Join and actively participate in one or two groups
LinkedIn has a wide variety of groups aimed at different audiences and interests. While it may take some experimenting to find a group that’s worthwhile, investing the time in one or two groups, and actively participating can help your business development efforts.
Keep in mind: actively participating does not mean simply posting a link and going on your way. It means sharing, commenting and generally engaging with other people to have conversations.
Monika also mentions, that while she’d be inclined to join a group filled with other copywriters, that’s not actually her target audience. Other copywriters aren’t going to be the ones to hire her. Small business owners are, so her business development efforts would be better served by finding a group that focused on business owners.
Share gated content
Gated content is something like an eBook or a white paper that is free, but people must give their email address to get access to it.
Mentioning gated content in your status posts is a good way to drive people to your website and start gathering a list of leads.
Unlike Facebook or Instagram, people are on LinkedIn to get business information or find tips to do things better. Because of this, you may see your business-focused content making a much greater impact on LinkedIn than it does on other social networks.
Be social
While LinkedIn may be business focused, it’s still a social media channel and that means you must actually be social.
LinkedIn will even help you find ways to start conversations. If you check your notifications you can find out about work anniversaries, or when someone in your network changes jobs.
They are giving you excuses to reach out and stay in touch with the people in your network. Make sure to take advantage of this!
Make a list of prospects and ask for introductions
One of the primary activities of business development is finding your targets. On LinkedIn you can do research to gather up a list of targets and see if you have any common connections or interests.
If you are connected to your targets through your network, this makes it easy. All you have to do is reach out to your mutual contacts and ask for an introduction. It may surprise you how happy your contacts will be to help.
Write personal notes with your connection requests
If you take the step of asking to connect with someone, make sure to add a note. Make it personal and tell them why you are reaching out and asking to connect with them.
This doesn’t have to be extensive, but mention if you’ve met before, if you have a common connection, or even how you came across their profile.
Many people will totally ignore connection requests that seem random, so take the time to personalize the note and give them a reason to accept your request.
Have more questions? Reach out and ask (here or on LinkedIn!).