I couldn’t be more excited to have surpassed 5000 connections on Linkedin, the world’s largest business-oriented social network. It definitely took a lot of work to get here. I’m not an “open networker” or LION, which is someone that joins groups just to exchange connections with people. I gained all of my connections by being an active social networker, attending conferences, exchanging business cards, and sending a lot of invites over the years to people I’ve emailed with. I’m particularly excited because the vast majority of my Linkedin connections are in the Internet marketing industry, which I have been working in since the late 1990′s. This makes me probably the most connected person in the world of Online Marketing, which is definitely a self-imposed title, but one I don’t think too many people that know me would argue with. So how did I get so many Linkedin connections? I’m going to tell you all the tools and strategies I have used over the years to achieve a ton of connections in Linkedin!
1. Invites - Linkedin has great invite tools under the add connections tab in the interface. You can upload .csv files from your email contacts or just paste in a whole list of email address you have from conferences or shows. However, if you send out too many invites that aren’t accepted, your invites can be shut off, so make sure these are at least people you may have met before or exchanged emails with to ensure your invites stay active. Sending invites is a daily thing for me and is a great way to show people you are proactive. When people accept my Linkedin invite I frequently will send them a little note thanking them and seeing how we can work together, but it’s a case-by-case basis and the message has to be specific to who they are to be effective. You can export your email contacts from Outlook, gmail, etc and then send the invites. They also have a function that accesses your email account and tells you who is already on Linkedin you can invite, which is invaluable. It also tells you who isn’t on Linkedin yet and you can invite them. Great fun I tell you!
2. Rapportive - this tool has really allowed me to send invites easier than ever before. It’s a gmail extension that shows you the person you are emailing with’s social networks, so you can click a button and send them an invite. Invaluable! People are blown away with how fast I follow them on Twitter, Facebook, and send a LinkedIn invite after our first email exchange. Makes me looks like I’m really putting in the effort to connect socially.
3. LinkedIn Groups - not only do I send a lot of invites, I get a lot of invites from posting my articles and content into LinkedIn Groups. You can join up to 50 Linkedin Groups, so when you have a great article to share you can post it into several groups at once with tools like the Addthis Chrome extension. This allows me to syndicate my content onto Linkedin into relevant groups, which gets it read by people in the Online Marketing industry I may potentially want to connect with or want to connect with me.
4. My Linkedin Profile - I’ve tried to make my profile as friendly and out-going as possible. I’ve moved my Linkedin Recommendations to the top of my profile so people see them, since I’ve worked to attain 154 recommendation, they look and read great to my profile viewers. I’ve also mentioned in my profile that I’m open to receiving invites from people on Linkedin. Make sure to check your “Who’s Viewed My Profile” on Linkedin so you can see who came by your profile and reach out to them for a connection request. This is the primary reason I’m a paying Linkedin member, to reach out to people that have view my profile. It works and has gotten my agency clients, so make sure to check that every day and follow-up!
5. My Linkedin Group - I run a Linkedin group called Linked Affiliate that gets 10-20 new sign-ups a day on Linkedin. I’m permitted to email blast all group members every 7 days with a message, so I always include a link to my Linkedin profile in the message and I periodically send an email to specifically invite the group members to connect with me socially. Running a Linkedin group is a great idea to build a presence in your industry, I highly recommend it, but make sure you have a good moderator or it will get over-run with crappy posts and become a nightmare.
6. Other Social Networks - I gain Linkedin connections from my other social networking like on Facebook and Twitter, when I share my Linkedin group’s posts or my own posts in those venues. All group discussions have sharing buttons, so I make sure to share good group discussions on Facebook and Twitter, which brings added traffic and exposure. I occasionally post to connect with me on Linkedin in my other social networks to keep it out there in people’s consciousness.
7. Conferences and Shows - Attending conferences in your industry is a great way to build your Linkedin connections. You can gather as many business cards as possible so you can later send them all Linkedin invites. I use a company called Cloud Contacts, that takes business cards and databases them for you. I also use CardMunch that photographs your business cards with your phone, which Linkedin owns.
These are some of the ways I have built up my Linkedin connections over the years. Linkedin will give you up to 2000 invites, so use them fairly wisely, although once you run out you can request more from them. Linkedin really is a great business development tool and a great way to find a new job or find a great new employee, so make sure you maximize your presence there and your number of connections. The more connections you have, the more people will see the content you post there and possibly want to do business with you. I hope you linked my little write-up on how I achieved 5000 Linkedin connections. Yes it took several years, but totally worth it!
