Building your LinkedIn network is one of the best ways to grow your business online. It serves as a highly targeted group of relevant prospects that you can nurture into leads.
But, before you can leverage content marketing strategies, you need to have a network.
Why not just play the numbers game and send out as many invites as possible?
Well, LinkedIn now limits invitations to about 100 per week.
Therefore, you want those 100 to be as effective and worthwhile as possible.
The goal is to send out connection requests that are likely to be accepted. Fortunately, there are a few strategies that will help make users more likely to accept your request.
Here are some of the top ways to get more acceptance of your connection requests.
Choose Relevant People
It may seem obvious, but consider who you send a request to in the first place. For one, the requests are limited. You don’t want to waste them on people who are not relevant. Furthermore, sending the requests to the right people increases the chances that they accept.
Who is right for a request? Consider your target audience. Be very specific about who you are targeting and what these people look like on LinkedIn. For example, make sure to target the right “job title” within an organization, or the right level of experience, etc.
As a bonus, see who is interacting with your content that you may not know. Or, who are the connections of people who commonly engage with your content? These are both great places to start for sending out requests.
Personalization
This strategy holds true for essentially every aspect of marketing, personalized works better than generic.
When you just send out a bunch of requests without any other information, they won’t be likely accepted by people who don’t know you.
Imagine seeing a random request come through from someone without mutuals. Why are they trying to connect? What do they want? What value can they offer me? Those are just a few of the questions you may have.
That’s why it’s so helpful to send a personalized note with your connection request. This note gives insight into why you want to connect. It doesn’t take long to do either. The note should be short and simple, just a brief introduction and a clear reason for connecting.
Short and Sweet
Sending a note is a great way to get more users to accept, but sending a novel is not. There is a 300 character limit but aim to keep the note shorter. Be direct and to the point. People don’t want to (and won’t) read a novel. The personalized note should be simple and concise.
Improve Your Profile
Most people will head straight to your profile if they see a connection request from someone they don’t know. This is your chance to make the right impression and convince them to accept! If your profile is subpar or unclear, there’s a high chance they just walk away. If you don’t even have a profile picture on your profile or some info about you, why should anyone want to connect with you?
Take the time to improve your profile. You want it to be professional and accurate, clearly stating what you do. Focus on the profile picture, banner image & headline. Those should give a clear picture of how you can help anyone in whatever it is that you do.
Beyond that, you should complete your profile as much as possible. Fill out every section with the most relevant information.
Connect with Active Users
There are a lot of people on LinkedIn that aren’t very active. These people only check the platform once in a while. If you send a non-active person an invite, there’s a good chance they won’t accept it just because they don’t see it.
So, how can you find active users?
One way is to use Sales Navigator if you have it. Using this, you can look for accounts that posted on the platform in the last 30 days.
Another idea is to go to industry influencers. Head to the influencer page or group. Look at their content, and see who is commenting on it. Send requests to the people that recently commented on the influencer’s content. Those are guaranteed to be active on the platform.
Learn from the Past
Figuring out exactly who to send requests to and what to include can be challenging, especially at first. However, as time goes on you will gather more data on what works and what does not work.
Maybe you’ve found a strong introduction line that seems to work every time. Or you begin to get a better sense of who is likely to accept your request.
Learn from the past. Use the information about who accepts your requests to make better ones in the future.
Be Consistent
Given the request limit, it’s not a pure numbers game anymore. Still, 100 requests per week is still a decent chunk each day. You don’t want to waste them. Take advantage by being consistent.
Set aside time each day to send out requests. Staying consistent helps make it a habit, which will only help you improve at finding and sending relevant requests.
Engage First
Here’s an important pro tip for sending out effective requests. If you want to really make a strong impression with someone, interact with their content first.
Comment on a few of their posts with valuable responses. Engage with their content and comments. This helps get your name in front of them. They’ll see it in their notifications. Automatically, this begins to build a bit of rapport.
Then, when you actually go to send the requests, they will already have some sense of who you are. You can even address a post you commented on in your connection request. This makes it even more personal and drastically increases the chances of them accepting.
Implement These Strategies Today
Building your LinkedIn network can be tough, but using these tips you can increase the chances of users accepting your requests. Commit to sending out relevant requests and pay attention to what works well for your brand. In no time you’ll grow a targeted LinkedIn network that you can leverage to grow your brand.
