We will shortly be releasing some new Printed Portal Products that you can use while working from home and networking virtually so join our mailing list to be notified when these products are released.

In the meantime, you can use your regular networking planner for your virtual networking activities.

The Year Planner

The Networking Planner contains a decent sized year planner to help you organise and keep track of all your networking activities for the year. I started lock-down with not keeping this up to date. However, I soon discovered that it was important to continue to use the year planner in the same way and include all the networking activities that I was doing online as my calendar was quickly filling up.

The Year Planner is undated, but has room for 12 months (a full year) and includes:

• Monthly Plan. A month grid overview for each month so that you can see the whole month across a page spread for easy reference.
• Weekly View Pages. One side contains the days of the week so that you can write about specific events etc. On the other side, there is a to-do list page for the week.

The week pages are split view. I use one side to write the details of what I have going on that day (and sometimes I also include reminders of other things going on more generally). The on the to-do list side I use the same box as the relevant day so for example, if I am planning on doing it on Wednesday I’ll write the to-do item in the third box (to give me a bit of guidance for when I should do it) but overall I treat this as a to-do list for the week as I won’t have time each day to do something on the to-do list.

As I am posting more content online, the Weekly View Pages, have also been invaluable in posting professional posts in relation to my networking activities and content as part of my visibility strategy.

Coffee and Conversations

This section, the priority contacts section (and the standalone Priority Contacts Pocket Notebook) can all be used to record your one-to-one catch-ups and meetups that you have scheduled with non-priority clients and contacts (or contacts that you don’t want or need a full section on but you want to record a particular conversation).

During lockdown (and beyond) you should still be having these conversations virtually or on the phone.

The layout in the Networking Planner has room for:

• name
• company
• date and location of the meeting
• meeting notes
• key points of interest
• follow up and action points.

You don’t need to be meeting in person to use this section. Use it to record your check-ins with your contacts during this time.

Events

With events happening in an online space, these various layouts will be modified to reflect the online networking space. However, in the meantime, it is possible to tweak your entries and content to reflect the fact that the events are now happening online – not in person.

Online Activities

The online activities can be fully utilised during this time. We hope that you are working through the suggested activities and engaging with your contacts online.

These activities are activities that you can do online and that should tie in with your overall networking strategy. It will also include ways that you can reach out to your connections and raise your profile online.

This is only a small section of the current planner and contains both Pre-populated and Fill in Your Own activity lists. It also includes a section for planning your blog posts and keeping track of any Blog Post Ideas.

We will shortly be releasing some new Printed Portal Products that you can use while working from home and networking virtually so join our mailing list to be notified when these products are released.