5 Proven Strategies to Grow Connections and Generate More Leads on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional social media platform to get more leads connected to your profile by building relationships and becoming an invaluable resource to others.

Discover 5 things you must do to grow your LinkedIn presence rapidly.

1. Optimize Your Profile

If you want to have success on LinkedIn, it’s essential to have a profile that’s professional, search-optimized and client-focused. In other words, your LinkedIn profile must speak to your ideal clients and tell them how you can help them.

First of all, make sure you use the same keywords in your profile that your ideal clients would input when doing a search for someone with your specialty, be strategic in your choice of language. Some of the most important places to include these keywords are in your: Headline, Summary, Current work experience (in the title and description), At least one past work experience (in the title and description) and Skills.

You also need to have a headline that makes people want to click on your profile. Once they get to your profile, you need an enticing summary. Include the following in your summary: One to two paragraphs telling your story: who you are, why do you do what you do, what makes you credible, who your ideal clients are, what problem your ideal clients face, what solutions you offer to solve those problems and call-to-action: what you want them to do next (call, email, connect with you, etc.)

2. Join LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn groups are an excellent place to start to grow your network. LinkedIn currently allows you to join up to 50 groups. However, the vast majority of the groups you join should be the ones your ideal clients are in. To locate potential prospects within each group, enter the group you want to prospect and click on the number of members. Scroll through the group members to see if there is someone you want to invite to connect.

LinkedIn will show all your first-degree connections in the group first and only list 500 members of the group. You may have to use the search box located at the top of the page to find other members who would make good prospects.

{{cta(‘f18e0c6a-64ad-4602-94a6-bc4feb68a79d’)}}

3. Save Successful Advanced Searches

LinkedIn’s advanced search tool is also great for finding potential prospects. It offers excellent functionality with the ability to search for people by keywords, relationship, groups, location and industry, which are all available with a free account. The people who come up will not always be perfectly targeted, but it will narrow your search down. Make sure to remove first-degree connections from your search parameters, since they are already part of your network.

LinkedIn will send you an email once a week when someone fits the search criteria you set up. You can have up to three Saved Searches with a free account.

4. Create A Sequence Of Messages

It is not enough to just grow your network. Build a relationship with your new connections. Send a sequence of value-based messages to your prospects. Always take the time to personalize each message appropriately before sending it. The more individualized your messages, the better the results. While this may seem counter-intuitive, none of these messages should include any of your products or services. It is extremely important that you do not include anything that could be perceived as spam or a sales pitch in your messages. This is the fastest way to kill any potential sale.

The Message Sequence

• After your initial connection request, send a message thanking the person for connecting. If feasible, include one valuable resource in this first message

• Then, depending on your goals and industry, prepare one or two relationship-building messages to send out over the next couple of weeks. You can also send another resource or two, such as relevant stats or helpful tips.

• After a couple of messages, if you feel like you have established some rapport, move the relationship offline. Suggest a phone call, Skype call or in-person meeting. No relationship with a potential prospect should be kept solely on LinkedIn—or on any online platform, for that matter.

If you want to turn a prospect into a client, a real conversation must take place. The only potential exception is if you’re selling low-priced online products.

5. Share Content With Your Network

Use LinkedIn to establish yourself as an industry expert and an invaluable source of information. Create and curate information that’s of interest to your target market. Here are a number of places to look for content: LinkedIn Pulse, Twitter, related groups on social media sites, company blogs, newsletters of relevant online magazines, companies and industry sites. Spend even a small part of your day searching relevant sites. That way you stay current with industry trends and news, and find articles to share with your network.

Whenever you post an update, your connections will see it in their news feed and, depending on their settings, get it in an email. This keeps you top of mind and positions you as an expert in your field. Posting in LinkedIn groups is another way to establish your credibility, while helping you build relationships with potential prospects within a group.

{{cta(‘377e5a1e-5e51-4f92-afe1-66911d82584c’)}}