LinkedIn Networking 101: How to Get Up To 500+ LinkedIn Connections in 30 Days

Simple Steps to Get More Connections On LinkedIn

Is your business on LinkedIn yet? If not, you are leaving potential business opportunities on the table. And if your business is already on LinkedIn, how many connections do you currently have?

With over 100 million members, largely composed of key business decision makers in small and big organisations alike, building relationships on LinkedIn continues to be a critical part of any business’ social media strategic plan. Everyday on LinkedIn new business deals are got, joint ventures are got and leads are generated. The power of of LinkedIn lies in the number of your connections (followers) and the relationship you build with them. However, the first step lies with getting invites for connection and connecting with other businesses. In this post, you’ll discover the 2 effective methods of getting more connections on LinkedIn.

The saying that “the size of your network is the size of your net-worth” holds true on LinkedIn – every single day, new deals and sales are made through LinkedIn Social Networking.

In this post, you’ll discover, step by step, two simple, yet effective techniques to rapidly add up to 500 new LinkedIn connections within the next 30 days. This is the first in 2 part series – all together (part 1 and 2), you will discover 8 different techniques to get more followers on LinkedIn FAST.

4 Business Benefits of LinkedIn Networking

In LinkedInfluence, Lewis Howes revealed that there are 4 compelling reasons why you should not ignore LinkedIn social networking in the scheme of your online lead and sales generation:

1. Executives from ALL Fortune 500 Companies are registered on LinkedIn!
2. 45% of LinkedIn’s members are considered the major decision makers for their companies. (Twitter and Facebook account for only 24-29%!). That means you have a chance to put your business right in front of the people who make purchase decisions, no middle-man.
3. LinkedIn holds the record for the Highest Average Household Income over all other Social Networking sites at over $109,000 per member! (that means networks in LinkedIn have high net-worth).
4. There are no distractions! On LinkedIn, you’ll only find high-calibre individuals with a business mind-set, focused on networking for results!

…And the best thing is that it costs nothing to use LinkedIn social networking platform to find and connect with your target customers. Besides, you have a chance to get referrals and new business from your LinkedIn network.

Now you have more than enough reasons to get your business and brand on LinkedIn, and also start connecting with other businesses. This post will show you how to get new LinkedIn connections BUT the dynamics and step by step Blueprint for converting those connections to customers and several methods to make money from Linked are covered by Lewis in LinkedInfluence.

2 Sure-fire Ways to Get More Connections (Followers) on LinkedIn Fast

To start building your connections on LinkedIn, these two methods will get you a daily flow of LinkedIn invites daily and a huge follower increase, even if you have zero followers presently.

Method #1: Make Your Brand Easy to Find on LinkedIn Search (Profile Tips)

If more people can find you on LinkedIn search, the more people will request to connect with you. Therefore you should create a presentable profile that describes your skillsets completely, ensuring to use industry keywords.

Wear the hat of your prospective client when writing your LinkedIn profile, think the words s/he will be searching for and be sure to include those on your profile.

Two examples of how to write good LinkedIn profiles can be found here:

• Chris Brogan’s LinkedIn Profile Tips – how to make your LinkedIn profile work for you;
• Guy Kawasaki’s LinkedIn Profile Extreme Makeover Create your own professional LinkedIn profile using the step by step recommendations made to Guy by LinkedIn designer – on what he needed to do to overhaul his LinkedIn profile to a more professional one. By the way, Guy Kawasaki is one of LinkedIn power users and a LinkedIn staff pointed to him that his (then) LinkedIn profile was not at par.

IMPORTANT NOTES For Creating LinkedIn Profiles:

• Ensure to rename your profile link to your name or company name – make it memorable (think SEO and findability)
• Rename your “website” to a short description of your website or service – a name that people are likely to use to find you. Never leave it at the default “website”.
• Search-optimize (SEO) your LinkedIn profile (see tips below for how to do that)

How to Search Optimize (SEO) Your LinkedIn Profile

As you may or may not know, many serious and ready buyers resort to the search engines for finding providers. LinkedIn members use the LinkedIn search feature. If you optimize your LinkedIn profile, you can outsell your competitors, no matter the business you’re in.

Would you like to be easily found by your ideal clients when they search for service providers or product creators on LinkedIn? Below is a step by step video tutorial, from Hubspot on how to SEO-optimize your LinkedIn profile in order to increase the likelihood of being found by potential clients, on LinkedIn.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0glUGk81Kyg&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Method #2: Join A LinkedIn “Open Networkers” Group To Quickly Expand Your Network

This particular method alone is so powerful that it can get you up to 500 new LinkedIn connections (followers) in less than 30 days.

LinkedIn is strict about intruding other people’s privacy in the name of connection invites – it’s advisable to only invite the people you know or are “open to invites” ELSE you risk them flagging your invite as “Report Spam” and may get banned by LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Open Networker groups (LION, for short) are organised groups of people who want to mutually and rapidly grow their networks without violating LinkedIn’s Terms of use. Every member agrees not to hit “IDK” on invites from other members.

How LinkedIn Open Networker Groups work to get more connections fast?

Every week, these groups send out an “Invite Me List” to members and all you need to do is to upload all the names to your LinkedIn page, using the steps – similar to Facebook method of uploading contact list. The good thing is that all members agree not to click members’ invites as “Report Spam” – they all have one common goal – accept invites from members).

NOTE: You can click “archive”, for any fellow Open Networker invite request you do not want to connect with. If it’s archived, you may want to connect with that person in the future. However, the more people you connect with, the more you’ll show up in LinkedIn searches. That’s because LinkedIn searches the people connected with your 1st and second level connections, whenever you do a search.

How to Find Open Networker Groups on LinkedIn

To search for an “Open Networkers” group, use the following commands on LinkedIn search box (selecting Group search):

• open networker
• open networker + YOURKEYWORD (example: “open networker real estate”)
• LION
• LinkedIn Open Networker
• Invite me list

Some Top Open Networker/ ‘Invite Me’ Groups To Start From

Below are 3 of the best top LinkedIn Open Networkers’ groups.  They post weekly updated “invite me’ lists that members can use to mass invite other open networker members:

• Toplinked.com
• InvitesWelcome.com (Open Networking)
• LIONS – LinkedIn Open Networkers

*Some of those Open Networker groups also have websites – be sure to join both their websites and the groups on LinkedIn.

**Those are some of the ones I have used previously. Be sure to check out if there are any LinkedIn Open Networker groups specifically for your niche: for example – there are open networker groups for “real estate’ professionals/ businesses.

After joining a LinkedIn Open Networker group, do the following 3 things:

• #1: Let Group Members Know You Are Open To Invites
  • Go to each of the Open Networker groups you joined and leave a message that you are open to new connection invites; also mention the kind of people you are interested in accepting invites from – that helps to ensure you get only targeted LinkedIn followers from your niche and related niches.
• #2: Let the Public Know You Are Open to Invites
  • Stating somewhere on your profile that you are an open Networker (or LION, for short) and welcome all invites will score you more LinkedIn invites from time to time.
• #3: Scrutinize Invites Before Accepting
  • It’s good practice to first check profiles of invites you receive, to be sure that you’ll be interested to connect with the persons. Note that if they are not your exact match, someone else 6 degrees away from them (or less) are likely to be, PLUS your direct connection can introduce you to a valuable contact who is on their first level connection. I used this strategy PLUS “Invite Me List” from Open Networker Groups, to kick-start my other LinkedIn profile.
• #4: Archive Any Invites You Do Not Feel Like Accepting

• You don’t have to accept every invite you get, if you don’t want to, archive the ones you don’t want to connect to. Do NOT click “Ignore” or “I Don’t Know You (IDK)” – open networkers’ code is against that. Maybe, in the future you may want to accept an archived invite.
• WHY PEOPLE ON LINKEDIN ACCEPT ALMOST ALL INVITES: THE 6 DEGREES OF SEPARATION AWAY FROM YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER – if your direct LinkedIn contact is not your ideal customer, his own LinkedIn contacts may be, and you can ask him/ her for referrals, which is where the power of LinkedIn lies.
  

• LinkedIn has a feature called “Introduction” and because LinkedIn reports your connections breakdown down to the profile and numbers of people in your first level and second level connection and down, by an arrow visual mapping. Perhaps, you want to connect with a particular market or company that you know uses your service or product.
• If you search LinkedIn by people, you are likely to find your first level connection (who is not anywhere close to being your ideal client) is connected on first level to an influencer that may get you tons of business if you connect to them.
• That’s where you’ll need to ask that first level to an introduction to that person. Usually, LinkedIn members are happy to introduce you to their connections.

This post was written as part of the Word Carnival. Read more great posts on the topic of Business Relationships by our other Carnie Bloggers.

Next Steps: Action Items For You

That’s all on part 1 of this “Tips for Increasing LinkedIn Connections” series. Part 2 will be on 6 more strategies to get more connections (followers) fast on LinkedIin.

I thought that you’d be thinking of how to put all those LinkedIn Connections Getting Started tips together. All reading and no action will not make you a connected business person. So here are 3+2 steps to making a Wow Presence that attracts customers/ clients on LinkedIn.

1. Setup your LinkedIn profile – use the guidelines in step 1, provided to Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki by Linkedin designer;
2. Join at least 2 of the top Open Networkers group (more is fine) and start uploading the “Invite Me Lists” weekly – that should get you up to 500 new LinkedIn connections within the next 30 days (if you are consistent);
3. Invite me to connect with you on LinkedIn by clicking here: Stella on Linkedin;
4. Get LINKEDINFLUENCE if you would like to learn how the successfuls are generating business leads/ customers and sales from LinkedIn networking. Else, what will you do with your new 500+ LinkedIn Connections, if you’re a small business owner?

If you liked these LinkedIn tips I shared with you here, then I highly recommend you get the LinkedInfluence advanced LinkedIn training where Lewis will walk you through how to do more with LinkedIn and start profiting from your large LinkedIn connections.

So, Click the image below to start learning from the LinkedInfluence, steps to profit from LinkedIn.

As always, thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments and hearing how your LinkedIn contacts are increasing.

Comment and Share: If you enjoyed reading this post, please help a friend learn how to get more LinkedIn followers.

Stella