How To Get Your First 10,000 LinkedIn
By Michael Von Irvin, DevelopUniversity.com
My Story: Who am I and Why do I write? I write because I have a voice. Because I care and because I know that I can help others. I once lost my voice and I was blind, literally. Now I can speak several languages and see much clearer.
My Near Death Experience — I almost died. When I was 13 years old, I was literally crushed by a 1976 Chevy Monte Carlo. I was in the hospital for more than a month, in ICU, with tubes coming out of every area of my body. I was on a ventilator. I had a broken back, 5 broken ribs, a broken hip, several hours of surgery to stop the my internal bleeding and patch me up to literally die later, a broken collar bone, a tracheotomy, a chest tube, nasal gastric suction coming out of my nose, I was blind and much more. I made it and I vowed to help others make it. I worked for 8 year in ICU, several years more in the ER. I accomplished my goal of helping others years ago. I still want to help others…now I also help others achieve their business, sales, and marketing goals.
Thanks for Sharing. Over 100,000 people read this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and at my website www.michaelvonirvin.com
Hi, I am on the New York Subway this morning riding from Upper Manhattan down to China Town and Little Italy where I plan to eat a delicious dish of Chicken Parmesan smothered in a bright red delicious Marinara sauce. I like to think that there is a wonder Italian mother back in the kitchen cooking the sauce, but I know that may not be true. But I will stick with my self-imposed illusion because it makes the food taste that much better. Believe me…most of your customers desire a similar illusion. Don’t disappoint them.(more on this in a different article).
As I am approaching my 10,000th connection on LinkedIn, I think it is a good time to discuss how to get 10,000 connections easier and quicker without making the mistakes that I made.
Question — If you could have all the LinkedIn connections that you desire, how many would you have?
For some LinkedIn subscribers, the answer to the question above would be infinity plus one.
And a few subscribers would rather be noticed, but not connected. I suppose these are the super wealthy or super famous who don’t want to be bothered by emails, updates, etc. Still other LinkedIn subscribers only want to be connected with people the really know. I get that.
However, I belong to the group known as….the majority of LinkedIn subscribers. These are hard working, success driven, people who are on constantly on their way up. And they are willing to help others climb the ladder of success also. We desire to have as many LinkedIn connections as it takes to achieve maximum success while helping others obtain and achieve their goals.
So, belonging to this community of LinkedIn subscribers, I have tried to get as many quality connections as possible in the shortest amount of time. I don’t want to waste unnecessary time, but I do want to make lots of connections. That is what LinkedIn is all about.
Anybody With 30,000+ Connections Does’t Know The Adam From Eve
“I’m not saying it is wrong. In fact, I think it is great to have +30,000 connections. What I am saying is there is no way to “know” all of these connections and that is okay.”
About a year ago, I wrote a short article on how to get your first 1,000 LinkedIn connections. Actually, it took me a long time to get the first 1,000 connections because I made so many mistakes.
Within the last year, I have gained an additional 4,000 LinkedIn connections without working really hard. However, I could have reached this number even quicker if I knew then what I know now.
So here it goes, the techniques and tricks to getting the maximum number of high quality LinkedIn connections in the minimum amount of time.
How To Create And Achieve Good LinkedIn Karma
1. Build Trust — You can build trust by filling in your LinkedIn profile as completely and honestly as possible.
- Upload a friendly looking photo of yourself.
- Fill out your name.
- Use a good headline (this can be your current title, but it does not have to be). For example, you write Adam A. Adams, VP of Marketing or you could write Adam The Go To Guy For Apples.
- Use a shortened url for your LinkedIn profile. This allows you to have a url which tells something about you while being short enough to share on your resume, website, emails, etc. People can click on this url and view your LinkedIn profile.
- Summary — use this area to tell as much good stuff about yourself as possible without coming off seeming like a prince/princess or a pauper.
- Go back at least 10 years with your job history.
- Include your education
- Fill the rest of your profile out completely. (If you need help with this, LinkedIn has a lot of good advice online or you can place comments below and I will attempt to answer your questions and/or update this post).
2.. Send Invites — Okay this is where I messed up big time. I thought that I could have a partially completed profile and just send invites to everybody and they would accept. Things didn’t work out that way. LinkedIn will block users from from sending invites if too many people click, “I don’t know this person.”
Here is how you can avoid this mistake.
- As I said, fill out your profile as completely as possible.
- Change your LinkedIn message. For example, instead of using the standard message of “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn,” you can write something like, “Hi, I don’t know if you remember me, but we met at …… I would like to add you to my professional network. If you prefer not to connect for any reason please click “Ignore” instead of “I don’t know this person.” PS Please don’t report this as spam.
The above message may sound a little desperate, but it is better than being banned from sending invitations on LinkedIn.
If you don’t know the person, but would like to connect anyway, follow the above and be honest about not knowing the person. Most people understand that people who haven’t met each other can still “know” each other. In fact, by today’s social network standards you probably “know” a person as soon as you read their profile.
What is the true current social networking definition of Knowing a fellow subscriber? Is there anyway that anybody could really know 30,000 or more people? How well could you know them?
What is the true definition of Knowing Someone? Is there anyway anybody could really know 30,000 or more people? How well could you know them?
Building Trust
3. Have Something To Offer — No, I am not talking about giving away gifts. I am simply stating that we all have something to offer to others. This is expressed in your profile. For example, if you have a common occupation, potential connections are more likely to accept your invitations.
If a fireman in NYC sends an invitation to connect to a fireman in California, odds are good that the invitation will be accepted and the connection will be made. However, if two people simply live in NYC or any other common location, that is probably not a strong enough bond to make an invitee accept an invitation to connect.
The closer the “connection,” the better.
This just a simple example. There can be anything within your profile that creates a common link. Just one thing in common may be enough for a connection to be made.
For example, I usually do not change the standard statement in my invitation, but I usually make sure that I have something in common with the person to whom I send the invitation.
Also, my connections have access to contact my nearly 5,000 quality connections. If the “thing” that me and a potential connection have in common is not enough, the ability of the potential connect to use my “Rolodex” of connections usually helps me to obtain more quality connections.
Lastly, by publishing on LinkedIn, articles can draw even more quality connections. For example, readers of my articles can simply press “Follow” in the upper right hand corner of my published article.
4.. Participate, Participate, Participate — It only takes a second to click “Like” for articles and posts. It only takes about 2 to 3 seconds to “Share” an article on LinkedIn and the great thing is you get “credit by association” when you do this. By this, I mean the post or article is re-posted on LinkedIn with (your) the re-poster’s name and photo beside it.
How To Receive Good LinkedIn Karma
Re-post articles and posts that you view on LinkedIn. Re-post them on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, through your email account, or other means.
Re-post as often as possible.
5. Post, Post, Post — You can either post an original work or re-post another user’s article or post. I realize that a lot of employees do not want to re-post for fear that this may cause problems with their employer. However, I think that every company should have a Social Media Poster In Chief. Any job title works, but someone from your company should be constantly posting, liking, and re-posting articles on several social media sites.
Companies and individuals that don’t participate in social media are missing a out on the potential to reach millions of potential customers.
Allowing Employees To Participate In Social Media
One of my friends told me that he didn’t want his employees to post on LinkedIn or to have a profile because he was afraid that another company might try to “steal” the employees.
I told him that his statement reminded me of the story of the farmer who didn’t want to teach his daughter how to drive because he was afraid she would leave home.
As it turned out, his daughter got married and left home anyway. And she didn’t return to visit the farmer until she learned how to drive.
The point of the story is that competitors can and will connect with your employees one way or another. Keeping employees away from LinkedIn will not stop this. In fact, companies can think of their employees as ambassadors and the employee’s profiles as “mini ads” by using social media openly and appropriately.
If you and your employees are not clicking “Like” and Sharing the articles and posts of your connections, you cannot expect to get noticed or for others to re-post your articles and posts. This is not deliberate, but I call it LinkedIn Karma.
By following the steps above and learning more about, copywriting and search engine optimization (SEO) you will increase your odds making more connections and getting yourself and your company noticed.
What do you think?
I made a lot of mistakes when I first started trying to get more connections on LinkedIn. You can increase your number of quality LinkedIn connections by following the techniques above.
How do you determine who you choose connect with? Who you send invitations to? Do you think you need to really know every one of your connections?
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I am grateful to you for sharing my articles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, by personal email and other means.
Thanks,
I was inspired to post here by Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary is a great guy.