Le Networker
Networking in Summer: Why July-August Are Your Best Months (If You Know How to Do It Right)
Less noise, more attention. The summer networking paradox and how to take advantage of it.
Less noise, more attention. The summer networking paradox and how to take advantage of it.
It's the same every year.
Mid-June, people start putting away their files. End of June, calendars empty out. July arrives and LinkedIn looks like a waiting room on a Sunday morning; there are still a few people, but everyone is relaxed.
That's when I get to work.
Not by forcing it. With precision.
Because summer isn't a slow period for networking. It's a filteredperiod. The people who respond in August are truly available. Those who don't respond are in Saint-Tropez, and they're not your target anyway.
In January, everyone gets back to work. Companies launch their projects. Calendars fill up within 48 hours. Your message arrives with 47 others in the inbox of someone returning from vacation who has a meeting in 20 minutes.
In July, that same message arrives in a half-empty inbox, read from a terrace or a quiet office.
Result: your response rate skyrockets.
I tested it. Using the same profiles, the same messages, just shifted in time: the response rate in July-August is easily twice as high as that in January-March.
Less competition. More calm. More available attention.
It's not luck. It's mechanics.
Not glamorous, but essential. In July, I revisit all contacts that have been on standby since January. The ones I had told "let's reconnect in the fall", the previous fall. I pull them out. I look for a legitimate excuse to reconnect.
An article relevant to them. News about their industry. An introduction to make.
Not "I'm just following up". Something genuinely concrete.
We all have conversations that just fizzled out for no reason. A meeting that never happened. A "I'll get back to you" that disappeared into limbo. In summer, people are less defensive. They have more time to respond. And most importantly, they've forgotten they didn't get back to you. You have too, for that matter.
Template message I use in August:
"It's been a while since we last connected. I was thinking about [subject of our last conversation] – have things progressed on your end regarding that?"
Simple. Curious. No hidden agenda.
Everyone arrives in September in " "we need to schedule something". Agendas fill up in 72 hours, and you find your first availability isn't until mid-October.
In August, I'm already booking appointments for the first week of September.
"I know you're back on the 25th. Can I grab 30 minutes on the 2nd or 3rd?"
People love that. Someone who respects their time and comes prepared is rare. It gets noticed.
On LinkedIn, post volume drops by 30 to 40% in July-August, depending on the sector. So, proportionally, your posts reach more people, and the algorithm isn't competing with 50 other pieces of content from your network at the same time.
This isn't the time to stop posting. It's the time to keep up the pace while others take a break.
Don't turn this into a mass operation.
Summer isn't an accelerated cold prospecting campaign. People are available, yes, but they're also more human, less in "automatic professional filter" mode. If you show up with a 300-word copy-paste about your offer, you're precisely wasting the opportunity you're trying to leverage.
Less volume. More personalization. That's the rule.
And most importantly: if someone replies to you from their terrace in Corsica, you don't send them a 12-page document the next morning.
In summer, your network is dormant.
Yours can be active.
Not by forcing it. By taking advantage of the quiet to do what you never have time for the rest of the year: nurture, re-engage, prepare.
A 15-minute phone call in August is often better than an hour-long meeting in October.
I've seen it happen often enough to believe it.
