“Growing your LinkedIn network without paying for premium is impossible” – we heard this recently. We’re going to debunk this myth and give you tips for growing your LinkedIn network organically, without compromising on the quality of those connections.

For most people, the main point of using LinkedIn is to grow a network of connections who will eventually buy off you. The more targeted the network, the greater the chance you will connect with someone who needs your product or service.

How can you get more connections on LinkedIn?

We’ve narrowed getting more connections on LinkedIn down to three main tactics:

The Wildfire Approach

This can be achieved by inviting anyone you come across and having a large following that isn’t planned out or aimed at your target audience. The name refers to the rapid, uncontrolled, and widespread method. This approach is going to reduce the chance of you finding new customers as you may find a lot of the accounts willing to connect with just anyone are probably bots, fake accounts, or inexperienced users.

The Moneybags Method

The second way is to pay for Sales Navigator, or any of the other premium packages that LinkedIn offer. When you pay for LinkedIn, you get access to tools you can use to find and invite new connections. These are useful tools but we’re deliberately trying to avoid paying anything, so this is a no go.

The Knowledgeable Networker

This tactic is to use your expertise on a subject, to create content and engage with your ideal audience. The constant presence and engagement will showcase your skills and knowledge, drawing people’s attention to you and making them interested in your product or service. With this approach, a lot of the followers may not need your product or service yet, but by getting to know you, the aim is they know who to go to when they do have a need. This tactic is designed to not only get your more followers, but also more sales.

The Knowledgeable Networker (or social selling as it’s more commonly known) is a tried and tested method for growing a LinkedIn network and increasing sales.

 

Tips and advice for building a bigger LinkedIn network

We’ve put these in order of most important, the ones we think you should start with and get comfortable with before you move on to the next.

 

Measure your progress

There are several ways to make good connections with people on LinkedIn, but it feels great if you notice a difference when you measure your progress. The most obvious way to measure the number of connections is by making a note of the number you have at the start and then give yourself an amount of time to do the experiment, such as a month. At the end of the month, tally up your increase.

Another measurement to track is your SSI score. The ‘Find The Right People’ and ‘Build Relationships’ ratings on an SSI score pertain to increasing the number of connections. Using the free tools on LinkedIn to find people and connecting with decision makers improves your score. The higher your score, the more LinkedIn will recommend people to you when they are looking for quality connections.

 

Know who your ideal connections are

Knowing your who your target audience is for marketing is linked to having more marketing success and the same is true with LinkedIn connections. Ideally, you should be connecting with people who you want to buy from or who you want to buy from you. That’s not to say other connections are bad, it’s always good to connect with like-minded people, local businesses, friends, graduates, people looking for work, industry forerunners and thought leaders.

What you don’t want to do, is spend time and effort building up great content and have an audience of no profile photo bot accounts who will never buy from you. Another example is, connecting with 40 graduates might be easy, but they won’t help your business of selling life insurance to the over 50’s. Ask yourself, “do they offer a service or product that can help me or my business, do I offer something for them?”

Have a criterion for who you want to connect with and stick to it so you avoid connecting with too many useless connections.

 

Make sure your profile and content are good quality

Having a good profile and posting regular, high-quality content makes you look trustworthy and knowledgeable. LinkedIn know this and have recently started introducing more and more AI features to prompt users to post more.

“Today’s Actions, “Post Ideas” and “Notify Employees” gives you ideas for content, actions to use LinkedIn more and a way to get your employees to share content.

At the very least, your LinkedIn profile should have a good quality, professional profile and cover photo. Your ‘About’ and ‘Skills’ sections should be filled in and up to date too. If you haven’t set up regular, original content to post, repost from other accounts and comment on the content so your followers can see your opinions. LinkedIn much prefers it if you repost with a comment so do that to get the most impact.

 

Put yourself where the people are

Ask your team to follow your company page and repost your posts so the company page reaches more people, and they grow their connections too. When they get new connections, you can also try to connect with them. The same goes with other connections you have, if they would make a good connection, use your mutual connection as a reason to message them.

Join groups on LinkedIn for exposure to hundreds of connection possibilities. You can join groups for university alumni, people in the same industry of you, and specific sectors your target audience belong to.

LinkedIn has lots of LinkedIn specialists who run groups for improving your LinkedIn social selling. They usually have a fee but sometimes have a free first month. Joining those types of groups will often give you a healthy new set of connections for free. Plus, you might learn something new!

Attend networking events where real people are and connect with them on LinkedIn, before, during or after the event. Expos and educational meetups are also great places to meet people at and if you choose ones where your target audiences are they can be extremely helpful.

If the decision maker of a company isn’t at an event or easy to get in touch with, you could choose someone in the company who you wouldn’t sell to, then add the person you want to sell to, as now you have a mutual contact. The same goes if you meet someone in person and hit it off, they might advocate for you to their higher ups if the need arises. Especially, if they see you consistently put out good content and build trust with them.

 

Be active on LinkedIn

It’s not enough to just be on LinkedIn and have a pretty profile. As we mention earlier in the blog, the content needs to be good quality and consistent too. Staying active, either by spending a block amount of time on the platform each day or popping in for a bit at a time in between tasks, is paramount. At least 20 minutes every day.

Spend time writing personalised connection messages after actually viewing the content your prospective connections release. Reply to comments, comment on boring posts with enthusiasm, write recommendations.  All these activities clock up as quality time on the platform and contribute to your success with growing your network.

You can save some time by scheduling your content in advance and set reminders to go on LinkedIn about the same time to really make the most of the algorithm’s preferences.

 

Use other marketing methods to grow your network

There are other ways to invite connections to join your network such as adding a link to your profile and a message on your email signature.

QR codes on any printed literature like business cards plus a link on your website are good option too. They might never get used, but they might be super successful depending on your connections preferred comms method.

If you have a good profile and interact with users regularly, LinkedIn are likely to offer you a month’s free trial on Premium which you can make use of too.

 

There are so many different ways you can start growing your LinkedIn network without paying for premium. The important things to remember is that appearing trustworthy and knowledgeable is going to increase your success rate, as is delivering good content and understanding how the platform works so you can use it effectively.

Get started by connecting with me here and tell me a bit about yourself in your connection message to practice!

 

If you enjoyed reading this and found it helpful, consider reading our other blogs or watching our webinars on the different Lunch and Learn topics we cover. We covered this specific topic here ⬇️