LinkedIn is a completely different game in 2017 then it was even a few years ago. Why? If you’ve not been using LinkedIn recently this is probably how you remember it:
- You can only connect with people you know
- If you connect with a stranger they shame you
- Endorsements are the most important currency
Right? Am I exaggerating?
There were literally people that said to me: “If I don’t know you please don’t connect with me”. When I was a student this just wasn’t the place for me to meet new people. But it’s completely changed now.
Why?
1 word – content.
Content changed the platform completely. People started sharing their work experiences, their stories, their victories and it became a more open platform. Granted, it still says “only connect with people you know” in the LinkedIn terms and conditions, but no one pays attention to that.
Here is how LinkedIn is different nowadays:
- You can connect with ANYONE you want
- You get views from your content, not from endorsements
- You can build massive networks using content, native video, groups, and pods.
How does all that work?
It’s more acceptable to connect with random strangers, that’s one side of it. The other aspect is that the content that I publish gets consumed by a wide range of people – most of them are not my connections on LinkedIn
When someone likes or comments on my post then their entire network of friends can see it on their feed.
That means you can reach tens of thousands of people in a matter of days. Here is how:
1. Post a ton of content
Content is the way to get more views on your profile, engage with people, and build an audience. I tried this strategy out on a post I wrote a few months back. It was a story of how I used a content strategy, with a link to the written article. Here is the post:
Here is the full post: https://goo.gl/edNscC
Within a week that post had over 27,000 views and 100 comments. That’s 100 people I could connect with.
Here are a few strategies that I used to make it go viral:
- Asked for LIKES in the first few hours that the post is live.
- Use the wave template by Josh Fechter, you can find it here.
- Told my story in a personal way.
So let’s say you set up some content, how do you make people see it?
2. Interact by liking and commenting
When you interact with people’s content they are very likely to click on your profile and read about you. LinkedIn sees their engagement with your profile and starts to display your posts on their feed.
It’s as simple as that.
This is especially effective on LinkedIn because most posts get 1-4 comments each, and if your comment is one of them it is very visible to the hundreds of people that see that post. Now you can click on every single person that interacts back with you and connect with them.
Wait, but how do I connect with absolute strangers?
3. Expand your network with LinkedHelper
It still seems a bit funny right? We are all so used to only connect with people we know.
Let’s go back to the basics.
Let’s take somebody who is a 2nd connection. Here is my friend Deepak Shukla, the CEO of PurrTraffic, he is a really great marketing professional, his profile looks interesting, so I want to connect with him. Just click on the connect button and you’re done.
Now what about 3rd connections? LinkedIn didn’t use to allow you to connect with them at all. So the strategy was to find mutual friends and start with them to get to your desired contact. This was made much simple now.
Here is Gary Vaynerchuk’s brother that runs VaynerSports. All I do is click on the 3 dots and then click connect. BOOM. Now we’re BFFs.
What if you wanted to automate this whole process? What if you wanted to have a tool automatically connect to 50 profiles every day without you moving a finger?
I found a great tool called LinkedHelper that does exactly that. It’s a Chrome extension that plugs in to your LinkedIn page and automatically does any task for you. It can endorse all your contacts, connect to people, send message blasts, invite all your contacts to your LinkedIn group, and tons more.
Here are my favorite features:
= EPIC
How to automatically connect with 50 people per day:
Step 1 – Search for specific people to target using keywords or the job title like “marketing manager”, “growth hacker”, “sales manager”.
Step 2 – Create a list for your contacts
Step 3 – Conduct a search and start collecting contacts
After you’ve collected your contacts click on Message and write a nice message for the list. This will show up on the contact request that each person will receive from you.
You’re almost done. Just click on Invite and start inviting all the contacts on your list. Simple as that!
Recap
LinkedIn is like Facebook but for networking. All the recent changes they implemented – like allowing people to post content and native videos – add to your ability to interact with people and to be discovered. It is also a great place to find leads, partners, and jobs. But it’s not just about building a massive network of connections anymore. It’s about building an engaged community of followers and converting your leads.
The first thing you need to do for that is to write a lot of good content. Then, interact with others like crazy. And third, use a tool like LinkedHelper to put your growth on autopilot.
Pro tip – always send a second and third message to your new connections, and always talk to every single person no matter what. You never know where a relationship can lead you to.
That’s it!
I hope you enjoyed our tutorial and please let us know how LinkedIn has worked out for you. Have you tried any of these tactics? and what’s an awesome “win” you’ve had on the platform?
Cheers =)
Ben Kazinik is a marketing manager for ShareSomeFriends, a referral app and lead management platform. He enjoys hiking, cooking, soccer, and visiting his family around the world. Email me at – ben@sharesomefriends.com or connect on my LinkedIn.