Expanding Your Business Network via LinkedIn

Social networking has been hot for some time with sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster attracting a lot of visitors and interaction that has attracted the attention of larger companies looking to expand their product offerings along with boosting revenue growth. The business community has some good sites dedicated to helping business executives connect online as well.

LinkedIn is one of several online networking sites aimed squarely at the business community. Others include Ryze, Spoke, Tribe.net, and Xing (formerly OpenBC). This particular site is very powerful if you invest a little time into it, and I would imagine it has massive potential to help you in your career or business. Having a vast network of contacts never hurts regardless of how successful you are at this moment. I choose to focus on LinkedIn due to its membership (more than 10 million people) and its easy to use interface, but I am not affiliated in any way with any of the services mentioned.

Heres an example of the power of networking based on my own experience using this tool thus far. I joined LinkedIn on Thursday January 4, 2007. Since then my network looks like this: 149 direct connections, 109,500+ friends of friends (two degrees away), and 2,830,900+ contacts three degrees away.

Thats a lot of potential reach! I only wish I had discovered this tool when I was in technical sales. Oh well, better late than never right? Some of the contacts I have made have led to partnerships, but the primary benefit has been the relationships built that have enabled me to bounce ideas off like minded folks, receive real world advice from people in similar situations, and expand the potential reach of my consulting business without investing a lot of money into marketing and advertising.

So, how would one go about expanding their network and reach rather quickly?

1. Upload your contacts from Outlook or your e-mail software. Let LinkedIn search their database to see if any of your contacts exist and invite those people to join your network.

2. Visit http://www.toplinked.com and browse over some of the top linked folks. If you see some that mesh well with your goals and objectives, send them an invitation or direct e-mail to join your network. Most people will do this if you ask politely.

3. Browse over the LinkedIn Q&A section to see if there are people looking to expand their network and e-mail those which reply.

4. Consider adding a link to your profile via your e-mail signature. LinkedIn can provide you a nice signature box with a lot of contact information to include in your outgoing e-mails. Go to My Profile --> E-mail signatures to set one up.

5. Promote your profile on your blog or website.

6. Ask a public question on LinkedIn under the answers tab and include in the question your e-mail address so people can expand their network if theyre interested.

7. Post a public invitation, including your e-mail address, asking for others to share theirs much like step #3.

8. Include your e-mail address in your profile on LinkedIn. That way people actively searching for networking prospects can connect directly with you.

9. When you post a comment or reply on message boards, blogs, or user groups, include a link to your profile. Or link back to your website or blog (this is a common search engine optimization trick).

10. Lastly, be easy to access! If you want to be able to connect to a lot of people, now or in the future, think like those people would think and make it easy for them to connect with you. Thats networking 101, but it still applies.

There are some people that do not wish to expand their network because of their current job situation or fear of the Internet. I understand. Yes, it is a risk to post your public e-mail address out there because of spam, viruses, and whatnot, but I havent run into that being an issue thus far, and the various e-mail software clients are getting better and better at stripping bogus e-mails out. My contact information is readily available on my business website, blog, outgoing e-mails, and on LinkedIn. Im not hard to find if someone is really trying. Does that scare me? A little, but I figure if Im going to be successful in my business, there are trade-offs and risks involved that I just have to take. Since LinkedIn is free to use, why not take full advantage of it? Its a great tool that can really improve ones chances at success if utilized properly, and it can help eliminate cold calling if your network is powerful and broad enough.

Hopefully this helps, and I hope you choose to expand your network and connect with some really interesting people out there. If I can help you in any way, please dont hesitate to ask.

Roger Bauer is CEO of SMB Consulting, Inc., a nationally recognized small business consulting firm specializing in business planning, competitive intelligence, marketing, sales development, SEO, and strategic planning. To learn more, point your browser to Business Consulting or http://smbconsultinginc.com

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