. As you listen to the panelists, take notes. Write two action-oriented steps you will take. Plan to contact the speakers by email with a congratulatory note and indicate what you learned from their remarks.
  5. At the lunch, sit with attendees you don’t know, so you can expand your network.
  6. In your conversations with other attendees, be sure to make a note on their business cards of what you spoke about. Also add what you may have offered them, whether an introduction, an article or other material. If they did not give you their business card, make a note on one of yours so you can contact them later.
  7. At the networking sessions, ask others what they have learned so far at the Symposium, plus which action steps they will take, in addition to your usual questions.
  8. Take some selfie photographs with other attendees and snap shots of small groups.

After the Symposium

  1. Gather the business cards of those you met. Write these new connections a note, perhaps following the template below. Include whatever you may have promised to send them.
  2. Contact the attendees with whom you shared a meal. Comment on their website/latest newsletter/recent article. Offer something related to your conversation or pose a question, so they will be inclined to reply.
  3. Compose individual mentions about key insights you learned from the panelists. Post on LinkedIn, or other social media, and tag them, for example: @NancyMertzel. Consider writing a longer post or article that combines highlights of all the panels.
  4. Email each panelist, including the link to your social media post. Mention the steps you will take based on their remarks. Perhaps ask a question to prompt a conversation.
  5. Send the photos you took to the people in the pictures.
  6. Write a congratulatory email to the conference organizers. Provide feedback on your experience. Send them some photos.
  7. Log on to LinkedIn and invite the contacts you made to connect with you (or use another social media platform where you both are active).
  8. Set calendar reminders to follow-up with the new contacts of greatest interest.

Implementing any, many or all of these tips will help you maximize your attendance at the Women Owned Law Symposium – and future conferences and networking events.

Janet Falk is a Public Relations and Marketing Communications professional at Falk Communications and Research. She offers members of WOL a review of their Public Relations and Marketing activities in a Complimentary 30-minute consultation. She guarantees TWO Ideas.

Here’s a template for follow-up with possible topics and slots to insert specific references. Feel free to customize it according to your style:

Subject line: Great meeting you at Women Owned Law

Name,

It was great to meet you at the Women Owned Law Symposium and learn about your practice/business focused on ______.

I visited your website and noticed ______.

Remembering our conversation about ______, this (article, newsletter, podcast, video) discusses ______ and may be worthwhile. Do let me know what you think.

You mentioned you are interested in ______. If you are not already acquainted with my colleague ______ (link to website), I’m happy to introduce you.

If you’d like to keep in touch on a regular basis, please subscribe to my newsletter/blog here (link).

Of course, I’m happy to receive yours as well.

Shall we connect on LinkedIn? (link)

Looking forward to continuing our conversation. Please let me know how I might be helpful to you.

Regards.

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