LinkedIn is the best platform to connect with people you personally know to people you wish to know.
With more than five hundred million users across the globe, LinkedIn is undoubtedly leading among all social media when we talk about potential hires, business partners and B2B prospects.
Growing your connections can become challenging once you’ve exhausted your contact list. Which is why we bring you these 3 tips to help you grow your professional network in a more useful and appropriate manner.
1. Personalize
More often than not, we mindlessly send connection requests and hope to get accepted. This is also the reason why a large number of requests end up “pending”.
Instead, visit the individual’s profile and send a connection request after adding a personalized message, such as “It was nice meeting you yesterday at the BusinessTech conference. Let’s connect.”
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And if you hope to connect with people you personally don’t know, add relevancy. You can do this by being honest.
For instance, “I’ve been reading your articles for a while now and couldn’t help but tell you how amazing they are. I appreciate the time and effort you put in and look forward to connect.”
This simple trick will increase your acceptance rate by 50 per cent.
2. Following-up
Remember how effective networking was when people used to meet in person? We recommend you to do the same.
Met someone at the conference or a business event? Served the community or volunteered for a charitable event? And how about your classmates, yoga instructor, healthcare provider, owner of your favourite salon…you get it.
Sometimes, we miss reaching out to people who we daily interact with. Add all such individuals to your list and hit send the connection request right away!
3. Set growth goals
Adding 1000+ connections in one can seem like a big deal. However, not if you split 1000 connections over a few months (or weeks). For instance, rather than going from 500 to 1500+ connections in a day, try to connect with 50 connections per day.
Remember to set realistic and reachable goals. This, however, does not mean you start spamming individuals you don’t know. Exercise caution and maintain LinkedIn etiquette.
Another thing to keep in mind is to have realistic expectations. You’re wrong if you think all your requests will be accepted. Different people have different LinkedIn philosophies. While some might enjoy making new connections, others might not.
Lastly, quality over quantity, please!
4. Post frequently
This tip is pretty much self-explanatory. More people are likely to interact with you when connections like, share, and comment on your posts.
Try to add content that is relevant to your second-degree connections so that they not only start interacting you but also send you connection requests.
This also opens new opportunities for your content to be reshared and syndicated. Don’t worry about pissing off connections by posting something every day. A relevant, informative and interesting post per day is better than posting useless content people can’t relate with.
Another trick is to use more images in your overall strategy as research has shown that they increase content views by a whopping 11 times!
Going from a 100 to 1000+ connections won’t happen overnight and if you already have 1000+ connections, don’t stop there. Linkedin is one of the most powerful (yet easiest) networking tool that lets you interact with important individuals – without leaving the couch!