Linkedin New Approach

[beasty]

If you cannot beat them, join them then beat them.

I have always tried to keep my Linkedin profile with as few contacts as possible.

Given all social media is now interlinked and with automated posting software etc, i am giving myself 30 days of massively increasing my own network on linkedin to see how this impacts traffic.

Little experiment really

I am not going crazy starting with 250, i will add around 10 contacts a day for 30 days and judge if a big network, is more use than a tight network.

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM
here i come

 

[Swisaw]

Please report back?

 

[Digital Resellers]

Make sure you have a professional business photo on your LinkedIn profile Not a Facebook profile pic.

 

[beasty]

Added 51 folk and folkesses
This is folking easy
up to 301

Linkedin makes it way too easy to connect with lots of people fast

oops 302

 

[Edith@TerraNetwork]

would be interesting to see how it pays off in real term business - I try to add contacts in LinkedIn but not sure if it's worth the time.

 

[beasty]

It seems that although having lots of contacts is mostly pointless
Many people see this as a sign of legitimacy, so rather than retain a tight group i am rapidly expanding so that people will then see a huge network.

I might ask everyone to endorse me for SPAM too
lol

 

[Suzanne Smith-Byrne]

I could do with learning a little more about how to use Linkedin successfully - I have a lot of contacts there but it doesn't seem to mean anything.

 

[andygambles]

I have been trying this for a while. Complete change in LinkedIn usage for me. Used to be people I knew face to face. Now I have just connected with everyone LinkedIn suggests I know (that includes Barrack Obama!). Essentially becoming a LION without advertising that.

The results are a lot more messages from people saying "How can I help you?". The upside is getting around 25 profile views a day v the 2/3 I used to get. When I post something it gets 10x more attention and click thru's now than it did.

Wether this is short term I don't know as it has only been about a month.

Remember you have an upper limit of 30k connections so don't go too mad

 

[beasty]

I have no plans to go mad, it is a 30 day experiment, then i will probably delete everyone that has not made contact with me, but will not decide that until i see how this pans out over the month.

What i have noticed is that i am getting more requests to connect from people i would actually like to connect with (Golf company owners) i have been basically connecting with agents but owners have been asking to connect with me.

It is a learning experience

309 connections now, i started at 250

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

I think people expect too much from Linkedin It is quite simply a professional profile that might get you some spam . Its good but its only a small shop window

 

[ExtensionsMall]

Exactly, it is more of a professional profile than a place of business. I look at it as a sort of a business card, so I have no problem with connecting with lots of people. What's the point of connecting with people I already know

 

[beasty]

338 connections now, i just followed up with the most recent 30 or so
I seem to be getting more requests now than normal and some quite useful too

I was wanting to add around 10 a day so it is pretty much going to plan to this point.

 

[Georgia12345]

If you have any tips or advise for linkedin that would be greatly appreciated

 

[RickyD2411]

sounds good, are you using automation to add i saw you said you were using software but wasnt sure if thta was for social media.

 

[beasty]

So the month is up, i have had a series of guests visit and so slacked off a bit but have ended up with 385 contacts as of right now.

I have never really built a Linkedin profile or network in the past beyond those i have had actual business with or know well enough that I can pick up a phone and ring them but this experiment has told me that for me at least I have been using Linkedin wrong.

I found that being active on Linkedin massively increased views of my profile, i rose from top 55% in my network to top 10% in my network in terms of views, my network until this past month was probably 90% owners, ceos or vps of marketing so many individuals that have large followings and work social media hard (The final guy added to the network is a Financial services entrepreneur called Patrick Bet David whom I expect to set a call with)

What i did was connect with 20 GOLF AGENTS each day on average, over the course of the month i probably added somewhere around 400 to 500 (So clearly a lot declined my invitiation, which is fine, it was an experiment and there are thousands of those guys so its not a problem)

Interesting thing i did find, due to my higher profile on Linkedin company owners were connecting with me (They requested this not me often) and when i did approach a business owner, the odds of them accepting and also engaging beyond that initial contact dramatically increased, it tells me that people value your apparent pull on LInkedin so having a strong looking profile is going to make your life easier when hunting for leads, deals etc

I also wrote around a dozen articles shared via automated software which got several hundred views, how this impacted conversions i am not sure, it may have helped, it may not (The articles were shared over many platforms and were not written for the Linkedin Audience)

I have done 2 deals on the back of this past months efforts, one small, one that could potentially be huge and I have many others in the pipeline.

It is quite easy to accumulate so many contacts you cannot follow them up properly (This is what i found and as a result the last 10 days of the experiment I rather toned it down) Over the next two weeks I fully intend to connect again with all of the 130 or so new contacts whilst they are fresh and see what results.

Overall, i will be consistently expanding my network in future, it takes very little time and an active and growing LInkedin network clearly makes doing business easier (For me)

The little effort i put in (Adding a few hundred people) will pay of many times over

TIME V RETURN, it is a no brainer, expand your Network, from now on i will be devoting some time each day to just this and also the follow up of the new connections.

 

[Carl "Excel-Expert" Nixon]

I have been trying this for a while. Complete change in LinkedIn usage for me. Used to be people I knew face to face. Now I have just connected with everyone LinkedIn suggests I know (that includes Barrack Obama!). Essentially becoming a LION without advertising that.

The results are a lot more messages from people saying "How can I help you?". The upside is getting around 25 profile views a day v the 2/3 I used to get. When I post something it gets 10x more attention and click thru's now than it did.

Wether this is short term I don't know as it has only been about a month.

Remember you have an upper limit of 30k connections so don't go too mad

I have done virtually the same experiment except I advertised I was a LION. My 320+ organic connections went to 850+ in less than a month.

The 10x more attention when posting is something I got as well - what I havent mastered yet is how to take advantage of that. Open to suggestions on that one.

 

[Debbie Barnes]

Hi beasty,

I made a six figure sale from a LinkedIn enquiry a few years ago - somebody sent me a message saying they really enjoyed the content I posted and it went on from there. I'm happy to spend 5-10 minutes a day posting on there if it means I make a sale like that from it once every three years! Great way of keeping up-to-date with what's going on in your industry as well. I don't do LION but it's a good way of adding connections quickly, feel free to add me!

 

[David G Rees]

Interesting. Have around 350 connections on Linkedin but never really had any leads from it.

 

[Debbie Barnes]

There's a new book out by Timothy Hughes called Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers, worth getting if you are solution selling

 

[Redsquid Communications]

We've found that Linkedin is one of our most successful and active social media communities, we get plenty of website visits from there, so it's unsurprising to see that a growth in network has produced some results beasty.

Keep up the growth, and remember to tend to your current network on a regular basis.

 

[ilya]

Thanks!
Looks like I should focus on LinkedIn more than usual