- December 16, 2018
- Posted by: Con P. Sweeney
- Categories: LinkedIn, Social Media
OK, you’re engaging and publishing on LinkedIn and you’re experiencing reasonable organic growth with your connections from it.
Now, how about going out and soliciting new connections on LinkedIn?
Have you been doing any of that lately?
Let’s discuss it!
Organic growth on LinkedIn or any social media channel is a very, very good thing!
But, for most of us, organic growth is gradual, takes time, and is subject to the whims of LinkedIn’s algorithms.
So, what do you do?
You go out and ask people to connect with you!
But, first, a word of caution before you go out and start soliciting connections on LinkedIn.
Don’t just start asking people to connect with you willy-nilly.
Have a reason for asking someone to connect with you, especially if you haven’t met before.
Make a personalized connection request and don’t use the default option. (Yeah, lots of folks still do, believe it or not!)
Have a set of criteria to identify potential connections.
These will vary by person but several basic ones are:
- Is their profile complete and professional? (Like including a profile picture)
- Do they have a reasonably sized network?
- Are they engaging on LinkedIn regularly? (In other words, are they showing any signs of life?)
- What value would you bring them?
- What value would they bring you?
- And, a personal one of mine, are they a second degree connection?
As in all things relating to social media, you should proceed in a disciplined manner.
A few pointers here:
- Use your criteria, determined above, as keywords for search purposes
- Set aside a set period of time each week to do this
- Keep track of the requests that you send out
- Give yourself targets and learn what your hit rate is over time
- I’m repeating myself here because this is important, personalize your request!
A few further caveats:
Remember that you have a lifetime limit of 3,000 connection requests on LinkedIn.
Therefore, go slow with your requests and don’t use them up all at once!
Always leave yourself a cushion.
You’re permitted a lifetime limit of 30,000 first degree connections on LinkedIn.
Once upon a time this was a very big number, but LinkedIn has been around for a while and many people are starting to bounce up against that figure. (Hopefully, Microsoft will help out here.)
If you do hit the limit there is a process to appeal for more.
However, I hear it’s cumbersome and only yields a few hundred more connections.
Withdraw connection requests that go unanswered after a certain period of time. (Mine is six months.)
Like all social media, LinkedIn requires continual attention to be successful with.
Don’t be passive and wait for connections to come to you!
Go out and find them!
That’s it for now!
Please check-out my 8 step approach for developing a social media program to get some more ideas on how to use social media.
Also, never forget to reach out to either ask questions or to ask for help from someone like myself!
In the meantime, thank you for following and reading my blog!
I look forward to any and all comments that you may have. I will reply to any comments made to this blog post as promptly as I can.