Regardless of the number of Connections you have today, your network is going to do one thing consistently and that is, GROW! Even if you are purely reactive on LinkedIn you will be receiving contact requests and this in turn will increase the number of overall people in your network. If you really want to benefit from LinkedIn in your business, it is important that you understand how to search for People, Companies and Groups. It is also important that you know how to manage your contacts and keep on top of your ever-growing contact base.
This section of the book is all about finding, approaching and managing your connections. Once you know how to do this you can really start to see the massive value that LinkedIn can bring to you and if applicable, to your team.
Searching LinkedIn works in a very similar way to searching on Google. The more specific you are the better. If you know the person’s name and company or name and location (country) then put both in as quite often with over 200 million members even a name search will come up with many results. The trick is knowing how to find people and then finding a way to connect with them, either through a mutual shared interest or connection.
The next section of tips covers the many types of advanced searches you can do on LinkedIn to help you to identify potential customers, and then we also cover how you can manage and track these contacts on Linkedin.
If you want to find people who are local to you, then you simply go into the search bar at the top of the page and type in the name of your town or city. People with this location on their profile will be shown in the search results. From there you can see who is your 1st connection (already connected to you), 2nd connection (1 connection away from you, you have a mutually shared contact), or 3 connection (2 degrees of separation from you).
If you prefer to look for people by country instead of by town or city, then click on the ‘Advanced Search’ link to the right of the main search bar on top of every LinkedIn page and choose a country from the list. If your country is not listed then you can start typing the first few letters of the country and LinkedIn will suggest a country from the list. Choose the country and click on search and all of the search results will be people who are based in your chosen country.
You should have a pretty good idea by now on the typical buyers for your product or service. We spoke in the last section about the importance of providing engaging content for you contacts, now you can use the Advanced Searches to actually look for them.
If you want to look for a Job Title or a key phrase then you need to use speech marks around the phrase to make the search exactly what you are looking for. For example:
HR Manager Putting this search into LinkedIn will mean that all of the LinkedIn profiles that contain both the word HR and the word Manager, literally hundreds and thousands of profiles will come up.
“HR Manager” If you do the same search again, only this time with the key phrase in speech marks then only profiles with the full phrase “HR Manager” will appear.
You can also use a string of keywords and phrases to include the words OR, AND or AND NOT. For example you could search “HR Manager” OR “HR Director” AND NOT “HR Assistant”.
There are many tricks you can use with LinkedIn searches, this is quite advanced and typically used in the recruitment industry. You can learn more about this here, also known as ‘Boolean Strings’:
Glen Cathey has a great website that he runs called "The Boolean Black Belt:
http://www.booleanblackbelt.com/
Also, there is a very good videos about Boolean search by Jonathan Campbell of Social Talent. Find him at socialtalent.co
So in tip 42, we looked at how to search for your end client and prospective buyers. In this tip we are going to focus on ‘Introducers’ or ‘Referral Partners’. These are companies or people who sell to the same target market as you, but offer something different than you. The best way to think about this, is to look at who else is regularly servicing your target market.
Find people in professions or categories that you know you would be able to give referrals to if you built up a strong relationship. Some examples are below of the kind of Referral Partners or Introducers for various industries:
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Profession: |
Good Referral Partners: |
|
Photographer |
Jeweller, Travel Agent, Videographer, Bridal Shop, Wedding Planner |
|
Plumber |
Builder, Electrician, Roofer, Plasterer, Architect, Engineer |
|
Recruitment |
Human Resources Consultant, Business Coach, Accountant, Printer, Training Company |
|
Accountant |
Solicitor, Financial Advisor, Bank Manager, Business Coach |
|
Web Designer |
Copywriter, Marketing Agency, Graphic Designer, Printer, Promotional Products |
Think about what type of referral partners would be right for your business. Then start researching these using LinkedIn. Apply the same search techniques that we have already talked about and use the keywords and key phrases. Then narrow and refine your search to your locality and you’ll start to find good people to partner with to help you reach multiple end clients.
Tip 44 – Use Company Searches to find dream Prospects
If you are looking to specifically work with a large company, then use the Company Search by typing in the company name and selecting their LinkedIn Company Page. Then on the right hand side, you will see how you are connected to this prospect client. Once you can see who can get you in there you can start to use these techniques in this section to help you to get closer to the buyers of your products and services.
When you ask a person to connect with you, the standard LinkedIn message will appear, as follows:
I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.
- [Your Name]
Our recommendation is that when you connect to a new person, that you always personalise the message by using their first name and customising the message to give a short introduction. It can be useful to mention your mutual connections, a shared group or interest, or something impressive about their profile. This will increase the chances of them saying ‘Yes’ I’ll connect.
When you find a LinkedIn Profile that you would like to connect to, you have the option of choosing how to connect to the person. Some people allow you to send an ‘InMail’, if you want to pay LinkedIn for a premium account then you will be able to freely send InMails to people. If you prefer to ask for an introduction then you can use LinkedIn’s option to ‘Get Introduced’. This is relevant when a person is a 2nd of 3rd connection to you.
When you see your search results a list of people will appear, and then you can see which of them are 1st, 2nd and 3rd connections. When someone in the list is a 2nd or 3rd connection, you will see a Green link underneath their name, with “XX Shared Connections”. When you click on this link, LinkedIn will show you all of the people that you could use to help facilitate an introduction.
Dependent on the level of relationship you have with these mutual contacts, you can either pick up the phone to a shared connection and ask for help, you could message the person through LinkedIn to ask how well they know the person or you could simply ask for the connection directly by sending a personalised connection request.
This feature is very useful when you go to meet a new contact face to face, before the meeting go through their LinkedIn connections and ask for help in the meeting if you feel comfortable and this will help you to connect to 2nd and 3rd connections. It will help by you sharing your contacts first, if you help the other person first with your connections, they will be more inclined to want to share theirs with you.
We’ll talk about groups in a later section, but an easy way to reach people who seem unreachable and out of your network, or 3rd connections is to scroll to the bottom of their profile. You will then see a list of all of the LinkedIn groups that they are a member of. Simply click on the Group and join that group. Once accepted to that new group, you can send a connection request to the person, and when asked by LinkedIn to confirm how you know the person, you choose ‘We are in the same Group’ from the drop down menu, and find the group. Your newly joined Group will appear in the list. This way you never need to know their email address or say that ‘We’ve done Business together’ when you clearly have not.
When you go into the connections or contacts part of LinkedIn, scroll down to the bottom of the page and on the bottom right you will see a very small blue link which reads ‘Export Connections’. This allows you to export your data into a .CSV file which is a type of Excel file. Once you have exported the data you will see on your Excel file all of the data from your connections which includes contact details, names and country as well as any other information taken from the profile.
This tip is useful for a couple of reasons:
The new version of LinkedIn Contacts makes it easier than ever to ‘tag’ your contacts or connections. Each person you know on LinkedIn as a 1st connection can be ‘tagged’, which essentially puts an identification flag on them so you can group your contacts into a particular category. For example, you might want to tag all of your ‘Clients’, ‘Suppliers’, ‘Partners’, ‘Friends’, ‘Family’ etc. and then you can send a group message to these people as a tagged group.
If you prefer to tag people by the frequency of contact that you need to have with them, then you may want to tag contacts as simply, A, B, C, D. Where your ‘A’ contacts are your top contacts that you need to keep weekly or bi-weekly contact with and as you move down to B and C contacts, the frequency would be less. This of course depends on your type of business and how you would like to manage your contacts.
The point here is that really it is up to you how you make and keep contact with your connections, tagging provides a simple system that allows you to keep on top of your ever-growing network. Just remember to keep your messages send to tagged groups to a minimum as they cannot be personalised within LinkedIn, and it is very obvious when someone has sent out a blast email. And always remember to provide useful and engaging content, and never ever sell!