When you need a boost in your B2B marketing, LinkedIn is the first tool you should turn to.
LinkedIn is an extremely valuable social network that allows you to identify and connect with influential individuals in specific industries or organizations. Once you make your connections, you can interact with any of the individuals simply and easily to source new business deals, share industry expertise and advice, get introductions to even more connections and more. And the more first degree connections you have, the more professionals you can contact with just one click.
Read on to learn how you can quickly and easily connect with the right people, both ones that you already know and do business with and those that you’d like to.
Searching for People on LinkedIn
LinkedIn has a very powerful search feature that allows you to search for broad terms in addition to very focused criteria. You can search for people, updates, jobs, companies, groups, universities, or through your messages for key terms.
With just one search, you can easily find key decision-makers and influencers necessary to successfully close a deal.
In this example, we want to find a web developer near the Sioux Falls, SD area.
First, we type our search term in the search box. You can select from the suggestions in the dropdown list or type your own specific search terms. Here, we search “web developer” because we want that term specifically. We also want to search for people, not groups or companies, so we choose the “People with Web Developer titles” search.
Once you click search, you’ll notice there are many ways we can filter search results on the left side. You can filter your search based on companies, your connection, or location. You can also click on “Advanced” for even more filtering options such as job title, school, industry, interests and more.
While there are a large number of search criteria available for advanced searches, we recommend first searching with the basic filters and then taking a look at those results first. If there are too many results, start using advanced filters to fine-tune with added criteria.
Using the basic search filters, I searched based on “web developer” as a title, and within a 100-mile radius from Sioux Falls. Turns out I have a lot of 2nd degree connections in or near Sioux Falls that fit this criteria. I can click on “shared connections” to see what connections we have in common and reference one or some of those people in my connection request message. This is a great way to increase the likelihood of an acceptance by increasing familiarity.
While connecting based on shared connections is a great way to find new connections, you can also utilize your first degree connections in another way. Specifically, you can use your existing connections to get introduced to individuals in their networks. Thus when the desired connection receives a message, it’s coming from your mutual connection instead of from you. In this message, the mutual connection is suggesting they should connect with you because they think it would benefit you both.
Similar to mentioning shared connections in your connection request, utilizing a mutual connection for introductions is a great way to increase the likelihood of gaining that new connection. This is a great way to leverage your existing contacts to grow your own network. LinkedIn provides you the step-by-step instructions on how to request an introduction.
Near the bottom of the page, you can also filter by industry, past company, school, or profile language. At the bottom of a category’s checkboxes you can also enter an additional filter like another company name by clicking ‘+Add’ to show a text box.
Bonus tip: If you find yourself performing a lot of searches that you like to reference back to, you should consider investing in a LinkedIn Premium account. When you do, you’ll gain access to features such as saved searches and InMails. Saved searches allow you to save a set of search criteria and the results that those criteria generate. This allows you to quickly reference back to multiple searches, saving you a lot of time in your connecting efforts.
Sending messages based on filters
While one of the great powers of LinkedIn lies in helping you make new connections, another wonderful feature of LinkedIn is the power to keep in touch with your existing connections. In fact, the most frequent way most people use LinkedIn is to reconnect and rediscover existing contacts based on their geography, area of expertise or employer.
Here’s an example. Often, Scott will be headed to a new city for a conference, let’s say Chicago. He has a free evening and wants to find people in Chicago that he knows. A quick look at LinkedIn enables him to find and immediately send a message to all or some of his connections in Chicago.
To get started sending messages based on filters, click “Contacts.” You’ll notice on the left side there are numerous ways to filter through your existing contacts, just as you can filter search results when searching for an individual you are not yet connected to.
In this case, Scott want to find everyone he knows in Chicago, so we click on locations and type in Chicago. Wow, Scott actually knows 56 people there (he’s kind of a people person).
We can then look through the entire list and checkmark anyone that we want to send a message to.
You can send a message up to 50 recipients at once. When you’ve check marked everyone you want to send a message to, choose “Send message.” If you haven’t selected anyone, it will send the message to everyone.
After clicking ‘Send Message’, you have the opportunity to write your message just like an email. Remember to write an intriguing subject line that will grab the recipient’s attention. Maybe something like: “Dinner on Friday?”
After writing your message, there is one very important step left. Underneath the send button you have the option to allow recipients to see one another. By default this will be marked. I recommend almost always unchecking this box. You want the reader to think you sent a message just to them instead of a large group of people (think of it like using BCC on an email).
The Potential of Filtering Contacts
This simple technique of sending messages to LinkedIn contacts based on filters unlocks enormous potential.
Imagine you wrote a blog post that you want to promote to the healthcare industry. You can start by filtering your contacts based on industry and then send the post to those people you know work in healthcare.
Or what if you are looking for a job or a new employee? You could find people you know who work at a company you want to work for…or find employees from a company you want to steal talent from.
If you are looking to send a message to a third connection or further, you can either use InMail, which is a feature reserved for LinkedIn Premium accounts, or leverage your personal network to get introduced. Learn more about both of these connecting tactics.
The variety of filtering and connecting capabilities help you find the right people and get in touch with them, helping you to create the connections you need to boost your biz.
If you need more help, give our Social Media Field Guide a read. It’s full of LinkedIn tricks and tutorials, as well as advice to help you navigate the digital frontier with the other big-game social networks.
Happy connecting!
Featured Image: Nan Palmero
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