LinkedIn is one of the biggest social platforms focused on business. You may already have a LinkedIn profile or want to set it up. LinkedIn also has many professional tools that are excellent for networking. Mastering them is an added advantage.

The first step is to understand how LinkedIn works and how it can be the springboard for maximizing your networking potential. Your LinkedIn profile can serve as your business card, a showcase of your expertise, and a message board for your success.

But where to begin? We have developed a step-by-step guide in collaboration with Moji Ajele and Greg Travnicek to answer this question. It will help you get started by inviting more people to connect with you and grow your business and your BNI chapter.

If you are new to BNI, visit www.bni.com to learn more.

The Move to Virtual

BNI has been built on in-person networking and meetings for over three decades. The pandemic changed this aspect and made it essential for people to innovate, thereby accelerating the move to digital. The networking activity moved online, and LinkedIn became the perfect platform for bridging the gap created by the suspension of offline activity.

LinkedIn was already a place for BNI members to connect. Both BNI and LinkedIn are a platform for professionals to connect, network, and grow, with BNI being a great tool to maintain offline activity.

So it was only a matter of time before BNI members started using LinkedIn resources to build on their networks. LinkedIn became a central hub for networking and conducting business when the pandemic arrived and changed everything.

Since then, LinkedIn has become integral to setting up meet-ups, as meeting formats have evolved into a more hybrid model from the in-person format. In fact, it has become an excellent platform for sales prospecting.

The LinkedIn Advantage

LinkedIn is the most popular platform for professionals where they connect with other professionals about opportunities, new jobs, or even just share their successes and news. It is a social network with over 810 million users with a strong business focus. Isn’t that a platform worth exploring?

BNI members must leverage the LinkedIn platform to grow their network. Due to its reach among business and professional audiences, 92% of B2B marketers choose LinkedIn over other platforms.

You can also grow your business with LinkedIn with a few practical tips.

Now that you know why you must do it, let’s get you started on your road to LinkedIn networking success!

A Step-by-Step Guide to Making LinkedIn Work For You

There are three key aspects that you must focus on to leverage LinkedIn to grow your connection:

1. Have a great profile.
2. Create unique and relevant content.
3. Engage, engage, engage.

Let us now dive deeper into these aspects and follow the steps to LinkedIn success.

1. Have a great profile.

When you approach other professionals to connect with them, they will first check out your profile.

Whether they accept or reject your invitation will depend on how they perceive you based on your profile.

Your professional summary is the first impression that you make online. It is even more important than your resume, which only shows where you have worked and what experience you have gathered. The professional summary’s language, tone, and flow build up your professional image.

You can also share recommendations from colleagues and customers. They act as testimonials from other professionals who have liked your work.

Everything about your connections, updates, articles and other associated content is a part of your profile.

Before you start reaching out to potential networking members on LinkedIn, here are a few prerequisites that you must ensure are in place regarding your profile:

Step 1: Set up your profile appropriately.

If your profile is sloppy, incomplete, and has grammatical errors, it is bound to turn off potential connections. They will get the impression that you are not someone who is very professionally motivated and has no attention to detail.

Now that’s not a very good first impression, is it?

Your LinkedIn profile is your front-end. Design it right.

Step 2: Make sure you give enough information, but not too much information.

Now we look at how to share your work summary and other information.

Refrain from sharing your opinion about sensitive topics like religion or politics, as they can alienate people. Your focus is on your business and its growth, so stick to that.

Step 3: Make your profile look trustworthy and professional.

When people look at your profile, the first thing they see is your name, profile picture, and designation.

Ensure that you have a professionally taken picture set up as your profile photo. Unprofessional and casual profile photos can make you look like someone who is not serious about their work and maybe even unreliable.

Put the proper description of your job title, and make it exciting but self-explanatory.

Step 4: Have a simple, to-the-point introductory message.

It can be a two-sentence introduction message that you send over as a direct message. It can also be a well-crafted, short email that goes over as an In-Mail.

In-Mail message is a premium feature that LinkedIn offers to its premium members. It allows you to directly message LinkedIn members you are not yet connected to, which basic members cannot do.

Step 5: Use recommendations.

Recommendations are a perfect way to establish credibility and expertise. When your peers and seniors recommend you for your skills and appreciate your proficiency in critical areas, it helps validate your credentials.

The best way to garner recommendations is to give one. Go to the profiles of your colleagues and people you have worked with and give them recommendations. Be authentic and positive in your comments.

You are bound to get many recommendations in return, though some may choose not to give one, which is ok. It’s not an obligation.

Step 6: Add special projects.

The great thing about LinkedIn is that you can showcase some of your special projects. You can attach multimedia projects and links to work samples that highlight your skills.

These projects can attract like-minded professionals who might be willing to collaborate on similar projects.

Pro-tip: Treat your LinkedIn profile as your business card – put the correct information in the proper manner. Add everything that will create a complete and positive persona for you.

2. Create unique and relevant content.

To truly leverage LinkedIn’s potential, you must produce content. This content must be unique to you and based on your business or professional experience. It is the key to establishing you as an expert and a thought leader in your industry.

A thought leader is someone who is a visionary. They are an expert in their field and have an insight into where their industry might be heading.

It is not difficult to create content that’s unique and engaging. Let’s look at a few ways in which you can develop content.

1. Use your experience.

You can collect your thoughts and experience as articles that you can publish as LinkedIn articles.

When people resonate with your thoughts and see you as someone with an insightful mind, they are more likely to connect with you and become a part of your network organically.

2. Offer insights.

Your insights into your domain are unique to you, and sharing them can help young and seasoned professionals alike.

Ask how you can help in your community, and then create content with the queries you receive. This initiative will establish you as an industry leader who cares about the community and the industry.

3. Share your content to increase visibility.

Creating unique and relevant content increases your visibility when your articles are shared. Similarly, your credibility goes up when you can help other professionals in your industry with your insights.

You may wonder if putting your energy and effort into creating content is really for you and your business. The VCP process proves that both visibility and credibility lead directly to profitability.

Here are a few key points to consider about what to share:

Share content in different formats.

While LinkedIn blogs are the most popular way of sharing your ideas and thoughts, there is no reason why you cannot get creative with different content formats.

• You can share posts with links to interesting articles with a short commentary putting forward your opinion or citing the pros and cons of the topic.
• You can share videos and presentations of relevant or trending topics related to your industry.
• You can re-share posts by other people you feel deserve to be heard on a broader platform. You can also share content from prominent people in your field to further establish that you are in tune with the current trends.
• You can run polls and invite opinions on trending topics to increase engagement.

Another point is to share different types of content. You need not share news and business information.

You can share personal interests, professional tools, tips, humorous or satirical articles, new books or articles that may have inspired you, links to TED Talks or podcasts, etc.

Share your success and chapter wins.

Be sure to share posts about your successes as well as chapter wins. When people see people like you succeeding with BNI, it encourages them to become members too.

Sharing posts also tells people that you are active, as is your business. It also increases your visibility across the board.

You can share your BNI information from your company page as well for more traction and higher engagement.

Share information that may be relevant for BNI members.

You will have a wide range of professionals from different industries In your BNI chapter.

You are bound to come across information that may be interesting to your chapter members. This information can be news about changes in local regulations or a global initiative that may impact everyone’s business.

Sharing such valuable business information with your chapter helps everyone and further establishes the value of belonging to a networking platform like BNI.

4. Post frequently to show up in the feed of your connections regularly.

This point is significant for growing your network organically. When your connections see your posts frequently in their feeds, it establishes you as a professional who actively engages with the people and trends.

While posting, make sure you keep the content varied and in different formats as we have already discussed above.

When you post and ask people for their comments, make sure you revisit your post and reply to these comments as well. Always thank the poster for showing interest and politely address their remarks even if they disagree with you and vice versa.

Replying to comments increases engagement and, once again, establishes authenticity. It shows people that it is indeed you who is running the account and not someone whom you may have hired.

In the spirit of giving more of what you want to receive, you must also share, like, and comment on the posts of your connections and fellow members.

5. Use a content calendar to manage the content you share.

Once you decide to generate and share content frequently, you will need a content calendar to keep track of your publications.

You would want to balance your feed with blogs, posts, re-shares, and other formats. You also need to pace your content to ensure its appears at a steady interval and not overload your connections with shares one week and be silent the next.

A content calendar helps you be regular and steady in content sharing and also ensures that there are no repetitions. You can re-share some older posts that would have performed well in the past, but only after a decent internal. A content calendar can help you manage that and ‘throwback’ posts.

6. Use hashtags for your content.

Using hashtags is extremely important as it helps you increase visibility and show up in search results.

There is no need to overload your posts with paragraphs upon paragraphs worth of hashtags. Instead, a few judiciously chosen hashtags can do wonders for your posts.

You use many tools to find the right hashtags for your content. You can even take the help of an SEO or social marketing expert to select a group of right hashtags for your profile and business.

You can keep these hashtags tags handy in your content calendar and simply spread them out with different types of content.

An example of such a post is shown here, which is about an inspiring book about achieving one’s goals. It’s complete with an engaging question and a few relevant hashtags.

Pro-tip: Keep your content diverse and exciting. Subscribe to various newsletters and news capsule services to stay on top of things. Use hashtags wisely.

3. Engage, engage, engage.

Your virtual community is exactly like your “real-world” one. It is all about showing you care and lending a hand, and a good recommendation, wherever you can.

In some ways, the LinkedIn community is even better than the in-person ones.

Once you start making connections, you immediately get access to mutual connections of your contacts. And this is the key to growing your network!

We have discussed the VCP approach above, and so far, we have covered the visibility and credibility part.

• Sharing your thoughts and opinions or relevant news that may impact your industry increases your visibility and makes others think of you when looking for something in your wheelhouse.
• Establishing a professional, well-rounded profile establishes your credibility.

Now it is time to explore profitability.

1. Apply the VCP approach to reach out to potential new members.

To build the profitability of your network, you need to focus on three key aspects:

• Invite
• Promote
• Empower

Inviting new members to become a part of your network is the key to growing it.

Reaching out to mutual connections as they are the best way to increase your network and grow your business.

However, how you word your invitation is significant as people get a lot of invitations to join various groups and are typically wary of aggressive recruitment/marketing language.

Therefore, keep your invitation short and make it friendly and exciting for the person you are approaching. Here is an example of such an invitation.

In this invitation, many things are working.

• It has a great subject line: It engages the person’s attention by indicating a potential business opportunity through referral.
• Its tone is friendly and exciting: The message talks about the profile “caught my attention” and would she be kind enough to recommend herself or ‘someone like herself’ to join a group of business owners.
• The message is short, subtle, and to the point: There is no pressure to join, nor is there any long list of advantages. The benefits are implied, and it piques the interest of the receiver to know more about the group or organization.

After inviting people to become members, the next step is to retain them.

To retain members, you have to give them a platform where they can share their expertise and insights.

Promote the speakers at your chapter and ensure that their speaker profiles are shared via all important accounts.

You can also promote the most notable networkers and new or renewing members. Add a description of their success stories, and you have a winning post!

In fact, the next step, ‘Empower,’ leads directly to that.

When members share their stories, other members and potential members are inspired to replicate their success.

2. Use all of LinkedIn’s tools to your advantage.

LinkedIn has several tools that are both free and premium. You can leverage all of them to maximize your networking potential.

LinkedIn Messaging: It is free and easy to use. You can use it to send direct messages to your connections.

You can send messages from:

• Messaging page
• Connections page
• A member’s profile page
• LinkedIn messaging chat windows

The only limitation is that you can only message the people who are already your connections.

However, you can send a message to a new connection as a connection invite. You can use the “connect with me” request as a message where you talk about yourself and your network, as discussed in the point above.

InMail: InMail is a premium feature that allows you to send a direct message to anyone on LinkedIn even if they are not connected to you. However, these messages are not unlimited, and the number of InMail credits you have depends on your type of subscription.

One great way to leverage LinkedIn Messaging or Inmail communication is to do a cold call turnaround.

When you receive a message that is a cold message for any marketing or sales service, send them a short message about your business network that can help them grow their business.

You can attach a video link (as shown in the example here) or a link to any published article to help them understand more.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator: LinkedIn Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s flagship product. With its 800+ million users, LinkedIn can help you generate leads, find out more about your potential audience, and initiate sales engagement.

You can use the Sales Navigator to:

• increase visibility beyond the normal scope
• initiate proactive conversations via InMail
• increase your credibility
• do more focused Inviting
• reduce your effort
• save resources, including time, energy, and money

Sales Navigator goes a step further than regular searches and gives you actionable insights about what interests your potential members and the content that they engage with the most.

You have a window into their activities and interests, allowing you to draft more focused invites.

Using Smart Links with the Sales navigator further increases your efficiency and effectiveness.

Smart links allow you to bundle all your content – decks, videos, brochures – in one trackable link and share it from any channel such as chat, email, or messaging.

Since the link is trackable, you get insight into how the person is engaging with your content.

3. Engage with the LinkedIn Groups.

Most of the networking on LinkedIn takes place in LinkedIn Groups. This platform is where professionals and business owners come together to share information and exchange ideas.

Many opportunities and requirements also get posted on the community boards. Members frequently ask for and give recommendations. There are many more such ways of making the best use of LinkedIn Groups.

A LinkedIn Group that is most relevant to your business is the place to be for a business owner like you.

You can post your experiences and share the tools that have helped you in achieving your goals. Your content in LinkedIn groups can be more nuanced and more focused than your regular feed.

You have a better chance of showcasing your profitability with recommendations and invitations to meet-ups.

Pro-tip: Be active in the groups you join and have an overall active presence. Let people see you as an engaged and caring business owner/professional.

Tips for the Road Ahead

Now that you know how to leverage LinkedIn for growing your networking, here are a few things that you must take care of:

• Be authentic
• Follow up
• Don’t give up

Be authentic in your communication and information.

Do not indulge in making tall claims and false promises or give out misleading information to get someone to attend your meeting. It is simply not worth it. Your credibility is your most significant currency, and your communication must reflect that.

Once you have established your voice with your content, you can approach people with an offer to engage with you.

You do not need to ask them directly to join your network; rather, you can create a message that piques their interest and subtly shows them the benefits of joining BNI.

Given here is an example of one such communication.

Follow up with people whom you have approached.

If you do not hear back from someone, follow up.

People are often busy and simply forget to respond to communications that may not be at the top of their to-do lists. Always follow up with people to see if they are interested.

Don’t give up.

This is a fairly straightforward statement. You may feel like giving up after a couple of communications, but in today’s world with short attention spans, it takes three or four messages to catch the eye of the person you are approaching.

Do not give up after one or two tries. Tweak your message, and approach again.