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If you have been following this sequence of posts about adding connections to your network, you have now invited all those who are already on Linkedin to join you.   In your Outlook file and other email services files, you will have many more names that are not on Linkedin.  What is going to be your strategy for inviting them to be part of your networking efforts?

Again, you want to use the your overall purpose for using Linkedin as the guiding principle to additional invitations.  Continue to ask yourself, how will this person or these types of persons who emails addresses you have, help you achieve your goals for the program.  Revisit your decisions such as quality networking verses quantity networking.

More than likely, you will have a number of people whose emails addresses that are not on Linkedin.  Break this larger number down into chuck size pieces so that you can invite them your join your connection each day.  A consistent effort of 5-10 invites a day from your existing lists of contact will produce an amazing result even over the course of 30 days.

Here’s an example of a script I used for people I know but who may be unfamiliar with the Linkedin program.

Script

“Hello, its been sometime since I have connected with you.  I hope you are doing well.  I am not sure if you are familiar with the new social networking programs people are using on the internet?  I belong to the Linkedin program as a way of networking with a group of people who have similar interests as me.  I would like to invite you to join my network.  It’s very easy to get started.  You can go to www.Linnkedin.com and sign up to be on the program.  It’s free and I think you will enjoy it.  I am currently working on an e-book of tips for people using the Linkedin program and would like to send it to you.  Let’s try to connect on each others network.   Check out www.linkedin.com and join so we can connect on a more regular basis” Thanks,  Al

Change the words to suit your situation.  With this script, I am making an invitation, telling them about Linkedin, showing them how easily they can get started and making a promise to share something with them.  These ingredients make the script work.

Use this or a similar emails invitations to those on your list and do it on a consistent basis.

Manual Invitation

The last direct tool Linkedin offers for building your network is the Manual invitation.  Go to the green Get Connected button and click on it.  You will see a manual section where you can now type in six email names and addresses to invite with one stroke of the key board.

I found it helpful to take some time to research the names and email address I wanted to invite and then place them in a word document.  I then copy six names on a daily basis from this list and send an invitation to all the people I wanted to invite.

Recycling Your Invitations

On a sixty to ninety day basis, you may wish to invite again those who have not responded.  If you go to your Inbox on your Linkedin Home Page and click on “Send” you will see all the people to whom you have send invitations and the status of those invitations.  From here you can choose to resend invitations to specific people.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

If you have been following my posts on the Linkedin networking tools,  you have loaded up your contact lists from Outlook and other email services like G-Mail or Hotmail, etc.  The strategy I suggested was to find on those lists, people who are already on Linkedin and send them an invite to connect with you.  They already are familiar with Linkedin and are more likely to accept your invitation.

When I did my first batch of Outlook Contacts (I have been using Outlook as a contact manager for about five years), I identified 37 people who were already on Linkedin.  While I knew many of these people, I have not had contact with most of them in the past year.

I composed the semi-private invitation you saw in an earlier post.  I sent invitations to 37 people in one click.  I was very pleased that within the first hour, I had twelve responses accepting my invitation.   Over the course of the next several days, that number grew to 18 people.  A 50% response rate is good for less than 30 minutes of work.  It helped give me more Linkedin connections in very quick fashion.  You may get better response rates with from your uploaded contacts.

Colleagues, Company and Class Mates

Linkedin also provides you with tools to find connections from colleagues, companies where you have worked or people who attended school with you.  Start again with the Green Button Add Connections on the left side of any Linkedin page.   Click on Colleagues and Classmates.  If you have listed specific companies in your profile or identified specific schools in your profile, Linkedin will search its data base to find matches for your companies and schools who are already on Linkedin.  You will be given a list of names and you can decide whether they are people you want to invite as connections on your Linkedin program.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

Here are some ways to begin building your Linkedin network rapidly.

Use the Linkedin “Add Connections” Function

On the side of every Linkedin page you will find a green button Add Connections.  Click on this button to begin your first step in building your network.  This will take you to a page where you can manually add six invitations at one time.  We will come back to the manual input in a moment.  First we want to use Linkedin automated tools.

You will find a tab on that same page “Import Contacts”.  You will click here to import contacts from Outlook, and webmail services like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and other electronic address books.

I’ve had a Hotmail account for eight years.  From the Icon choices, I clicked on Hotmail.  My connection did not go through the first time (See the tip at the end of this secton).  The second time Linkedin connected to my entire email list in Hotmail and displayed a 193 contacts.  (Since I only use Hotmail as a back up email program, I had forgotten most of the people listed on this email file.)

If a person is already on Linkedin, they will have a small blue cross after their name.  This is a great place to make your first invitations.  These are people who are already familiar with Linkedin and suitable candidates to add to your network. (Use your own set of criteria for who you want on your network).

You then click to identify which of these people you want to send an invitation to.  In my case I choose  the 18 current Linkedin people as my first set of invitations.  This created a list (their names and email addresses are already on the Linkedin list because it extracted the list from your webmail accounts), on the right side of the page.

I checked the box that says I want to “Personalize my Invitation”.  I was then greeted with a screen box in which I could type my personalize invitation rather than the standard Linkedin form.

Since I was sending 18 of these invitations at one time, I wanted to make the invitation semi-personal.  This is not a mass mailing nor is it a one to one mailing.

Here’s what I wrote:  “I see that you are on Linkedin just as I am.  I would love to connect with you.  I am currently working on an e-book of tips for people using the Linkedin program and would like to send it to you.  Let’s try to connect on each others network.  Thanks.”  Al

You will notice a couple of things about this semi-personal note.  It is more general than a one to one (you can always send out individual personal invitations) .  Second, I offered them something in return for joining my network.  My mother taught me that whenever I visited a friend’s house, I should bring some type of treat or gift.  This is my version of “visiting” someone.  It is my hope that the email tips sheet will be seen as useful to the other person and an incentive to connect with me on Linkedin.

Once I was finished with my message, I click to send the invitation.  Linkedin will personalize the invitation with the person’s name.  I was immediately notified that 18 invitations were sent. By the next morning I already had four responses that people had joined my network.

Because my hotmail list had almost two hundred names, I went back several times and follow the above steps until I had send email invitation to all the people I wanted to from my Hotmail list.  If you have a large list you can go back to your list several times to do this process.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal