How to increase your LinkedIn connections

As you know, LinkedIn is a great place to connect with professionals just like you but do you know how to increase your LinkedIn connections to grow a large network?

The number of connections you have plays a crucial role in the search result other professionals make. Your profile will not show up if you are not connected to that person to either the 1st, 2nd or 3rd degree.

Strategically, the only way to increase your odds of appearing in search result is to connect regularly with more people. The goal is to reach the magic number of 500+ connections. Past this number, LinkedIn will not display the exact number of connections you have. They use the count as an indicator of other professionals willing to work and connect with you.

There are a few easy steps you can take in order to get closer to 500+ connection and I am going to show you how.

In order to make a new connection on LinkedIn, you must either be a colleague, a classmate, a friend or must have done some business together. If you can’t select any of these options, you must know that person’s email address.

Now with that said, you want to welcome new people looking at your profile to connect with you. The best way to do that is to advertise your email address in your LinkedIn summary section. It is one of the first part, visitors see on your profile. You want to make sure they will see it right away, so it is best to write your email at the top of your summary. You can write something like:

“I welcome networking opportunities. Please use pierreguez@gmail.com for connection request."

Let your Twitter followers know you want to connect with them on LinkedIn. Share your LinkedIn profile in your bio or in your website link.

Many people on Twitter are also looking to connect on LinkedIn, so feel free to tweet your LinkedIn profile to your followers. If you want your tweet to attract people who aren't following you yet, you need to add a few hashtags with your tweet. Here are a few examples of what you can write.

“Connect with me on #LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/pierreguez #Network #SocialMediaMarketing"

“I’m happy to #connect with my followers on #LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/pierreguez #Network #SocialMediaMarketing"

Just like yourself, there are a lot of Twitter users who are looking to connect with their followers; do a quick search and add them on LinkedIn.

The Twitter search tool can be a good place to start but there are other search tools that more efficient, such as https://moz.com/followerwonk This website let's you search Twitter users bio and sort through the people you may want to add in your industry.

This website is also a great tool for finding new Twitter users to follow in your field of work. See my other blog post: 6 ways to improve your Twitter profile.

Another easy way to promote your LinkedIn profile is to add your profile link in your email signature.

In order to increase your chances of people accepting your connection request, you should write a personalised message. The LinkedIn generic message is a good start but it is very impersonal and it gets old very fast. People will really appreciate the fact that you took the time to right a personal message to them.

In your message you want to explain how you know them, (in this case Twitter) and why you want to connect with them. Here is an example:

“Hi John,

My name is Pierre and I follow you on Twitter. I really liked your last article on Facebook marketing tips and would love to connect and follow your work. I run my own business in social media marketing and I am always looking to improve my skills. Keep up the good work! All the best.

Pierre Guez"

In my experience, most people advertising their LinkedIn profile are happy to connect with you 99% of the time.

LinkedIn groups are a great way to find other professionals with the same interest. The goal of these groups is to learn tips and tricks from other professionals in the same field as you by sharing relevant information.

Do a search for various subjects you are interested in and join these groups. Once you find a group to join, there are several things you should do. You can start a conversation by asking questions, sharing good articles, participating in conversations, liking and commenting on posts.

The goal is to become active in your group, and the more active you are, the more likely people are going to check your profile and add you. Once you master this step, you may consider creating you own group. People are even more likely to connect with you directly if you are the group owner.

LinkedIn has a publishing platform called Pulse in which you can write and publish your own article. The articles are all attached to your LinkedIn Profile.

The biggest advantage of this platform is the entire LinkedIn community, not just your connections, can see your posts. People reading your article can like and comment on it and they can easily add you in their connections.

LinkedIn  Pulse is a great way to attract a broader audience.

As I mentioned, a lot of people are looking to connect with other professionals on LinkedIn via Twitter. As you may know, Twitter has a feature in which you can create a list and add Twitter users to it.

I created a Twitter list called “Connect on LinkedIn"

This is a list of people I have connected with on LinkedIn by finding their Twitter profile. This is an ongoing process and I am adding people to that list everyday. The list currently has over 450 people and it keeps growing.

I invite all my readers to check this list and to add all these people on LinkedIn. You are more than welcome to follow the list, so you can add more people to your LinkedIn as this list grows. If you would like to be added to this list, please let me know by sending me a direct message on Twitter.

Everyone can hand out a their business cards but how many of them are you going to find a resume on it? Adding your LinkedIn profile to your business cards, invite people to check out your professional experience after meeting them in person. This may help you forge a bond with a potential client.

This concludes my 10 steps to grow your LinkedIn connections. You can follow all these steps to grow your personal LinkedIn account and these steps can also be applied to grow your LinkedIn company page.

Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, if you haven’t done it already.  Connect with me Pierre Guez

Have you used any of these tactics to grow your LinkedIn network? How are you growing your network? Let us know in the comments below.

Please let me know what you think about this article by leaving me a comment.