If you ask any thriving professional what the key to their success is, most of them will tell you it’s all about networking. Regardless of your industry or position, you can’t expect significant career advancements if you’re not connected with other professionals.
One of the best ways to grow your network is using LinkedIn. With 756 million members, LinkedIn is by far the best place to find and connect with the right people from your industry.
However, it’s not enough to simply create a LinkedIn profile and expect connection requests to magically pop out in your notifications.
Here are a few steps you should take if you want to network on LinkedIn more efficiently and grow the number of your connections.
Make sure your profile is fully completed
It goes without saying that your LinkedIn profile can’t be complete without a profile picture. People simply like to put a face on a name both in real life and on social media. On a specialized network that is LinkedIn, you want to be mindful of a picture you choose.
You don’t want to use a picture of your cat or a photo from your last vacation. Make sure that you choose something professional-looking to show that you mean business.
Add as much work-related information you can, from job experience to relevant skills. LinkedIn will even indicate that your profile is not completed until you fill in your photo, position, industry, education, and skills. Try to add all of this information to make your profile more visible to other users.
Don’t forget to add a profile summary
One very important part of the LinkedIn profile that people often overlook is the profile summary. Besides your profile picture and your headline, it’s the first thing other users will see.
You need to make sure that both your headline and LinkedIn summary contain the right keywords so other users can easily find you when searching for someone that matches your description.
Always keep in mind that if your profile is not easily searchable, yall the other networking tips won’t help.
Focus on quality instead of quantity
When trying to expand your LinkedIn network, you always want to focus on the quality of your connections, not just the quantity. Just like any other social media platform, LinkedIn is full of bots and spam accounts. You want to avoid them and focus on connecting with people who truly add value to your network.
Besides, managing a big LinkedIn network can be quite overwhelming, even if you’re careful and restrictive. You can easily lose track of who your connections are and why you added them in the first place.
If you ever wondered how to view connections on LinkedIn and organize your network more efficiently, you can use LinkedIn productivity tools such as LeadDelta that offers a clear overview of your network and allows you to add custom tags and notes, bulk disconnect, export LinkedIn contacts, and easily categorize and declutter your connection list.
Join LinkedIn groups and share your expertise
So, how can you find relevant connections and boost your visibility?
One of the best ways to find like-minded users is by becoming a member of LinkedIn groups. You can join the discussions and share your expertise to put yourself on other members’ radars and make new connections.
Make sure to know who your target audience is and where you can find them. Although you will reach fewer users with a highly targeted approach, you will make sure that the ones you do reach are the right audience for the content you offer, and they will be more likely to become valuable members of your network.
Create unique and original content
Lastly, to get people to want to connect with you instead of chasing them, you want to create unique and engaging content. Creating high-quality content is one of the best ways to garner attention and attract users from your industry to connect with you.
You can use the blog option if you want to reach an even wider network. LinkedIn blog posts are favored by the platform and promoted so they can reach a wider audience. If the content you offer is unique and original, you can definitely attract more people and expand your network.
Conclusion
Networking is a great way to scale up your career, and new connections can open you to a world of new business opportunities. LinkedIn is a great place to create such valuable relationships, but you need to know how to do it right. Make sure that your profile is on point and share valuable insights both on your page and via LinkedIn groups. Always focus on quality instead of quantity, whether you're writing a new piece of content or connecting with new people.
Follow these tips to master networking on LinkedIn in 2021.