PhD Voice

In our previous blog post on networking, we described how to use emailing to help build your network.

This blog post further builds upon it with some tips on how to maintain contact with people in your network.

In our last blog post, we gave a tip to email your network when you have a new piece of work published. Everyone loves getting emails like this because it is new information about your field delivered straight to you. If you like, you can even give a 2 or 3 line summary of your work and the major finding.

In addition to this, a very effective way of using email is to see if your contacts are going to attend an upcoming conference you will be attending.

The reason why this is such a powerful approach is because if one of your contacts will be going there, you can then arrange to meet up with them before you get to the conference. Conferences can be busy places, so trying to organize to meet up during one can be difficult. So, organizing beforehand gives you a much better chance of getting that meeting.

What’s more, if someone in your network isn’t attending, then emailing them helps you stay in touch. It’s an easy excuse to contact them and for making sure that they remember you. For example, I met this one PhD student at a conference once and he seemed like every other PhD student – capable. But in the blur of the conference, I kind of forgot about him a little bit. It wasn’t until after he emailed me a couple of days after the conference that I kind of remembered him.

Anyway, I got on with my life and the months passed by. Out of the blue, I got an email from him one day. It took me a little while to remember him, but he made sure to remind me how we met. He asked if I was going to a particular conference coming up. I wasn’t planning to. I responded as such. We had a short email exchange and I continued on with my research.

We exchanged emails a few more times over the next couple of years, including some that included relevant information about our field. Then, it just so happened that we were both planning on attending a certain conference, so through email we arranged to meet up and further build our professional relationship.

Notice how this took place over a couple of years and just out of one initial meeting and some subsequent email exchanges?

So, in conclusion, one way to keep in touch with your network is by asking them if they will be attending an upcoming conference that you will be attending. This is an easy excuse for getting in touch. If they will be attending, then make sure to ask them if they want to meet up one day for lunch, for example.

If you want to read more about how to network effectively, read our book, “100 Tips For Doing Your PhD” where we cover this, as well as 99 other tips to make other aspects of your PhD, like staying motivated, getting a job, and having a good work-life balance much easier and better.

Read it here:

Ebook: https://phdvoice.org/product/100-tips-for-doing-your-phd/

Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXMYVYCF

(We also translated it into Arabic here: https://phdvoice.org/product/100-tips-for-doing-your-phd-arabic/

And Spanish here:

Ebook:https://phdvoice.org/product/100consejos-para-hacer-tu-doctorado/

Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C1DN9ZG4)