LinkedIn Networking Tips

Having been an active member of LinkedIn for 5 years I thought I'd share some of the methods I've found useful for developing a large worldwide network of friends, colleagues & clients.

Below I've outlined a few basic tips that will help familiarise yourself with LinkedIn & help improve your Network. I've tried to keep the information quite brief whilst also highlighting some of the most important elements

Profile & Settings

On the top right of your LinkedIn page you'll see your name & a green connections link. Hovering over your name will allow you to enter your setting page. In the setting you'll find a lot of customisations that allow you to change certain aspects of your profile. For example you may wish to "hide" your connections, hide your new connection updates or change the "Select what others see when you've viewed their profile" settings. You can also update your profile from here

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Profile

This may be pretty obvious but the content on your profile will help people find you & your company. It's also a great way of promoting your company. LinkedIn is a very powerful tool & your profile acts as a mini website. Try to include as much information as possible about your company, services & clients. Include key words that relate to your business, industry & location. LinkedIn has become very popular for finding local, national & international organisations.

Company Profile

LinkedIn provides a business directory that allows members to add their company profiles. When adding your company to your personal & company profile, ensure they are both case sensitive. LinkedIn will then automatically link up everyone who has the same company name in their personal profile to your company profile. LinkedIn Company profile also provides other information such as new hires, past employees, etc

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Groups

There are number of advantages of joining groups. Groups open your network. Anyone who shares the same group as you can be contacted directly & will also appear in search results. LinkedIn limits the amount of groups you're allowed to join to 50 so it's advisable to join groups with large amounts of members. Groups such as "The Midlands Network" has 3300+ members from the East & West Midlands so this will automatically open up a local audience, improve your search results & help you become visible



Another great thing about joining groups is the ability to contact other group members without having to use your limited Linkedin invites. Enter "The Midlands Network" or a group of your choice, click the "Members" tab and simply hover over the persons details, this will change the background blue & a "Send Message" will appear in the top right. This is a great way of connecting with potential cleints, partners & friends.

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Becoming visible

There are a few ways of becoming visible. Groups are a great way of becoming visible in your local area & in your industry. Join groups that relate to your industry & interests, actively involve yourself in the discussions.

One of the unfortunate things about LinkedIn is the tendency by many to see it as a promotions board. LinkedIn is great for promoting your business but there are many more effect ways of building a following & a potential client base without what some may describe as "Spamming". Many groups suffer from this & as a result it becomes pretty difficult to find any decent information.

Creating & involving yourself in interesting discussions will increase more traffic to your LinkedIn profile than most "promotions" will ever do.

When people see an interesting discussion or comment, more often than not they'll look at that persons profile to see who they are & what they do. As your profile contains information about you & your company then it's quite likely they'll also visit your website. As a result, someone new now knows about you, your company & also appreciates your expertise. If this happens often then you're creating great free publicity whilst also helping your fellow networkers.

Also utilise LinkedIn's status update & twitter app to promote yourself to your connections/followers. It's much more efficient due to the direct audience who are actually quite keen to hear about your promotions, news & opinions. Obviously the more connections you have in your network, the better the publicity will be

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Networking

LinkedIn organises your connections by a 3 tier system

1st tier Connections - People you're directly connected to
2nd Tier Connections – Those people connected to your connections
3rd Tier Connections – Those connected on a wider network
Group – People who share a group with you.
Out of Network – Your network isn't wide enough

LinkedIn search results all depends on the people in your network. The bigger your network spans over connections, industries & Countries, the better the search results will be

LIONS (LinkedIn Open Networkers) Lions are members of LinkedIn who to have an open network. This basically means they'll connect to anyone who invites them. This benefits their network & of course yours. Some LinkedIn members will easily have several Million connections, if you're new to LinkedIn then adding LIONS to your network with instantly open up your network search results, allowing you to find those you really want to connect with

If your company requires an international audience & larger search capability then add LIONS from the USA, Canada, Europe, China, Australia, etc.

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Inviting Members to Your Network

To invite other members to your network then it's important to have a wide network search capability in order to find them. If you've connected to LIONS & joined Groups then finding people of interest & potential clients/partners will be much easier.

There are a number of ways of finding people to your network. LinkedIn's advanced search allows you to search members from specific industries & locations. You may also wish to search within your groups, just enter the group you wish to search & click on the members list.

LinkedIn won't allow you to find someone who's out of your network, LinkedIn also won't allow members to connect to people you don't know. This is another good reason to join groups. By simply confirming you share the same group with the person you're looking to connect with, there will be no need to provide an email address when sending an invitation

When sending an invitation it's always advisable to explain why you're looking to contact rather than using the template provided. Reasons to connect could be anything from wanting to keep updated with their services, in order to open your network or to simply network.

You shouldn't be reluctant to connect to other LinkedIn members. If you're concerned about your email address then create a new one. It's advisable to use your company domain instead of a Gmail/Hotmail address. Creating a new email address only takes 2 minutes.

LinkedIn is a mutual relationship & the people you're connecting with may expect to be able to contact you directly, especially if they use their company domain & feel it may be used by you for business development purposes. If you're using a Gmail/Hotmail address, one that's clearly created for your LinkedIn profile, you may find people will remove you as a connection.

If you do receive unwanted newsletters from connections, then simply email them asking to be removed from their mailing list.

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Receiving unwanted Invites.

LinkedIn have a system in place to prevent spammers. Should you receive an invitation from an unwanted networker then it's advisable to click the "Ignore" tab instead of "I Don't Know". Should a LinkedIn member receive around 5-10 "I Don't knows" then their account will be frozen & that person then must contact customer services to have their account unrestricted. Considering a large amount of people use the free version of LinkedIn, it's seen as bad etiquette to restrict another member's account

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Best of luck & happy Networking

Nathan Fortt

ID-Lab