How to build a strong network on LinkedIn efficiently?

If you are looking to market your product or brand in the Social Media, then comes in mind a few
networking sites.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest are a few of them on my personal list.
But, what would be your strategy
relationship in the B2B (Business to Business)
choice which had helped me to grow my network by building the right connections.
Only LinkedIn helps you to generate
considered to be smaller than other Social networks.
In comparison to other Social Media
knowledge about their industry and they do not come in to this platform
happenings.
Most of the B2B Companies writes Blog
provides you with more traffic and
Above mentioned graph demonstrates
Today LinkedIn counts over more than
such a strong network of professionals all over the world how
stay away from this network?
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
LinkedIn Company Blog
Lead Generation of a B2B Company through
oking to market your product or brand in the Social Media, then comes in mind a few
Google+, Pinterest are a few of them on my personal list.
ur strategy if you needed to improve your Business or to build a professional
B2B (Business to Business) Industry? I personally recommend LinkedIn to be
had helped me to grow my network by building the right connections.
s you to generate over 80% of B2B leads than any other Social Media even
smaller than other Social networks.
In comparison to other Social Media’s, LinkedIn users are looking to learn more about products,
and they do not come in to this platform for sharing their personal
ompanies writes Blogs to promote their business, but I strongly
and leads in comparison to other channels if marketed properly
demonstrates the power of LinkedIn.
more than 400 Million Users, now that is something really amazing. With
such a strong network of professionals all over the world how could someone serving B2B customers
FaceBook Twitter
Lead Generation of a B2B Company through
Social Media's
Lead Generation of a B2B
Company through Social
Medias
oking to market your product or brand in the Social Media, then comes in mind a few
build a professional
I personally recommend LinkedIn to be the best
other Social Media even though it is
about products, gather
for sharing their personal
strongly believe LinkedIn
er channels if marketed properly.
now that is something really amazing. With
could someone serving B2B customers
Lead Generation of a B2B
Company through Social

As I had mentioned LinkedIn to be the better choice for B2B customers to generate business, learn to
educate your connections with your Industry value knowledge rather than directly reaching out your
connections and selling out your products. LinkedIn doesn’t suit you if you are looking to sell your
products to Consumers.
Key Points of using LinkedIn for Business:
First start to grow your network on LinkedIn.
We all know that professionals over the world join LinkedIn to build a smarter network which could
directly benefit their business but before starting out to generate premium leads (which leads to Sales)
learn to get connected to the right professional.
I firmly believe that following this post would definitely help you build the right quality relationships and
a bigger network on LinkedIn.
1. Determine with whom you should be trying to connect
If you do some research on other sites and blog about how to market yourself on LinkedIn, most of them
provide you with two opinions.
First one is to reject the invitations of the request you receive from an unknown person or someone
who is not right for your business, as it helps you to maintain your profile as “high quality” one.
Unlike other networks LinkedIn doesn’t have any kind of a limitation for the number of connections you
make, so definitely it will not affect your results even if you have a large network of “low quality”
connections.
Second Opinion is to add as many as possible to improve your network and it seems you are more active
in this platform.
In my scenario I would definitely love to follow the second method:
1. Accept the Invitation even if you receive a request from someone from a different Industry, in
future they could be of any help for you.
2. Even if the person is not the right for your industry, it doesn’t mean that his connections are not.
Getting connected with the person will show your profile higher on their connection searches, if
you would have the noticed the link with “People You May Know”.
3. The higher your connections, you are more likely to be show up in the “Most Viewed Profile”
which eventually leads to attract more connections.

Implement this following strategy before you start getting connected with people who you don’t
know well with just a few simple steps.
Step #1- Learn to recognize spam profiles:
Once you start hitting with a decent number of connections, your profile begins to receive a lot of
Invitation requests.
Many a times you might even receive requests from Spammers.
So once you accept those connections you start getting promotional mailings about their products
into your mailbox or through messaging platform of LinkedIn.
These unwanted mails from your low quality connections may hurt you.
There is a chance to lose your potential customers if they see that you are connected with the
spammers.
It’s almost easy to identify these fake profiles.
Always make it a point that before accepting a request from someone you don’t know, review their
profile.
Spammers usually:
• Don’t have profile pictures.
• They commonly use fake photos of attractive men or women.
• Use a company name instead of personal name.
• Use a logo instead of a profile photo.
• They have very limited information.
Spammers commonly create hundreds of accounts at a time, which looks similar.

Just go through the invitation before you accept, you will be able to find the fake profile in just seconds.Just go through the invitation before you accept, you will be able to find the fake profile in just seconds.Just go through the invitation before you accept, you will be able to find the fake profile in just seconds.

Just reject such Invitations and then
Step #2 – Start by connecting
After creating LinkedIn profile,
worked.
If you have a lot of experience
potential connections if you are
It is easy to build connections from
That’s why it’s better to start getting
Before building up connections
with your Family, Friends and
Your Profile would be reported
you should be aware of before ge
such Invitations and then move on...
connecting with everyone you know:
profile, start getting connected with the people whom
experience you will get much connections, and it is
are not familiar with LinkedIn yet.
from 250 to 300 rather than 50 to 100.
getting connected with people whom you know
connections with the professionals from your industry,
Colleagues.
reported as spam if you send tons of invitations, this
getting connected with the people you don’t know.
whom you have
not easy to get
.
industry, get connected
is the only thing
know.

Step #3 – Encourage people to connect in all possible places:
As mentioned above LinkedIn is the best option for you to generate leads when it comes to
B2B market, as it helps you straight out in getting connected to the right people who have
been looking out for your product.
Here I would like to show you an example on how to build both On and Off LinkedIn
network.
Add you LinkedIn profile link to your email signature and if you do send a lot of emails on
regular basis you would be receiving new connections through this method.
Next in your message make it very clear that why would you love to get connected to the
person to whom you are sending out the Invite. Be clear and precise.

Finally add your LinkedIn profile to each and every page of your Blog

2. Sharing content does
Your goal should not be only on
Prospects on the right time.
One thing you have to do is to always
When you make a post on LinkedIn,
your posts are educational and informative
Unlike other Social Media platforms
your posts
Share your posts at the right time:
There is not much issue about the
doesn’t make any difference in driving
more than drive traffic
on building good relationships but to turn your
always engage by posting or sharing contents on
LinkedIn, it will be shown to your followers and connections,
informative peoples start following you.
platforms your followers over here at LinkedIn definitely
time:
the time when you post. Even though there is a
driving traffic.
connections into
on LinkedIn.
connections, and if
definitely won’t miss
a best time, but it

The most important thing is you have to post regularly and engage your targeted audience in
you post.
Next what comes into mind is “What do I Post”?
Although you can post about your personal job, or about something educated to tackle your
targeted customers.
The posts content should be interested to your targeted customers.
You can post contents created by others, or share others contents.
Benefit #1 – You stay at the front of their minds:
By regular posts you are right away positioning yourself as an expert in your industry.
When you consistently posts about industry, your connections and followers sees it, so
whenever they are looking a help from your industry definitely you name would be coming
first in their mind.
Let’s consider that you are a fitness consultant. One of the person in your connection who
had been working in this Industry is looking for a consultant who could help their
customer’s stay fit.
Guess what your post has done the magic?
This method of content sharing is a strategy which pays you off in the long run.

Benefit #2 – You drive traffic:
When you post anything it immediately drive traffic towards your profile and if any external
link given to your website or blogs.
Your posts should be very useful and interesting to the people in your connections.
If you copy others contents, you would not get more traffic and if it’s your own post you
would get appreciation from you connections.
Definitely you won’t get benefits if you post others content.
Benefit #3 – You have the opportunity to engage:
One important lesson that I had learned is to build a strong bonding with your connections.
When you build a personal rapport with your connections, that’s the time when these
connections of yours turn into customers.
If you need something necessary and you friend sells it; won’t you go ahead and purchase it
from him?
Definitely, YES!!!
So maintaining a professional relationship in personal level helps you to achieve your goal
from LinkedIn.

And the right people are the ones who always likes you posts and who asks questions in your
comments.
Once you are able to start a conversation with them through the comment of your post you
could also send invitations to them.
Direct communications only improves the strength of relationship so avoid communicating
private messages in the comment section rather starts a private conversation with them.
Benefit #4 – Some content will help you convert connections into customers:
Some people may not know exactly what do you deal with.
A good and valuable content will help you to educate more and more about your product.
Do not continuously keep on posting about your product where you urge people to buy it but
make it in such a way that the read should be both interesting and informational. Always try
to educate your customers. It helps people to understand more about your expertise.
3. The one element of networking those LinkedIn users often forget…
If we go for a networking event we do make sure to distribute our business cards but
sometimes it doesn’t pays off. Have you ever wondered why?
Don’t get hurt, its quiet natural.

It’s not the matter of meeting new people from your industry
The best part is to build a relation with whom you meet.
After a networking event you can send an e-mail or give them a call after the meeting.
This is how you truly add someone to your network, and that person becomes someone you
can contact when needed.
How to do real networking on LinkedIn:
Lot of attention should be focused on getting more connections from LinkedIn.
Next step is to develop relationships with as many of those in your connections.
Educating contents will help them. We already went through the benefits of content writing.
Here are some tips to give value to your connections:
• Leave them a thoughtful comment on the posts they share.
• Share and like their posts.
• Send them direct messages asking them for your assistance.
Now, let’s say for an e.g. if someone post a question on LinkedIn regarding a problem that
they face in regards to their work and is looking for a solution; won’t you try to solve the
problem if you know the answer to the solution by typing in the comment, if possible you
could also try to create a video tutorial which is considered to be more expressive and
informative.
I strongly recommend you to sit the whole day by providing solutions to the problems faced
by people in regards to their work for which you got the perfect answer if you are having
above 500+ connections.
4. An underused area of LinkedIn for growing your network
As I mentioned above High Quality connections can be build easily from LinkedIn.
The only ways to find these types of connections are Groups.
Marketers join Marketing groups, a Travel Guide joins Travel and Tourism groups, these
peoples joins these groups to know garnish more knowledge and insights about their
respective industry whether it be technology, news updates, latest trends etc.
Groups are the easy way to connect with hundreds of people and a platform where you could
easily get engaged with others.

Eventually conversations are converted to leads through these groups.
How to use groups to expand your network and generate leads:
If you create a group and request everyone to join, it would take a lot of work and time to
build up.
My opinion is to simply join in a large group which is already active as it becomes much
easier than the above process to get followers and connections.
To find these groups you can search for the topic on the search bar, or you can search for
only for groups by picking the group option from the drop down menu to the left of the
search bar.
Please review the group posting before joining as some of these large groups are full of
spammers and ultimately the posts that you share won’t get any like or views from these
groups.

So there is no use of joining in a group where you do not get any likes or comments for your
posts.
Join the group that have at least a comment or two on every article in the group. It shows
that people in this group do communicate with healthy discussions and postings.
Sometimes instead of joining larger groups, search for those groups that have less members
and more post engagements.

This sales force group is having a few numbers of members but this group has more
engagements.
So you have to go through the posts engagements of every group before you join.
The best group usually asks permission to join. Click the button on the group to ask to join;
usually you would be approved by the Group Owner or Admin within a day.

You can always leave a group if it’s of no benefit for you.
How to behave in groups to grow your network:
Every group be it large or small, always have both active and inactive members.
Your target is to get connected with the active members of the group.
The members who actively post content, share, like on it are the highest leads you will ever
find from your network.
Then you can further go ahead and use all of the strategies that I had shared above to build a
relationship.
What’s the best way to build relationship from groups?
Don’t post content as soon as you join the group, it may take you as a spammer.

So, for a week or two just try to cover up most of the articles in the group, shared by other
people of the group by giving a “comment”, “like” and “share” for a bonus.
Don’t just comment as “very nice post” “very useful”. Just comment meaningful comments
about the content or ask doubts on it.
After you had a short discussion through the comments start connecting with them.
From there, look for opportunities to add value using the methods I mentioned above.
Once you get engaged in the groups then start posting your own contents, connect with the
people who comments on your post.
You should know that you can join multiple groups, so send requests to 5-10 active groups
per day.
5. Influencers can put you in touch with almost anyone
The only one who have tons of connections and followers are influencers.
Because they have plenty of fruitful connections, they have a better and in-depth knowledge
and understanding in LinkedIn.
These are the two ways with which you can grow your network.
Find at least 10 – 20 influencers from your industry and try to get connect with them, or
start following.

That will add their posts to your homepage.
Followers will always get an update when an Influencer shares, comments or like an article
or presentation.
So if you leave a comment on you influencers post you get a great opportunity to get you
name in front of a lot of users.
But again, don’t say “nice comment”; just leave a thoughtful or doubtful comment.
Will an influencer help you out?
This strategy is quiet difficult to produce results fast, but can generate some great results.
Ask the influencer to whom you are connected to help you out by introducing you to a few
people from your industry. But before you do so you must have build up a good relationship
with your influencer.
For example, if you ask the influencer that you are looking to expand your network of small
business owners, He could easily give you a list of 10-20 with whom he is already connected.
You could then send them a message that you have been recommended by the Influencer to
connect with them. You are not only getting a chance to grow your network but also impress
them by getting a referral from an influencer.

Hard part is to get recommended by the influencer.
To be authentic, without a doubt you will be getting a lot of rejections.
Definitely you should find a way to provide them with some kind of value in advance,
whether based on something they have posted on LinkedIn, website or wherever.
Don’t get upset while hearing this but I believe this is the only way to grow you network
when it comes to getting connected with an influencer.
This strategy is not compulsory to grow your network on LinkedIn but its helps you to build
a “high quality” network.
You will be definitely getting success in LinkedIn if you follow the ones we have looked at.
Conclusion:
LinkedIn is a vast social media platform to grow you B2B business.
Everyone in this platform is here to improve their professional lives.
Grow your network with quality connections and build relationships sooner or later that
lead to sales.

How to build a strong network on LinkedIn efficiently?

How to build a strong network on LinkedIn efficiently?

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