Whew! The Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference + Expo went very well. The panel discussions were great and I received a list of free tools and resources, which I’ll have more of later.
I met a lot of awesome people over the last few days, but I realized something as I ran into a number of folks I’ve met at other events–people don’t follow up as they should.
If you look at my earlier blog post, many attendees came to the Entrepreneurs Conference with a strategy, which included meeting key contacts and building relationships. Well, over the past three days I’ve come across quite a few people who wanted to find out how to get their business featured in Black Enterprise. They’re eager and their pitches are passionate. I ask them to e-mail me information and links so I can look things over and–nothing. No e-mail. No phone call. No tweets. Nada. Zip. Zilch. While it’s good for both parties to actively network with each other, the reality is, if you’re pitching you’re business, the onus is on you to actually make the pitch.
You might have gotten great tips and made really promising contacts, but all the advice and great people in the world are useless if you don’t follow up on them.
Renita Burns is a writer and content producer for Black Enterprise.