Best ways to connect on LinkedIn – one tip you’ve not heard a million times before

By Neil Patrick

Whether you are job hunting or just looking to improve your network, there’s no escaping the fact that today LinkedIn is the number one most powerful tool at your disposal.

And it’s almost certain that there are some really key people you’d like to have in your LinkedIn network that have no idea who you are.

I had a discussion recently with a friend who asked me how he could connect with people he’d never met, but who were really high profile experts in his field. He was worried that if he just approached them cold, they’d decline his invitation to connect.

And his fears were justified. The highest profile people in every field get dozens of invitations every week to connect with people they don’t know. And probably don’t even want to know. If you start to get too many declined invitations on LinkedIn, you risk being downgraded by LinkedIn or worse being classed as a spammer.

This morning I spent an hour or so looking at the tips and advice being given on how to overcome this hurdle.

There were lots of ideas about how to make your LinkedIn invitation appealing to the recipient, such as flattery and researching their work so you could comment intelligently. Joining groups and joining in conversations where they were present.

That’s all fine, but guess what, many of the world’s top professionals do not spend much if any time on LinkedIn group discussions. They quite probably only ever look at their LinkedIn messages once a week or so. They are too busy being successful to spend their time this way - they don’t need or want more connections or more online messages.

And if you approach them cold, chances are they’ll ignore you or decline your invitation, because they just don’t need it.

And that’s a problem if they are potentially a really valuable connection for you.

But there’s a way round this.

What many people don’t appreciate is that LinkedIn may be social media, but it’s not a free for all like Facebook or Twitter. And because people share much more personal information about themselves on their LinkedIn profiles, many treat invitations to connect with caution. I class LinkedIn as high stakes social media.

But most people also have a Twitter account. This is low stakes social media. And you can usually discover this on their LinkedIn profile too. Just click on the contact info button and you’ll often find their Twitter account link. Here’s the button you need:

Click this button, see if they provide their Twitter handle and you can go straight to their Twitter account and follow them. Then you can develop a relationship with them on Twitter even if they don’t follow you back. You can retweet them. Send them a friendly tweet in response to something they tweeted about. In a little while, you’ll have a relationship where they know who you are. And more importantly like you at least a little.

Now if you send them an invitation to connect on LinkedIn, (and don’t forget of course to personalise it by mentioning that you are already connected on Twitter), it’s highly likely they’ll accept. To be extra sure, you could even be super courteous and ask them on Twitter first if they’d be happy to connect on LinkedIn.

I have used this method of connecting with key people dozens of times and it’s never failed yet. Moreover, it means that when we do connect on LinkedIn, we already have a basic relationship in place, that’s a great jumping off point for more dialogue.

Sometimes, it really does make sense to knock at the back door, not the front!