Last week I wrote about Connecting with Connectors. After a week of thinking, it dawned on me that it's really not that difficult to be a connector yourself.

You don't have to know thousands of people, and have worked in your industry for decades to be a connector. All it takes is the right attitude and the appropriate actions.

Even my own experience bears this out. When I first came to Austin over 6 years ago I didn't know anyone. Yet from almost day one I helped people make connections. Heck, even knowing two different people puts you in a position to make a connection.

The best connections are thoughtful connections. They're introductions that will serve both people well. All you really need to do that is a good understand of each person's strengths and goals, and what they might need.

I find that it's easiest to think about making a connection for a single individual. Let's say you just finished a great lunch meeting with someone and you want to make sure you continue to develop that relationship. You can easily do that by making a great introduction for them. So think about your network from their perspective. Who would they benefit most from getting to know? You might even come up with a couple of different people you'd like them to meet.

Now think about it from the perspective of the person you're wanting to introduce them to. Will they enjoy meeting this person? What connection points do the already have in common? Does this person have the time to take a meeting right now? Is there an obvious way that they will benefit from knowing the other individual?

If you have a good answer to most of these questions you're ready to make the intro. There are several ways you can facilitate the introduction. The highest level would be to setup a meeting for all 3 of you where you can make the introduction yourself face to face. Typically I prefer a nice e-mail that provides a bit of background on each and why I think their getting to know each other would be beneficial. In this type of communication be sure to include each party's contact information so that they can follow-up with each other.

You should follow-up as well. Just sending a quick e-mail is often not enough. Take the extra few minutes a week or two later to 1) see if the connection has been made and 2) if it has how it went.

Getting feedback on your connections will help you massively improve the quality of your connections over time. You don't want to find out that one of the people you've been introducing people to is becoming agitated with these meetings after the 6th introduction.

There's certainly no rocket science here. Simply think like a connector. Give some thought to how you can best connect highly compatible people in your network, and follow-up when you're done.

Who can you connect today? Think about that one individual in your network who's top of mind for you today. Who else do you know that they would benefit from knowing? Be a connector!

Happy Networking!