Community Voices: Space Friends share...their best tips for reaching out on LinkedIn. What are yours?

What are your best tips for reaching out to someone on LinkedIn?

Ai Addyson-Zhang @aiaddysonzhang

LinkedIn is my favorite platform to cultivate professional connections. Before you send a connection request, you should conduct some research about this person. Check out their LinkedIn headline, about section, and recent content. Find anything that you genuinely like about the person and use that as leverage to initiate conversations and nurture relationships. The more you can demonstrate that you have done your homework to study the person’s background and interest, the more likely you are to stand out among thousands of others on the platform and build long-lasting relationships conducive to your career.

AJ Wilcox @aj1

My best tip for connecting is to have an actual, mutually-beneficial reason for connecting. If you are trying to connect under the auspices of selling the prospect, they’ll smell the sales-breath from a mile away.

Start connecting well before you need the connections, and they’ll be “relationships” instead of “prospects”.

Ed Troxell @EdTroxell

Do you research before reaching out

Theresa Anderson @theresa

Be authentic, add value where you can

Viveka von Rosen @viveka

Always take at least 3 minutes to look at a person’s profile, find 3 talking points (commonalities, points of interest, etc) to bring up in your invitation to connect. Do NOT follow up a connection request with a sales pitch. Continue to follow up and provide helpful content and after building your KLT factor and providing value for a week or two, then go for the meeting.

Troy Sandidge @FindTroy

Slingshot method. I found many who you want to connect with on LinkedIn, may not have LinkedIn as their primary platform of choice for simple communication. Use Twitter, Messenger, Instagram, or even email as a way to bridge the gap and accelerate/maintain communication which can help have more serious conversations with individuals on LinkedIn.

Rachel Moore @rachel1

Before you send a connection request to someone, like and comment on a few of their posts. They will receive notifications that you have done this and will be more likely to connect because they now know who you are when they receive your connection request. Once connected contact them within the hour whilst you are fresh in their mind.