How to develop connections on LinkedIn

How to develop connections on LinkedIn.

A few weeks ago I received an email from LinkedIn congratulating me on being in the top 5% of the most viewed profiles. I thought cool, and I tweeted my accomplishment. It didn’t make me want to start paying for a premium membership, but it did make me feel as if I’d accomplished something. But from what I read on the internet, the general consensus was, “so what” and many sounding like; “don’t people realize that means they are one out of ten million and even those that are in the top 1% are one out of two million.”

To answer the question, yes I do realize I’m one out of ten million – I ran the numbers – but I am still happy with my accomplishment, and for me it was an accomplishment.

I’m not a world famous author or screenwriter, nor am I a well-read blogger, I have never had a video go viral (possible because I’ve never put a video on the web), I have a few hundred twitter followers not a few thousand, and I have about 30 likes on my authors Facebook page. So being one of the top 5% of most viewed profiles on LinkedIn was an accomplishment.

How did I accomplish it? Well I’m glad I asked that question and if you keep reading I’ll tell you about it.

When I first began using LinkedIn, I would look for possible connections to people I knew in the writing industry, other authors, publishers, etc. But I quickly discovered that I was not reaching those in the industry I had hoped to, and how would I connect to the people I wanted to if I didn’t know them in the first place. So I branched out and started connecting with those who were connected to people I already had connections with, and this meant I was requesting connection to people I didn’t know. Regardless of whether I knew them or not, this doubled my few dozen connections, but once again it didn’t create the results I’d hoped for.

What I needed was a change in my way of thinking. First, instead of just building a number of connections with the hope that one of them might be interested in my work and want to know more, I decided to build real connections, friendships, or at least put out the offer. My second change in thinking was this, once I put the offer out I let it go as soon as the send button was hit.

So here is what I did. I requested maybe five connections a day, of people in my industry or a related industry, such as Film, Mixed Martial Arts, or Boxing. Out of ten requests I might get one confirmed connection. Great now what to do with the connection, just let it sit there in on my connections page as I’ve done or do something with it. How about a thank you? It sounded good to me, and it is based on old school networking, like sending a thank you card after meeting someone at a convention. So I started sending thank you notes to people that agreed to connect with me, and I said just that “Thanks for the connection.” I did a little research on the person whom I was addressing, mentioned their accomplishment, why I was happy they agreed to connect, or why I was impressed with their work. Then I gave a brief comment about myself, often saying “I write MMA and boxing fiction” and leaving it at that. Depending on the summary of the individual I was corresponding with, I might add more details to what I was writing, maybe my influences, or anything I could think of to make the note a personal correspondence between me and the individual I was connecting with.

After sending out thank you notes to those I connected with, I might receive a response from one out of ten. Still not huge numbers, but now the connection was personal and often this created a dialogue between me and the person on the other end. It hasn’t led to any screenwriting jobs or book offers, but that isn’t what I’m after. My Thank you notes are not “what can you do for me, or what can I do for you”, they are just I know a little about you and now you know a little about me, no pressure or pretense.

All this is why I consider being in the top 5% of most viewed profiles an accomplishment. Because I’ve worked at cultivating and developing just about every connection on my linked in account and right now I’m approaching 700 connections, and at least 90% of those I’ve sent a personal note to. So if you think being in the top 5% is just “so what” I don’t and I’m glad I’m there.