How To Network On LinkedIn

My career as a writer, editor, marketer, personal trainer and whatever else I’ve succeeded in has unsuspectingly come back to one thing – not a strategy, budget, or any other buzzword, rather the support of a true community. The encouragement of my community is what lead me to and made possible this guide on how to network on LinkedIn.

I think it’s fair to say I can attribute all the landmarks in my career to one concept – leveraging the learnings from other people’s support & ideas.

I would argue that as much as most people like to believe their success is self-made, I propose that it’s more due to the support of other people empowering them to be the person they are today.

Steve Jobs was coached by Bill Campbell.

Oprah Winfrey was mentored by Maya Angelou.

Elon Musk doesn’t like the idea of mentors but he has said he has learned more from others than he has from his own thoughts.

When I looked to grow my professional network at the end of March 2018 I thought, “Imagine if I could crowdsource the knowledge of the most incredible people in New Zealand, and all the insights they have to offer while still growing my business?”

There is one place where all of these people live and that’s why I decided to learn how to network on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has become a breeding ground for all today’s most advantageous professionals to share their knowledge and their professional prowess with the rest of the world.

Who is on LinkedIn?

From our Prime Minister to Bill Gates, everybody who is somebody is on LinkedIn and you can bet that they’re only a click away from being a part of your own network.

The best part is that most people are receptive to hearing from you if you approach them in the right way and with the right mentality of giving more than you take.

I decided I would spend 90 days on this project and here are the results: 

• I’ve connected with some of the largest names on the planet including the Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern, Jason Feifer the Editor in Chief of Entrepreneur Media, CEO’s of some of the largest companies in Australasia, and hundreds of other incredible individuals

• I’ve had over 3 M+ views on my content on LinkedIn

• I’ve been approached by a number of recruiters and picked up multiple new clients

• Connected with 4500+ people who are in my target market

• 32000+ people viewing my professional profile

• Created a lasting network on which I can call upon by simply sending them a message straight to their inbox

Since that time I created one of the most commented video’s  on LinkedIn in 2018 with over 2.1 M views and LinkedIn as a company has shared my content across their own social media channels.

So how does this happen?

You begin by becoming a person of value and look like somebody who is able to offer value to others.

People respond to one of two things in a professional setting, firstly those are credentials that scream I want to know this person and secondly, you know other people of value.

Here’s the process I used to eventually connect with my Prime Minister and every other person I’ve ever wanted to meet using LinkedIn.

Let’s jump in.

1. CREATE A PROFILE THAT PEOPLE WANT TO LOOK AT

Everybody knows how important first impressions are. But not everybody knows that the “first impression” is actually only a seven-second window upon first meeting or in this case seeing someone’s profile.

In a world where people’s attention spans are low, you need to make an impact on people immediately. The first thing people always look to is a person’s face or more specifically a headshot.

Here’s a great example of what not to do:

Here is what an optimized profile looks like:

As you can see my profile shares a lot of information as soon as you land on it. I’ll break this down so you can set up your own profile.

2. a) Look the part

I have a professional headshot (and you’re 14 times more likely to have your profile viewed when you have a photo) and a banner photo of the PR I’ve managed to land.

Most people haven’t had the PR I’ve received but most people do have a great photo that shows them in a professional scenario. Essentially your goal is to portray one of two things:

• some sense of public credibility
• a level of friendliness by having a picture of other people as people relate to people.   

If you can put a photo here (1584px x 396px are the optimal dimensions) that immediately resonates with your audience it will guide people to the next part of your profile.

2. b) Establish who you are and what you do

This part of my profile is made for two things

• the first is to appear in search results for companies that are looking for people on LinkedIn
• the second is to instill trust and a bit of wow factor on the reader and tell them what it is that you actually do

My profile is search-optimized: Each word in here is strategically placed as I want to be found by employers who are searching for people in digital marketing, writing, consulting and growth.

I’ve then crafted each of these to read nicely and give a bit of the wow factor I mentioned that hopefully gets people to read on to find out what is that I do at K&J Growth.  Here’s an example:

Have something that people can grab on to when they see your profile.

2. c) Write an interesting bio and three sentence summary

When people continue to scroll they are met with the first three lines of your bio and then any other selected media you want to share. Here is another opportunity to impress people and tell them what you do.

Start by telling people [very clearly] what it is you do.

“I help companies and people from around the world expand their business by creating, growing and exploring their market with data and creativity while driving up ROI”

Then become real to the reader by telling people who you’ve worked with.

“Here are some of the names we’ve worked with that you might recognise: Tik Tok, Microsoft, Comcast, Universal Pictures, University of Delaware, The Personal Trainer Development Centre”

Finally hit them with any link that gives you credibility, as you can see in my bio it’s the links that are on my profile are how I opened our gym in Central Otago which made $202K in 14 days.

Hopefully, all of this is compelling enough for the reader to venture onwards to the rest of the profile.  

2. d) Personalising your work experience and getting recommendations and endorsements

Now that people are reading your profile you want to organise the remainder of your profile in order of priority of how you want people to see you and your work.

For me the priority for profile viewers to find is my main source of work and income which is K&J Growth. I want people to see our agency first with the intention that hopefully, they click on the link to find out more about the company and who we are.

There are two things here that I want to point out to people that I see who usually make mistakes in this area:

1. i) When you’re listing your previous employers or employees make sure that the company actually exists on LinkedIn nothing screams I’m new to this and my solo trading company was created last week than an image like the one below.

If you’re unsure how to upload and create a company on LinkedIn so that you have the proper picture go here.

If you’re short on work experience put up anything you’ve done in the past that other people look kindly upon:

• Student groups
• Volunteering roles
• Clubs you’ve managed

Anything like this gives you the credibility and diversity to let people know that you’ve done more than just go to school and get a job.  

2. ii) Every part of your profile should now be perfect so that when someone is scrolling through they know who you are, what you’ve done and that you’re here to offer them the help if they need it.

Once you’ve filled these areas in – it’s time to move to the Skills & Endorsements section.

Here is the three endorsements I have on my page Fitness, Social Media and Marketing Strategy.

Essentially these can be added and tweaked as you like but as you’ve probably guessed the more endorsements you have the better. When you’re starting to optimise your profile you want to put the top three things skills you want people to look at.

Your goal is to get into double digits for each of the skills there.

Here is the message that I sent to my friends on Facebook who I knew would respond quickly if I asked them for help with both endorsements and recommendations.

“Hey (first name),

How are you?

I want to ask a favour of you. I’m trying to optimise my LinkedIn profile and would love it if you get the chance to endorse me for my top 3 skills on the platform and possibly leave the recommendation about (insert whatever skills you’re good at). It would mean a lot and very happy to do the same if you want.

Here is my profile: (insert direct link to your profile)

If it doesn’t fit I completely understand!

Chat soon”

I’ll share with you an easier way to increase the endorsement count later on in this guide once you’ve made your first 500 connections.

Now that your profile is ready to rock and rumble it’s time to start the fun part and start connecting with anyone you’ve ever wanted to meet.

2. CONNECT WITH PEOPLE AT SCALE

It’s time to reach out to your ideal contacts at scale and start automating your outreach process.

Have you ever wanted to connect with the Prime Minister?

What about the CEO of the company you love?

How about the author who wrote the book which you’ve based your personal and professional philosophies around?

It’s almost certain that these people have a professional profile on LinkedIn and it’s almost always possible to reach these people even if you’re starting from scratch.

So let’s get into it and start talking about how you can build your own world-class network in ninety days or less.

a) Getting The Right Tools

To start you’re going to need the right web browser for the job and If you’re not using Google Chrome it’s time to switch your web browser, you can do this here.

Once you’ve downloaded Chrome it is time to get the free 14-day trial Chrome extension tool called “LinkedIn Helper”.

I want to mention a key point here, you need to be using either a free trial of LinkedIn Premium (make sure you choose the “Sales Navigator Professional” option like I’ve shown in the picture below) or you run the risk of getting your account banned by running this automation without any form of premium.

If you’re on a tight budget you can use the free trial of LinkedIn Helper but you’ll only be able to send a maximum of 60 connection requests per day as opposed to the maximum of a 150 per day when you pay for the full version of this product (which is only $15 USD per month).

Once you’ve installed everything you need on Google Chrome it’s time to head back to your LinkedIn profile which will now look something like this.

The pop up down at the bottom right of the screen is the Chrome extension LinkedIn Helper.

Now that you’ve got your premium account activated and LinkedIn Helper up and running I’ll guide you through LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

b) Learning To Use The Tools of the Trade

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a tool that allows you to search for leads on a mass scale and it leads you through a guided setup process when you activate your free trial. Once you’ve finished your guided setup (select whatever you like in the set up it doesn’t matter too much for how you’re going to use the tool) you will be shown your home screen which look something like this.

What you need to do from here is select the “Search by keywords or boolean” area.

This will take you to the filters you applied at the beginning of your free trial set-up process. You should get a picture like this:

From here you want to scroll downwards and you’ll find the words “View All Filters” on the left hand side menu.

Select the words and you’ll be taken to the screen as you can see below:

This is where you can begin to have some fun and find practically any person on LinkedIn that you could ever want to connect with.

The process I used to find the people I wanted to connect with came down to two things:

i) I wanted to build a stronger community for New Zealanders in marketing, PR and comms (these were my industry fields in my search) because all of my learning and experience came from groups overseas

ii) I wanted to connect with people who I could learn from and were in roles senior to me so I could share these experiences with the community I was building

From here I choose how these people were connected to me which you can do by selecting the “2nd connections and 3rd + everyone else” options in the relationship field.

You’ll end up with something like this and a long list of leads to connect with. Feel free to have as many goes as you need with filters to get the results you need and continue to change them until you get a list of people you want to connect with that will benefit you.

This is where the next step comes in of using LinkedIn Helper.

Click on the Video-tutorial & User Manual so that it expands and select the option that says “Collect, Select & Invite 2nd & 3rd contacts”.

Your LinkedIn Helper will now look something like this. What you need to do is now click the drop down arrow beside the words “DEFAULT_LIST” and select “. . . CREATE NEW” make an appropriate name for the new list of leads I’ve named mine after the role they have, what industry they’re in and where they live geographically.

This is an example of a client non-profit client we work with.

From here just hit the “Collect the contacts for inviting” button. At this point and time the screen will begin to scroll through the next 1000 leads you’ve created from your filter search. This should only take 5 – 10 minutes maximum.

Once you’ve collected your leads select the “Message” and write out a message for your community to receive.

Here is one of the scripts I’ve user personally:

“Hey {firstname},

My name is Kale and I run a growth marketing firm with my business partner in the U.S and I’m down in Dunedin. I’m trying to grow a community of leaders and executives in New Zealand and I thought you would be a great source to learn from and connect with.

Best,

Kale”

Your goal here is not to sell anything and make a simple ask that appeals to an individual’s better nature and admit that you need help by asking to learn from them. Do not try to sell them anything because they won’t connect with you.

Hit the save button once you’ve written your template and click the “Invite” tab and set your invite per period to 100 for your first week and select start profiles inviting.

Do not go over a limit of 160 per day otherwise, your profile may get banned and do not let your total invitations hit a maximum of 2500 people in total. To check this number head to your “My Network” tab and beside Invitations you will have the “Manage All” button. Select this and it will take you to this screen. Check your sent invites are not over 2500.

Once you’ve got this process up and running you can hand this over to a virtual assistant or an employee but be wary you will get a lot of inbound after the first 30 days of doing this.

3. CREATING CONTENT THAT RESONATES WITH YOUR COMMUNITY

Once the wheels begin to move you want people to recognise who you are, what you think and how you’re adding value to their professional network.

For those of you who have never done this, it can be hard.

Creating great content is not a walk in the park, and this will be the hardest part of this journey if you’re new to copywriting.

I’m going to share with you how I prepare my content for LinkedIn and how I’ve generated over 3 M views on my content since being on the platform. 

a) Start Writing in Low-Risk Environments

If you’re not a content marketer or even a writer, learning to become a writer is not easy. When I started out on LinkedIn I would post five times a week and often I would get crickets in response sometimes getting less than 500 views. Now my posts average 10,000 + views and have over 20 comments or more.

This didn’t happen overnight though and I was able to test my content using other platforms first.

Here is how to start honing your content for LinkedIn before you start posting here.

b) Enter Quora

Most great content often starts off as a spark or lingering thought, it then transforms into an idea which we flesh out and we begin to investigate if this idea has viability or not, and finally, we share some of that idea with the public.

Quora is a social media platform this allows people to answer questions asked by anyone and everyone if you’re a first-time content creator this allows you to get your teeth into writing without actually having the social pressure of it performing because you’re offering advice.

This has been a breeding ground for some of my LinkedIn posts. This is how I use it for validating my ideas.  

I start by searching to see if someone has asked a question that is relative to an idea I have for a LI post:

I then answer that question to the best of my ability and gauge the response and port this over to a post on LinkedIn.

By using this process I can validate whether or not content is going to perform well ahead of time and I don’t have to use LinkedIn as my testing ground but another social platform that allows me to test my ideas without any repercussions of content that could fail in front of my new professional audience.

Almost all of us have a following or audience on any of our social media channels whether this is our colleagues, friends or acquaintances all of these people have voices and they will share their opinions with us through a like, heart or comment.

Here is where you can again test an abbreviated version of your work and see what people have to say.

It can be a post on Instagram:

It can even be something you share with your friends and family on Facebook:

Essentially all you’re looking to do it get your idea out into the public and see their reaction. The bigger the reaction the more validation you will have for putting the time and effort into that idea. This process allows you to find out if your idea is one that is worth chasing or if it needs more work and save you the pain of writing something that people don’t want to share or read.

c) Structuring The Anatomy Of Your Posts

Now that you’ve got a place to test your posts most successful posts on LinkedIn have three stages:

• The Intro
• The Middle
• The Sign Off

If you get a combination of these right people will engage with your content the first part is getting them to click further into the message as LinkedIn only shows the first two-three lines of your post:

This intro works because it creates curiosity of what I learned but also people internally ask themselves “how did he connect with so many people so quickly?”

This naturally leads people to click “…see more” and takes us to the middle of the post:

The middle of the post offers some professional credibility by recognising the people I’ve connected with and the lessons learned and the admission of my own fear.

The sign off:

A conclusion that resonates with the most valuable thing I’ve learned from others and it leaves an emotional response with the reader.

When you begin structuring your content in this format it does two things:

i) It gives your credibility from the connections you’ve made using automation and makes those other people look good too

ii) Your posts are structured as stories and for the most part, this is how humans take on board information

d) How To Ask Questions When All Else Fails

If you’ve tried throwing everything you’ve got at your posts and your engagement is still low it’s time to ask some questions, not of yourself but to your connections.

Some of my most engaging posts have come from asking a question to my audience they still have the same structure as my storytelling posts but instead of finishing with a statement simply ask people a question.

By asking questions of your audience you’re giving them a call to action to interact with you and this is a quick way to grow engagement as fast as possible.

Your goal to increase engagement is to simply ask as many questions as possible and reply to as many comments without forcing a conversation.

Here is a great example of how somebody outside of my network commented on my post.

e) Keep people coming back to your content

Remember when you’re networking your way to the top your goal is to be as conversational as possible and also as thankful as possible.

What do I mean by being thankful?

This is a comment from a person who was not in my network but there were two things I focused on doing as soon as they commented on my post.

The first was I thanked him for commenting and secondly, I reinforced their commentary with another person in my network I then followed up by adding Jared as a connection.

Your goal as a pro networker on LinkedIn is to recognise that people are using their time to comment on your content and you need to be thankful that they chose to do that.

By saying thank you to someone who comments you can very quickly create repeat commenters on your LinkedIn content because you’ve shown appreciation for their insight.

Now that you’re resonating with people on LinkedIn it’s time to make them recognise you on the other social platforms too.

4. KEEP PEOPLE INTERESTED WHEN THEY’RE NOT ON LINKEDIN

You’ve started to gain notoriety on LinkedIn but you’ve also realised other people don’t spend every waking moment on LinkedIn, they also have Facebook.

So how do you capitalise on the new audience you’ve connected with outside of LinkedIn, you advertise to them on Facebook too by creating a custom audience.

To do this you first need to export your contacts from LinkedIn:

To export LinkedIn connections:

1. Click the  My Network icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
2. Click Your connections on the left rail.
3. Click  Manage synced and imported contacts near the top right of the page (it has a book icon beside it and is difficult to see)
4. Under Advanced actions on the right rail, click Export contacts (you may be prompted to sign into your account)
5. Click Request Archive and select Pick and Choose and tick Connections only.

6.
7. You will receive an email to your Primary Email address which will include a link where you can download your list of connections.

From here you will now have all of your contacts emails in one list that is sent to your email and it can now be uploaded to Facebook as a custom audience.

If you’re unfamiliar with Facebook and how to advertise on there you can simply hire a virtual assistant who is skilled in social media marketing to help you set up a business account. If you want to do it yourself check out this guide on how to create your own Facebook business page here and you can learn how to set up a custom audience with this guide.

At this point and time, you want to upload something that will resonate with your audience.

Seeing most of the connections I made were in New Zealand I opened with a case study of how we opened our gym in Central Otago and used a location-specific title for the advert.

And slapped in right of the middle of the advert is a big picture of me with my cousin reminding people of who they had connected with on LinkedIn.

The relevance score for this ad on Facebook was 9/10.

With this tactic we picked up over 40 new page likes for K&J Growth (our marketing firm and we’re the team that built the BossBabe site) and had over 90 click throughs to the link we provided for less than $40 dollars within the space of 48 hours. That’s 55% better than the industry average of $1/read. The page likes were just an added bonus.

5. STAYING TOP OF MIND

You may remember at the start of this guide that I would show you a way to increase the number of endorsements on your profile. 

I’m going to share a strategy with you that allows you to increase the number of endorsements from your newly founded network, increase your profile views, continue more organic conversations with your connections and best of all make sure that they’re always thinking about your professional profile.

We’re going to start endorsing other people automatically using LinkedIn Helper again.

Here is how to do it – Open LinkedIn Helper and select “Endorse my contacts”:

Like most things with LinkedIn Helper you need to collect a list of people to endorse them. To do this simply click on “Collect contacts for endorsing”

You will be presented with above screen from here you can customize your endorsement strategy however you like. I recommend selecting “Go To All My Connections Page”.

Then select “endorse my contacts” again and select “Collect contacts for endorsing”. LinkedIn Helper will run through your connections and collect them as a list. Once this is finished you need to select the “Endorse” tab.

From here you will be presented with this screen:

Hit the “Endorse my contacts” button and that’s it from here you will begin to endorse your contacts.

Never go above 70 a day or you run the risk of getting flagged or worse, from LinkedIn.

This strategy gave me over 40 endorsements from people who I endorsed from a number of different industries and boosted my numbers dramatically. You can expect anywhere between 2 – 5% endorsement return rate.

The other thing that happened here is I ended up having organic conversations with other people like this:

People love to reciprocate favours and as a result, it opens up another whole window of conversation. This strategy also results in a lot of people looking at your profile as people always want to know who has endorsed them for something and who they are.

With this much traction, it’s time to start working on the goal of generating revenue from your LinkedIn audience.

6. CLOSING THE LOOP

At this point, you’ve cultivated a community and the time frame for me to get to this point was sixty days. I had grown to 4000+ followers, had over 50 phone calls, 9 coffee dates, 200+ inbox conversations which were a mixture of giving and receiving help.

The best part of this is that I have now created numerous connections who I now can call upon at any time.

It was now time to capitalise on my new audience and I made my first ask of the audience and it was a subtle ask.

“Hey {first name},

We’ve been connected here on LinkedIn for a while and it’s been a pleasure getting see you in a professional light. I wanted to ask you for your best advice on how you would grow a marketing agency that specializes in digital growth, creative strategy and website development in New Zealand?

Are there any particular books, people or groups that you would recommend I should look into?

I understand you’re probably flat out right now so please don’t feel rushed to get back to me and if you can’t find the time to respond I completely understand.

Cheers,

Kale”

When you’re crafting your message to your network remember this quote from all-time great and hip-hop legend Pitbull:

“Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice”

By asking for advice people are far more open to offering you their time as opposed to asking them to hire you, buy your product or take up your service offer.

Start by sending your own version of this message to ten people who have replied to your connection request and have at least commented on your post to the test the response from those who are receptive towards you.

The message I crafted above was sent to a hundred of my connections per day and the response was incredible. Over 40% of people responded within the first day and almost 60% of people sent back some form of message after three days.

Within seven days of sending out 60 messages a day I landed 22 new leads and secured four new clients by the end of the week and I still had over 50 unread messages to respond to.

So like everything else we’ve been doing it requires the assistance of LinkedIn Helper.

Open the LinkedIn Helper tab and select the “Message to 1st connections”.

From here we’re going to filter our own contacts to get a list of people for LinkedIn Helper to message for us.

To do this select “My Network” in the top right-hand corner.

From here select the “Connections” option below the total number of connections and just above hashtags.

This will take you to the next and you need to select search with filters.

You will be presented with a “filter” screen and from here you want will want to select the people who are within your connections.

This will present you with the filter section below and from here you can put together a list of people to receive your message using LinkedIn Helper.

From here you need to open LinkedIn Helper and select “message to 1st connections | group members” and select the “Recipients” option.

From here select “Collect message recipients”. After this select the “Message” tab insert the note that is relative to the audience you’ve collect and select “Broadcast” and select “Start Message Broadcast”.

Just like the auto connect feature LI helper will begin to send the automated messages to your connections allowing you to send a message to the clients you want.

As heads up I wouldn’t send this to more than 60 people per day for your own sanity and in terms of running a risk of getting a restriction from LinkedIn.

7. CASE STUDIES

And there you go, I’m confident that you’ve just read the most complete guide on how to network on LinkedIn. If you’ve come here and read right through to this point and thought for some bizarre reason this isn’t applicable for me I work in (blank) you’re probably wrong.

A network is something that can and should be built at anytime.

Made redundant and need a new job?

Make sure you’ve got the right people around you who could give you a new role.

Need to find prospects that aren’t on any other platform?

LinkedIn has all of their details and email addresses that become available to you as soon as you connect with them.

Wanting to learn from people with real world battle scars and have been in business for years?

They are waiting for you to send them questions and they’re just one click away from chatting.

We’ve implemented these strategies for a number of clients and we’ve curated the stories of three clients from diverse industries to show you the power of using LinkedIn for yourself, your company, your employer or your own business.

CASE STUDY 1: NOVO MINISTRIES -THE NON PROFIT MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Jay Sherrer the Director of Novo Ministries goals are simple:

“Our vision is to see real, lasting life-change in Oklahoma City’s at-risk children – and beyond. Qualified organizations can utilize our Mentorship program structure, supplies and resources – all at no cost to you.”

Success for Novo was to simply help as many at-risk-children as possible and as a nonprofit the more children they help the greater the success. To do this they needed to reach more facilitators for their programs and this was often other youth ministers

We took a multi-pronged approach with their marketing by firstly designing for each way that people came to the website whether that was through FB, Instagram or LinkedIn.

The way we used LinkedIn was to use some hyperlocal targeting for profiles that had the title “Youth Minister” and lived in the Greater OKC city. When leads received a message from us the ask was simple and to the point.

“Hey {first name},

My name is Jay and I’m the Director of Novo Ministries, an OKC nonprofit passionate about reaching inner-city boys and girls in need. I’m looking to build a community of pastors and ministers around the US and thought you’d be a great connection”

After we connected with these people we would then use a follow-up message:

“Hey  {first name},

I also wanted to ask if there are any people in your community that you think I should connect with who are doing work with inner-city or at-risk children?

My nonprofit, Novo, is passionate about empowering churches, organizations, and individuals to reach the needy kids right outside their doors, and I’m looking to talk to people who are doing the same thing so we can get their feedback of how they’re making an impact.”

Each of these messages proposed no threat to the receiver and once again these started organic conversations.

Within three weeks we had gathered 27 leads of people who were wanting to facilitate the training programs created by Novo’s team.

For those who didn’t reply or convert from our initial messages, they were feedback into our FB audience funnel once again resulting in another organic touch point without ever directly telling someone to buy, sell or like us.

The key part of the success of this campaign came from the non-pushy message and the intent to help people facilitate relevant content and copywriting in their industry.

CASE STUDY 2: ACCOUNTING THAT MATTERS

We had one of the largest accounting companies on the globe approach us on how they could generate more conversations with large potential clients from the bottom up without selling them their service until they asked the question first.

The company who wished to be anonymous for this case study were happy for us to share the tactics we used for the territory they were targeting.

The scope for success for this project was to gather at least ten organic inquiries for the business per quarter from the target companies that our client had listed as desirable clients.

Here is the approach we used combining both LinkedIn and some other subtle remarketing tools that got us across the line for this.

We took a team of 9 employees in various levels of the company’s hierarchy and started targeting the people connected to the companies they wanted to work with.

We used a variety of outreach messages from each employees profile and turned this into a collective LinkedIn presence that shared similar messages to a target group of 300 employees from the companies we wanted to work with.

Here were the results:

• A collective 800,000 views from the 9 employees LinkedIn profiles within 60 days of launch
• Collectively 9500 connections were made and of those at least 750 of those were related to the target companies we wanted to hit
• From here we had 62 direct sales inquiries from the project with the scope of each project ranging from $10,000 – $80,000 in ARR

The content strategy we used focused on two things asking questions of their audiences and asking for feedback on the state of their industry.

These posts were created to generate feedback and direct comments from the employees of the companies we were targeting.

The connections of each of the employees were filtered back into a target Facebook campaign that was focused on educating the client about the product and again we made no push to sell with these adverts and the appropriate landing pages.

The campaign’s success came back to two things this was the ability to build real-life interactions and relationships directly between client managers and clients and secondly because we gave clients information that could be applied in their marketing.

CASE STUDY 3: POLITICS THROUGH POSITIONING

This is a very unique case study as politics is a trigger point for a lot of people. We’ve helped a current client who wishes to remain anonymous towards attaining a new position in the upcoming 2018 elections.

Again like every other strategy we’ve discussed here all of the outreach is organic, warranted and willing. Our client was looking to connect with a large proportion of influential voters from a target demographic of professional females aged 35 – 65+.

So heading back to LinkedIn we tracked down a list of these voters for the upcoming election. The results have been incredible with over 5000+ connections in the first fifty days.

We can’t share much more about this approach but it shows the power of creating relationships and should teach people to think sideways on how to use LinkedIn as a platform.

CONCLUSION

If you’re sitting here after reading this and you’re slightly bewildered with what you have read or just plain astonished I don’t blame you. It’s the same feeling I had when I learned the true value of a community when we opened our gym back in 2016.

It leads me to a quote that I’ve taken from author Ryan Holiday:

“Your Network Is Your Net Worth”

When we’re looking at our assets at any point in our life we should take an inventory of the list of contacts, relationships and influential people we’ve met across our travels. When we’re struggling we turn to our friends, when we’re looking for new career opportunities we turn to our colleagues and when we need advice we turn those who we love and trust.

The common theme across all of these things is that whenever we need help we ask other people.

Everything we read, learn or hear is made by other people and being connected to those people is an asset. In marketing, there is no more powerful tool than word of mouth and that’s what connecting with people is about and that’s why this project I’ve created has been so important and all-consuming for me for the last three months because I know people help people.

I want to share these last three tips from my all-time favourite author Tim Ferriss on connecting with people as some thoughts to take away when you begin your own outreach process as I know they’ve been an invaluable guiding tool for me on this journey.

Never dismiss anyone – You never know who might help you one day with your work. Treat everyone like they could put you on the front page of the New York Times . . . because someday you might meet that person.

Play the long game – It’s not about finding people who can help you right this second. It’s about establishing a relationship that can one day benefit both of you.

Focus on “pre-VIPs” – The people who aren’t well known but should be and will be. It’s not about who has the biggest megaphone but talking to people who are willing to help that are going places.

These learnings have helped me connect with the Prime Minister to New York Times Best Selling authors and the best part is that you can do it too.

Best of luck,

Kale