A Jump Start for Your LinkedIn Networking
This article will be great for new people giving them some ideas for jump starting there networking activities. However, if you are a veteran networker you can do these same things with great results.
Open your networking status
If you are not an open networker,” someone willing to allow anyone who wishes to connect you should consider changing your strategy. I won’t go into a lot of detail as there are many articles in this blog that give the debate on this issue.
However, the basic premise is that you will make yourself more visible and thus have a better chance of running into someone who can use what you do.
To do this you need to do a couple of things.
Make it know in your profile that you accept invitations – in the header and contact settings sections of your profile.
Join a couple of the open networking groups – this will usually provide you with a number of new connections each week.
Go through your account setting and set to yes anything that allows people to communicate with you. I do have a free report on this in my networking success kit – the link is under my picture above.
Send out an “I want to help message” to your network.
As I have stated frequently I highly recommend that you don’t mass mail anything on LinkedIn and since your connections have not opted into your mailing list you will need to do this by hand one at a time.
Doing this actually has an advantage as you can cherry pick who you send the message to although I would suggest to you that that isn’t necessary as you may find gold in some very unsuspecting places.
If you create template message in a text editor you can actually do quit a few of these messages in a reasonable time just cutting and pasting. Once in your connections section of your LinkedIn account as you click on the connection you will get a link to send a message if that is available for that contact.
Here is what I recommend for the message.
Tell them why you’re reaching out.
Sample
I was just going through my connections and thought I would reach out to you.
Offer something of value
You can offer you expertise or simply a link to something useful – this blog for instance. Obviously, you don’t have to use my blog as your offer, but whatever you do offer make sure it’s valuable, FREE, and it has very wide appeal to LinkedIners.
Sample
Let me start by just giving you this great link to information on how to make your LinkedIn networking efforts more profitable. LINK
Ask how you can help
Sample
You never know what value your connections are until you engage them. So to start out I would just like to offer to help you in any way I can. Please let me know if you need an introduction or advice related to my expertise – I am happy to help.
Then close the message with a thank you.
Summary
Just doing these simply things will increase your visibility and quite probably get you engaged with a couple of your connections. There’s no guaranteed this will get you business but over time you will probably profit more than you can imagine.
One final note, don’t forget to keep track of which connections you have sent this to so that you don’t duplicate latter when you go to send out more.
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