We deliver ‘LinkedIn or LinkedOut?’ Masterclass workshops all over the world on the benefit and value of LinkedIn and more importantly for business owners, sales teams and in-house recruiters, we show delegates how to be successful through mastering LinkedIn.
The most common questions that comes up at almost every training or workshop, is around the subject of connections or ‘Contacts’ as LinkedIn is now referring to them as. We are going to tackle each of the common questions that arise here:
This question comes back to the VCO Process®. Having 500+ connections gives you great visibility, the more visibility you have and the more people you are connected to, the higher chance that your profile will be viewed and that someone will want to do business with you. Business people like to be connected to people who are well connected, so you will naturally draw attention to yourself if you are a 500+ LinkedIn user. Once you hit 500+ LinkedIn will not show how many connections you have, in a way it does give you some credibility, if you are connected to 500+ people then the perception is that you must know a lot of people and have some considerable influence. You are more likely going to receive connection requests from other people when you are at 500+, which equals less work for you in growing your network, it will grow organically.
Another reason for wanting to be 500+ as an initial goal, is that the more 1st connections you have the higher chance that you are going to be able to reach your target market. When we look at Advanced Searches later in this book, you will really start to see the value of having a high number, 500+ network. When you run a search in LinkedIn, you are effectively only going to see 1st, 2nd and 3rd connections, the more 1st connections you have the more likely that your search results will yield the name of the person you want to do business with or reveal connections that can help you get into your dream client company.
We recommend that you accept every connection request, even if you do not know the person. If you really want to generate new business from LinkedIn you do need to be connected to a high number of people on LinkedIn, even if you don’t know the person directly, their LinkedIn network could lead you to a massive contract or could offer up a dream 2nd or 3rd connection that you would never have been able to see before. LinkedIn is different to Facebook, you are not posting personal pictures of you having fun at the weekend or revealing things that people would otherwise not be able to find out about you elsewhere.
LinkedIn is a business networking platform, online. You never know why someone is asking for you to connect with them that you don’t know, it could be that they want to do business with you, having read your amazing profile! You can always remove them from your contacts if the way they go about their updates or relationship building is not for you. Bear in mind that most people on LinkedIn are business professionals, just because you connect with someone you don’t know today, it does not mean that they can do anything to you or your business, the more connections you have the more useful your LinkedIn network can be to you.
The decision around whether you connect to people on LinkedIn who you do not know is of course personal choice, just bear in mind all of the benefits that go with having a strong and large network before making the choice to restrict your network to people you know personally. It is also very easy to block, report or remove a connection that you accept and no longer want to have in your network.
The next 15 points all relate to growing your LinkedIn Connections, these are easy and simple things you can do to increase your online network and at the same time improve your visibility and credibility, which you know by now will help you move into profitable relationships.
Tip 16 – Connect with Clients
One of the easiest way to build your connections is to connect with all of your current and previous clients. Even if you have not done business with someone for a while, it’s a good way to re-engage with them and re-kindle the relationship. This alone should help to get you closer to 500+ connections.
Your supplier’s networks are invaluable. As a customer of the business if you asked for help in securing a connection I am sure that they would be happy to help. They want to keep you as a customer and are more than likely to connect with you and more importantly, facilitate introductions to other people in their network.
A Business Coach in the UK, Andrew came on one of our LinkedIn Masterclass courses in 2011. We talked about the benefits of connecting with people you used to work with, ex-collegues, team members, managers, subordinates. During that course he reconnected with an ex-colleague of 15 years previous, they had worked together at Unilever. That one connection he made transformed his business and in 2012, that one connection was worth 75% of his turnover last year. It has since spun off into more business for more of Andrew’s business contacts and all of this happened because of LinkedIn.
These dormant connections, people who you may not have dealt with in the last 4 or 5 years, will have a strong affinity with you, want to help you providing you have always got on well in the past and in the last 4 or 5 years will have been building an amazing network themselves which could be of use to you and vice versa. It is always worthwhile touching base with ex-colleagues.
Visit TopLinked.com, and register with a free account. This will add you to a list of people who are willing to be invited by others that want to grow a strong network. This will increase the number of times you are invited to connect by other people. In addition you will receive regular updates from TopLinked.com with lists of people who are happy to be invited to connect, even if you do not know them. Using this list can increase your number of connections very quickly. One contact of Sam’s in the recruitment sector, established 2000+ new connections in less than 24hours!
If you run a business with a team, then ensure that you connect with each of your staff. There are a number of reasons for this, firstly you can see who they are connecting with and be ahead of the game if they suddenly start connecting with recruiters or head-hunters! However the main benefit is that you can train your entire team how to use LinkedIn effectively and replicate your VCP way beyond your own capabilities. If you were to add up all of the connections that you have and then add to this the 1st connections of your own team, you can just imagine the online footprint that you could generate across LinkedIn.
The great thing about networking is that everyone’s network is unique, each of your team bring a different background, education, work history and you never know who they know that could be a business- changing contact! Make sure that the team have a similar message on their profile about your business, so that if a potential client visited your profile and then one of your team’s you would be able to see the same professional message about what you deliver for your clients. Encourage them to spend time on LinkedIn and this will all help the business to move the relationships online through the VCP Process®.
When you go to connect with someone new, LinkedIn gives you options to choose how you know the person. When you read this section you will see that we are recommending that you connect with people that today, you may not know. Often the challenge comes when you see someone you really want to connect with, yet they seem unreachable because tey are 3rd connections of out of your network.
This simple tip will help you to connect with any person you want through LinkedIn. When you find someone on LinkedIn that you do not know and you really want to connect with them, scroll down to the bottom of their LinkedIn profile and you will see a list of all of the Groups that the person is a member of. Choose a group that they are in and join it yourself. Once you are a member of the same group, a new option to connect witll be shown. When you request a connection, a new option under ‘How do you know [person’s name]?’ comes up. You will now see the word ‘Groups’ show up in the list. Choose ‘Groups’ from the drop down menu, select the group that you mutually share and then click on Connect.
Always make sure that you personalise the message. Never ever sell, but do make sure that you either compliment them or mention something you have in common.
Some useful phrases to use in a Connection Request message:
“I saw that we are in the same LinkedIn group together and have similar interests.”
“I saw that we have 23 mutual connections and I thought it would be of interest to connect” “I read your article on [insert subject], and would really like to connect with you.”
“I watched your presentation on [insert subject] and thought you made some really relevant points, it was really fantastic!”
These are simple phrases that work when requesting a connection from someone you don’t know.
Tip 22 – Connect with Friends & Family
Connecting with friends and family can sometimes reveal some interesting facts about people who you have known for years, especially your extended family. Connect with your parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins and you just never know what opportunities are going to come up.
At most family gatherings you are completely focused on the family, children, personal things, but imagine coming back into a work environment to discover that one of your close family members actually knows the person you have been trying to land as a client for weeks. It is an obvious one, but not everyone does this. You just might be surprised!
You never know where your past colleagues are now working, you also don’t know who they know. It can be so much fun going back over the old college year books and into the Alumni groups on LinkedIn to find people who you used to hang out with at School, College or University. Some will be running their own businesses, some will be climbing the career ladder in large companies, you just never know where they are and how you can help them and vice versa. One of the people who recently attended one of our LinkedIn courses just told me that she reconnected with an old school friend and has just landed her first international client as a result. This tip is useful and also fun!
LinkedIn is highly intuitive, this amazing business networking platform knows who you are already connected to and your extended network, and because you have provided data about your past history both for work and schools, it can easily connect you with people that you might know based on a combination of these elements. The ‘People You May Know’ section appears in multiple places within LinkedIn, always on your Home Page. Use this to seek out people that are most likely to accept your invitation, people you already have a connection with.
This can be done whilst you are at the event itself, using the LinkedIn App, or you can do this when you return to your office. Look at the business cards you collected at the event and go through them, do a people search on LinkedIn for their name and ask them to connect. Always personalise the message mentioning the event you attended and any other comments related to your discussion at the event. You could suggest a coffee or follow up meeting. It’s a great way to connect your face to face networking with your online activity. It means you can always stay in touch with your contacts through LinkedIn.
I am sure if you are like most business owners, that you have a stack of business cards either on your desk or hidden in a drawer or a box somewhere. Each of these business cards represents someone you have once met and exchanged cards with. By connecting with each of these people you are creating another touch point with these contacts and may rekindle some business relationships that you had not kept up to date with. Just by adding each person whose business card you are holding onto you could add significant connections to your total LinkedIn network.
The great thing about Conferences is that whether you attended or not, the Speaker does not actually know if you were in the audience. The Conferences for the industry that you are targeting will often profile keynote speakers on the before, during and after communication at the event. If you simply send a nice email to a speaker, telling them how brilliant you thought their presentation was at the [insert conference name] event, then they will always connect with you.
We do this successfully with people in the industry or profession that we want to target, it works because you have common ground, plus you are brushing the ego which is always a good approach when you are looking for someone to connect with you.
Trade Shows and Exhibitions are a great place to meet people. You can visit 50+ stands in one day and usually there are business cards available to pick up at each stand. Talk to people on the stand when you go, find out more about the company and then connect with the people you meet when you get back to your office.
Regardless of the industry you are in, there will be key players globally that speak and write in your industry. You can typically find these people by researching your topic on the internet. TED talks is a great place to find Thought Leaders, you can brush the ego when approaching these people, when you ask them to connect mention how much you were inspired by their talk, their presentation or what they said.
If you are reading this book, then you are most likely to be interested in improving your business in some way. Any business book that inspires you, connect with the Author and ask them to connect with you, you’ll be surprised, people genuinely want to be in touch with their followers and will usually connect with a fan. If you are inspired by a Business Leader, Mentor, speaker or Author then just ask, the worst that can happen is that they choose not to connect.
You can connect with Sam Rathling here: Sam Rathling LinkedIn Profile
You can connect with Derek Reilly here: Derek Reilly LinkedIn Profile