There is no doubt in my mind that LinkedIn can be a fantastic tool to help grow relationships with potential clients and customers.
But just having connections doesn’t mean you are building relationships. This cartoon by Sean Nelson comes to mind:
As “LinkedOut” by Sean Nelson displays, it is very common for people using LinkedIn to not really have a good handle on how to take advantage of the social network. It may have over 43 million users from around the world spanning 170 industries, but what do those numbers mean if you’re not doing anything with them?
So make sure you have a mixture of reactivity and proactivity when you use LinkedIn.
Why is it that some people are such fantastic networkers? A big part of it has to do with innate skill, but a lot of it has to do with practice. Successful use of LinkedIn also takes practice. Try and spend two hours a week digging into the site, and COMMUNICATING with your connections.
Change your paradigm to one of ‘communication’ and not just trying to build your network for the sake of building your network. Once you have changed that paradigm, you can focus on five of the most successful proactive activities to grow your network on LinkedIn:
- Search your contact’s contacts. The concept is simple: you probably know some of your contact’s contacts. Every few weeks, sign on to LinkedIn and proactively scour your contact’s connections. Odds are you’ll know a few of their associates.
- Upload your contact list. This is one of the first tactics you should implement to grow your network. LinkedIn has automatic connection with Gmail, AOL or other email providers. If you’re using Outlook (like me), you can export your contacts as a CSV file, and then import them into the social network to get connected.
- Consider becoming a LinkedIn Open Networker. Also referred to as a LION, a LinkedIn Open Networker encourages connections from any other member, whether or not they have had a previous business relationship. If you want to connect with someone on LinkedIn, you usually need their email address. By placing your email address in your ‘name’ field, you give anyone the opportunity to connect with you, whether or not you know them. Thus the term ‘open networker’.
- Install the LinkedIn toolbar for Outlook. This free tool is an incredibly powerful way to connect LinkedIn to Microsoft Outlook. Get an email from someone? Roll over the ‘INFO’ button and see if you’re connected to them on LinkedIn. Not connected to them? Invite them right away within Outlook.
- Include a link to your profile on all your emails and on your website and blog. Take advantage of signature lines and include a link to your profile on all your emails. On every email I send out, the recipient can connect to my LinkedIn profile right there, along with my Facebook and Twitter profiles as well.
What other tips have helped you be proactive and grow stronger relationships on LinkedIn?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Brad,
Thanks for featuring the LinkedOut cartoon. I still get excited to see something I create get passed around. Sure its partially because it drives new traffic, but really I still am amazed that two years ago I didn’t have a blog, I had 19 connections on LinkedIn, and I had not found business value in social networking.
What a short strange trip its been. Now if I could only recall what I did with all of those free hours I used to have.
Have a great day!
Sean Nelson
Hey there. I think this post needs a bit more work… You basically start off by making the point that people need to learn how to use LinkedIn effectively, that most people who are on LinkedIn don’t really do anything with it other than accepting invites. “What do those [connections] mean if you’re not doing anything with them?”
Then you go on to list 5 ways to get more connections.
What I was lead to believe the article was about was: how to utilize LinkedIn. What good is having all these connections if you’re not doing anything with them? Why waste the time accepting invites? Most importantly: how do I really use LinkedIn in a way that helps me and/or my business grow?
I hope you see this as constructive criticism
(and I hope you’ll give me some insight on this!)
PS: I found your blog via Google Image search (for: linkedin accept) while I was looking for a screenshot of the accept invite page.
Oh, poo. One of my tags must have been missing the “/” part. Oops!
Nathan,
It would take more than a blog post to cover the what and the how. The article get’s you started on the second key components of LinkedIn which is Extending Your Reach.
The first is to Optimize Your Profile. The third is Leverage the tools. I’ve been covering these and more on my blog http://www.socialmediasonar.com for the last two years.
Check it out if you like and find as many resources such as this blog, mine, and others to get different perspective, tips, and ideas.
Sean
Hi Nathan,
Thanks for the comment, and of course I take this as constructive criticism. Keep in mind the title of the post was ‘5 Tips for growing your LinkedIn network’, and that’s what I focused on for my 5 tips. A few of those tips don’t just cover growing the network, but the ‘proactivity’ necessary to engage with those individuals on the ongoing basis, such as the LinkedIn toolbar for Outlook. That’s a tool that gives you the opportunity to see who you connect with via email and connect with them immediately with LinkedIn. It’s tools like these, and tips like those I mention in the article, that can help you build your network proactively and shift your paradigm to one of ‘constant networking’ and ’soft selling’.
Regards,
-Brad
Hm.. Okay. So I get your point about the title. The problem is that the copy leading up to the 5 tips leads one to believe that it’ll talk more about how to make use of your network. So maybe there can be some improvement there so that the copy takes its readers down the right path (then you can take the original copy and create another blog post out of that!). All-in-all, though, your 5 tips are good ones. If only Gmail or Google Apps came with a LinkedIn add-on.