I place a lot of value on my relationships, both personal and business. When it comes to business relationships, I value genuine interactions with people in my industry as well as those with completely different experiences than me.
LinkedIn is the main social network I use. I’m not a fan of Facebook, and I’m simply a lurker on Twitter. But I’ve gotten a lot of value out of my time on LinkedIn.
Having said that, we’ve all gotten those dreaded messages from a stranger, trying to sell us on whatever they’re offering. They’re templated, generic, and sometimes a little slimy.
I wanted to grow my LinkedIn network, but I wanted to do it without being gross. And I’ve found success with a few easy activities that take me about 15 minutes per day.
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Visit
On LinkedIn, you can see who has visited your profile, and in return, others can see when you visit theirs. LinkedIn sends notifications about this activity, and it’s a great low-pressure way to start to get your profile in front of others on LinkedIn.
You can go through and visit profiles manually, but that gets mundane. I use a tool called Dux-Soup, a Chrome extension, to do the profile visits for me. Here’s the process I use.
Choose Profiles to Visit
I have a few different types of people I want to have in my network:
- Marketers and salespeople at small and mid-sized B2B companies in the US
- Editors, journalists, and writers at trade publications in a variety of target industries
- Other marketers, freelancers, and small business owners in Iowa (or beyond, but I focus locally)
LinkedIn has great profile filtering tools to narrow down the types of people you want to connect with.
For example, if I want to see local marketers in Waterloo, Iowa, I can narrow my search to by geography and industry. I also narrow by connection level to see those I’m not connected with yet.
When you apply the filters, LinkedIn will show you profiles that match your parameters.
If you’re doing these searches on a daily basis, LinkedIn will cut you off at some point. When that happens, you can upgrade to LinkedIn Premium (Sales Navigator), including the one-month free trial. Sales Navigator is around $70/month, and it’s up to you if that cost is worth it for your network-building efforts. The free trial, however, is definitely worth it as you dive in.
Run Dux-Soup
Dux-Soup activates when it recognizes a page with a list of LinkedIn profiles. So once you submit your search like I show above, the Dux-Soup extension will turn green. You can then click it and choose “Visit Profiles” and the system will start running. Dux-Soup spreads out visits and makes them look somewhat natural, and pauses for a few minutes after every 20 profiles. You can let Dux-Soup run in the background while you’re checking email, doing some writing, or taking a walk with the dog. Just don’t be doing other stuff on LinkedIn while it’s running.
When you start using Dux-Soup or any other LinkedIn crawler, start small. Stick with 20 profiles per day at the beginning and build up. The free Dux-Soup plan lets you visit up to 100 profiles per day, but work up to that. Even now, I generally stop around 50; I’m running the task daily, so the numbers add up quickly.
Check Visits to Your Profile
When you visit someone’s profile, using Dux-Soup or otherwise, you’ll show up in their “Who Viewed Your Profile” area (as long as both your and their settings are set to show profile information). They’ll also get a notification (in LinkedIn and/or by email, depending on their notification settings) about who has visited their profile. People who check this area frequently will often add you as a connection after they see you visit. At a minimum, they’ll likely click to your profile to check out who has been stalking their profile.
When someone looks at your profile, they’ll then show up in your “Who Viewed Your Profile” area, showing they’re at least somewhat curious about who you are.
Connect
After someone has viewed your profile, it’s time to connect. You can send a connection request with a note about why you’d like to connect.
Notes on Dux Soup
- LinkedIn is not necessarily keen on crawlers like this, but I haven’t run into any issues. Plus, this tool comes into play in one of the later steps as well.
- Make sure your LinkedIn profile’s privacy settings are set to show your name and headline. You have to have your profile open in order to see information about who’s visiting you.
- If you have LinkedIn Premium (like Sales Navigator), you’ll have access to much more robust visit data.
Connect
Profile visits are a passive way to attract new connections. I also use a much more active approach in addition to the profile visits. Dux-Soup does allow you to automatically connect with people, but I use a tool called Octopus CRM for this.
As with profile visits, you choose the people you want to connect with and import them into Octopus CRM. I use the same lists for visits and connections, with most people moving through visits first THEN connect.
Once profiles are imported into Octopus CRM, you can run the Octopus CRM “Connect” automation to send connection requests to your target profiles. You can include a custom welcome message, including first name personalization. I run the connect workflow almost every day, especially weekdays.
Again, LinkedIn isn’t keen on tools like Octopus CRM, but I’m several months in with no issues.
Message
When I connect with people using the Octopus CRM automation, I send a personalized note that I’d like to connect. However, I’ve found that many people don’t see this message. If they do it, most people don’t respond to it. The typical workflow when someone gets a cold invite on LinkedIn looks like: Sees invite, clicks to view profile, either accepts, rejects, or asks why you’re connecting. LinkedIn is pretty open in terms of connecting, especially for those who call themselves “LIONs” or LinkedIn Open Networkers.
So when someone connects with me, I send them another message. This gives them another chance to see my name and profile and start a conversation.
We’ve all gotten those messages after connecting with a stranger on LinkedIn—someone trying to sell you something right off the bat.
Do NOT send messages like that.
Be genuine, be curious, don’t be gross.
I have a few approaches I use with my intro messages:
- A simple “thanks for connecting” message
- A question or observation based on what you see on their profile
- An offer to connect them with anyone in your network
One small tweak I made has been very effective: adding a signature in each message. That gives additional information to complement what my heading and profile show, and gives them a way to find more about me without going to my profile. Here’s what I use:
Megan Horn
B2B Copywriter & Digital Marketer
www.meganhorn.com
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Engage
Once you’re connected to someone and have messaged them, that’s just the beginning. It’s important to stay engaged and present on LinkedIn on an ongoing basis. There are several ways to stay in front of your LinkedIn connections and build relationships.
Continue Message Conversations
When you follow the connect and follow-up flow above, conversations naturally start to happen. You find similarities with your connections and naturally build relationships. In a few short months, I’ve found new referral partners, clients, and straight-up cool people.
A lot of times, the LinkedIn conversations move over to email or a phone call, especially if it seems like there may be a good fit for helping each other out, being referral partners, or working together.
Organize Your Connections
4,000 contacts is a lot. Obviously I don’t personally know each one, but I do like to keep information about my network organized. I do this a few different ways.
Dux-Soup Tags – LinkedIn doesn’t offer built-in functionality for organizing or categorizing your contacts (on the free plan, at least). To help me keep my contacts straight, I use Dux-Soup‘s tagging feature (I told you this tool would come back). Tagging is available on the free Dux-Soup plan, and I use it to categorize contacts into segments like leads, referral partners, clients, influencers, cool people, fellow writers, and more.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lists – If you do choose to invest in LinkedIn Premium, you can use the built-in list-building feature in Sales Navigator. You can build custom lists, and despite the “Sales Navigator” name, the lists don’t have to be sales prospects. Your lists can be referral partners, journalists, industry pros, and more. When you build a LinkedIn Sales Nav list, you can crawl it with Dux-Soup, add the contacts in Octopus CRM, see your contact’s feed activity, send InMail, and more.
My main reason for not relying on Sales Navigator lists is that I don’t want to lose all my contact organization if I choose to stop paying the $70/month subscription.
External CRM or Spreadsheet – Your LinkedIn relationships don’t have to stay in LinkedIn. When I have a good conversation with someone or want to stay in touch, I pop them into my CRM (I use Streak). In my CRM, I have sales pipelines, of course, but I also have reference lists of contacts—referral partners (both to refer to and who refer to me), industry experts, other writers, people I want to stay in touch with, and more. Organizing like this helps me remember to consistently be in touch with the contacts in my network.
Follow-up
One-and-done doesn’t work on LinkedIn. When you connect with people, that’s just the beginning. Work on building the relationship over the time with genuine conversation. The external CRM or spreadsheet can help you track these interactions. Then when it feels right, you can move the conversation to email or even schedule a call to get to know each other better. I use Calendly to make the meeting booking process a bit easier.
Like and Comment
Even though it’s for professional purposes, LinkedIn is still a social network. When people in your network post interesting content, engage with it. Like and react to posts, and comment when you can bring value to the conversation.
The LinkedIn news feed can get overwhelming, especially as your network grows. If you have LinkedIn Premium, you can build lists and see updates just from people in those lists. If you don’t have Premium, you’re at the mercy of LinkedIn’s algorithm. The more active you are, the more LinkedIn learns what you like (and don’t like) to see. As your network grows, spend time in the newsfeed genuinely engaging with content that interests you, and LinkedIn will start to learn and adjust.
Share Your Own Content
LinkedIn isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it network. In addition to continually engaging with content from your network, it’s important to share your own. Share thoughts on your industry, trends, projects you’re working on, and more. When you post high-quality content, you can show up in the newsfeed of your connections where they can engage with you. You can stay top-of-mind and continue to build relationships with your network.
My Daily Tasks
Each weekday, I have a list of LinkedIn tasks I do. I spent 10-15 minutes per day working on connecting and building relationships. Here’s what I do most days:
- Check “Who Viewed Your Profile” area and connect with anyone listed.
- Run Octopus CRM automation to connect with new people.
- Respond to messages from connections.
- Start conversations with a few people in my network.
- Run Dux-Soup automation to visit profiles.
While the automations are running (don’t run them at the same time; do them back to back), I like to get a little writing done. In fact, I’m writing this very sentence as my Octopus CRM automation is building my network.
In addition to my daily tasks, I also schedule organic posts on my LinkedIn profile each week. I try to do about 3 posts per week, and I schedule them all at once through Hootsuite.
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From 1,000 to 4,000 Connections in 3 Months
I started getting purposeful about my LinkedIn growth in March 2020. Yes, that does align with when COVID sent the U.S. into lockdown.
LinkedIn doesn’t have great statistics or reporting. The main way to track progress for this approach is, yes, the number of connections, but also the number of views your profile gets. Here’s how my profile views increased over the course of the three months.
After 1 month of running this strategy:
After 3 months running this strategy:
You can see my latest number if you go to my profile and click “500+ connections” under my name. Who you see will depend on how many connections we have in common…which is a great impetus to connect with me.
Going Beyond the Vanity Number
Yes, my LinkedIn connections have grown, but for me it’s about more than that. It’s about the people I’ve met, conversations I’ve had, and relationships I’ve started.
Here are the other measures I use to determine the success of my efforts:
- Meetings Booked – Since starting my LinkedIn growth efforts, I’ve averaged 4-5 meetings per week. Some of the meetings are with potential clients, but many of them are “get to know you” calls where we hop on, learn about each other, and figure out if/how we can help each other.
- Partnerships – A few of my get-to-know-you meetings have resulted in partnerships and potential partnerships. These partnerships range from working on a small project together all the way to starting a new business or service together.
- New Clients – While I’m not on LinkedIn to sell, I certainly hope my efforts result in new clients. And they have! I have several new clients from connecting with people on LinkedIn.
- Referral Partners – Many of my meetings and connections have become referral partners. Once we learn what the other does, we can usually think of potential connections, both now and in the future. I’ve built up a nice list of people I can refer others to and am on several people’s lists of referral partners.
A note on referrals. A lot of people want or expect referral fees in exchange for connections. I’m not about that. I prefer to maintain an organic referral circle. I don’t ask for referral fees in exchange for making a connection, and I only have a few partners I pay referral fees to (at their request). I much prefer making connections for the sake of making connections—not for the money. Likewise, I want people to refer me because I’m good at what I do, not because they’ll get a kickback.
Balancing Automation With Human Interaction
I’m a big fan of automation, but only when the personalization and human-ness can be retained (like a well-done email series). With LinkedIn growth, I’m comfortable automating the profile views and connections, but that’s as far as I go.
There are tools out there (Octopus CRM and Dux-Soup included) that let you automate message flows, automatically endorse people on LinkedIn, and more. I find empty endorsements to be, well, empty, so I don’t do those at all. And as for messages, after the initial “hey, let’s connect” message, I prefer to handle those manually so I can have a genuine conversation.
For me, it’s all about balance. Find efficiencies that make the work easier, but not at the cost of being slimy and spammy.
My LinkedIn Philosophy
I’m not on LinkedIn to sell. A lot of people use it just to hawk their products and services to anyone who will respond. I’m not there for that. I’m there to network, build relationships, learn, and connect. And yes, ultimately LinkedIn is a marketing tool for me. I do hope to find my ideal clients there. But not by being sleazy or salesy. I want first and foremost to have conversations, and if I’m able to connect with new clients, great.
This philosophy aligns with my general business philosophy—I don’t do the hard sell. I build relationships, learn about potential clients’ pain points, and close the sale only if I can help the client and they can see the value of what I do. I’m lucky that I don’t have to scrounge for business and can focus on helping clients.
Obligatory Call to Action
This is a post about LinkedIn growth, so I’m obviously going to encourage you to connect with me on LinkedIn.
You can also download all the templates and checklists I talk about in this post to implement this strategy for yourself. If you have questions, send them to me here.
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