8 Ways to Build a Professional Network on LinkedIn
Anyone serious about networking has heard of LinkedIn—the world’s largest professional network, with over 850 million members. Professionals from all walks of life use it to connect with colleagues, potential employers, and experts in their field.
While the reach of LinkedIn is undeniable, simply signing up does not guarantee automatic network growth. You will need to put in time and effort to realize the full benefits it has to offer. This article discusses eight tips to make your efforts more productive and help you network better on LinkedIn.
1. Build a Solid Profile
Your LinkedIn profile is both your introduction and your resume. Before accepting your connection request, people will scrutinize your profile to get an idea of who you are, what you do, your skills, and the things that interest you. Therefore, you must craft an impressive profile to draw others to you.
One way it’s possible to do this is by completing your profile. An incomplete profile projects you as having little or nothing to say about yourself, which is not beneficial for building relationships. Consequently, your profile should include a professional-friendly-looking profile picture, a list of all your relevant previous jobs, educational history, skills, and a personal summary.
Otheressential LinkedIn profile tipsyou can incorporate are double-checking your grammar, being clear but concise, and using paragraphs and bullet points to break up the monotonous text.
2. Engage With People’s Posts
Commenting, liking, and sharing others’ posts is a great way to build a relationship before sending a connection request. Your sustained interaction with people’s posts tells them you are passionate and knowledgeable about your field. Consequently, they will be more open to consent when you make a connection request.
Additionally, your comment, if insightful, may kick-start a whole new conversation in the comments section, leading people to reach out to you first.
3. Create Custom Connection Requests
Connection requests are your first interaction with a potential contact, so make them as polished as possible to leave a lasting first impression.
Whatever you do, don’t send out a connection request without customizing it. If you do, your recipient receives a generic “I’d like to join your network” message, which provides zero context, is uncompelling, and shows that you didn’t take the time to go through their profile.
Instead, create unique connection requests for each of your potential contacts. you may do that by introducing yourself, mentioning how you discovered them, what interests you about them, and why you initiated the connection request.
Remember, the goal of networking on LinkedIn isn’t to grow your numbers, but rather to discover and develop meaningful connections with people who can help you grow professionally. So, don’t be afraid to spend a little time digging through your potential contact’s profile to scrounge up information that will help you craft the perfect connection request.
4. Follow-Up In-Person Meetings With LinkedIn Connections
Say you attend a work function and meet a colleague from another company with whom you have a stimulating conversation about industry news and happenings. You have on your hands a potential contact. Don’t stop at just swapping business cards. Ask them if they’d like to connect on LinkedIn, and send them a connection request.
If the situation does not allow for an immediate connection—for example, at a career fair, where you have to meet many people, you can instead take notes of all the people you meet and the conversations you have. You can then send them a connection request later that day, mentioning where you met and what you talked about.
5. Join LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn groups unite professionals in the same industry or people with similar interests and careers. You can ask questions, share news and advice, or converse about topics that interest you. These groups are a goldmine of potential contacts, and by joining, you’ll encounter several new connections that will enrich your network.
Finding a group that matches your career interest is easy. Simply search for keywords related to your interests, and LinkedIn will return the closest results. From there, you can scrutinize the group home pages to see which ones align with your career. Upon becoming a group member, you can view other members and send them connection requests.
Of course, it’s not enough to just join the group. To maximize your chances of forging connections, you must actively interact with other members by asking and answering questions, posting, and following LinkedIn group best practices.
6. Create Content Regularly
Publishing on LinkedInis a fantastic way to boost your profile’s credibility and present yourself as a worthwhile connection. The articles you write will appear on your connections’ and followers’ news feeds and can even motivate them to initiate a connection request.
If you want this to work for you, you must be intentional about your content. It must be useful to your readers, accurate, free from grammatical errors, and easy to read. Also, take note ofcontent you should never post on LinkedIn, such as personal information or religious sentiments. Thus, consistency is key, so ensure you post regularly.
Also, tailor your articles to the LinkedIn demographic by writing professionally. Add a visual layer with rich media such as infographics and pictures. You can also use hashtags in the article to ensure that the right eyes see it, thereby improving your odds of creating meaningful connections.
7. Share Your LinkedIn Profile URL
If you have an industry-related blog or publish in a professional journal, you can increase your connections by leaving your LinkedIn URL. You can find your profile URL at the top of your LinkedIn homepage, and by displaying it, people who are impressed by your work can easily find you and initiate a connection with you.
To increase the quality of connections you get through your profile URL and avoid spam, you canmanage your LinkedIn profile visibilityto control how much information is shared with the public.
8. Maintain and Engage Your Current Connections
Networking is not complete once your connection accepts your request. On the contrary, it’s just beginning. You must maintain your LinkedIn relationships even when you are not actively leveraging them so that you can access them without any awkwardness or guilt when you do need them.
Maintaining your network doesn’t have to be anything grand. It can be as simple as liking, commenting, and sharing your contacts' posts. It could also include sending them a congratulatory message on their birthday or discussing industry topics.
Grow and Prune Your LinkedIn Connections
Networking on LinkedIn doesn’t have to be difficult or frustrating. By incorporating the tips above, you’ll be able to build meaningful connections which will serve you long into your career. However, remember that not all your connections will further your career, so you must be able to distinguish which connections are valuable to you and which ones are not.
Sometimes you’ll get flooded with LinkedIn connection requests. So how do you decide which ones to accept and which ones to ignore?
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