Did you know that 90% of decision-makers say they never respond to cold outreach and sales prospecting?
Traditional selling strategies and techniques are not performing as they used to do before.
Especially on LinkedIn when almost anyone can approach you with LinkedIn InMails.
With so many different functions on the platform, it’s no wonder you’re confused about how to approach it.
But the biggest problem here is that many of you are not creating relationships.
If that’s your case, then this article is for you.
This article will cover the basics of LinkedIn relationship building and give you some simple tips to help boost your standing with contacts.
If you’re ready, let’s dive into it.
1. Create A Network
People who don’t know you and are not connected with you don’t want to talk and work on building the relationship if you’re a completely unknown person to them.
So the first step to building relationships with your LinkedIn audience is to find people you want to connect with and create your network to meet them and their needs better.
So how to do that?
Here are some strategies that you can use to do that:
1. Use the search bar and boolean search option to find people in your industry who have already answered questions about topics related to yours or are in your niche. This will help you find people with whom you have something in common and who may be open to connecting with you.
2. Connect with people who share common connections (e.g., mutual friends) – This makes it easier for both of you to reach out to each other when necessary or valuable information arises that could benefit both of you.
3. Create a network by adding colleagues you’ve worked with in the past or people who have worked at the same company as you. You can also add friends from school with similar interests and goals.
4. Ask for mutual connections to introduce you to the people you want to connect with – It will help you improve your connection success rate, and people will be more open to responding.
Make sure that you have something in common before sending them a connection request.
Otherwise, they’ll likely ignore it or even report you as spam.
If you need inspiration for sending connection requests, “50 Proven LinkedIn Messages” will help you craft your perfect introduction and increase your chances of getting accepted.
But before connecting, once you’ve found someone you’d like to connect with, click on their profile and check out their work history, education, and experience.
It will help you personalize your message and meet your connections better.
Pro tip: With the LeadDelta sidebar, you can easily segment your connections by adding Tags and Notes while on LinkedIn, so you can get back to it when starting with the outreach.
By entering your connections’ profiles, you’ll get a preview of their information, making it easier for you to see if they fit your needs.
What’s great is that you don’t need to go back to LeadDelta every time you want to Tag someone – just enter their profile, and the LinkedIn Sidebar will pop up.
The best part is that it’s instantly synced with the database anytime you enter the LeadDelta dashboard.
2. Interact With the Prospects
On LinkedIn, 24% of the forecasted deals are vanishing even with the best sales strategies.
That’s why one of the best ways to increase sales is to build relationships with people on LinkedIn through community and interactions.
The LinkedIn community is a great place where you can engage with other members of your industry, ask questions and get answers, share content and recommendations, and much more.
It’s also a place where you can meet new people and begin building relationships that may one day lead to business opportunities and increased sales.
Here are some tips for using the community to build relationships:
1. Start following people who have answered questions related to your industry or role within it — Once they accept your follow request, they will be notified that someone followed them on LinkedIn. They may decide to check out your profile and see if it’s worth connecting with you on LinkedIn as well.
2. Comment on other people’s posts in the community — Especially if their post relates directly to yours in some way.
You can’t expect your messages to be read if you don’t participate in the discussions that matter most to your target audience.
When someone shares a post, comment, or question, jump in with an insightful response that shows you’re listening and care about their needs.
Don’t make it look generic.
Here’s an example:
Pro tip: Use keywords they might be searching for when searching for answers or information.
3. Respond quickly – If someone reaches out, make sure to answer immediately, so it appears at the top of their feed rather than buried under other comments. If you’re not available at the moment, make sure to get back to it as soon as possible.
3. Provide Helpful Information And Feedback
For successful LinkedIn relationship building, it isn’t just about outreach and making conversations, it’s about providing your audience with helpful information.
People will gladly follow and interact with your posts and you if you’re consistently providing valuable information.
Here are some ideas you can use to share with your audience:
1. Post interesting articles from your niche – This is a great way to increase visibility and build relationships with people who share similar interests and goals. Whatever helps you share with them will help you later when you start interacting with connections.
2. Recommend people to other companies– Recommendations can help you build trust in your network and show off your connections. By recommending someone who works in your industry, you’re showing others that you’ve had positive experiences with that person — which could make them more likely to follow up with you if they need help with something down the road.
3. Share new career achievements, accomplishments, awards, and charitable work as a status update.
4. Share LinkedIn events that would be helpful for your audience – If you have an event coming up in your industry or something exciting happening at your company, let people know about it!
5. Add value by offering advice or sharing experiences –
The content doesn’t have to be salesy — just share interesting things happening in your industry or company that might be useful for others in your community.
6. Find new ways to repurpose content – You don’t always have to create new content to be active. Instead, you can repurpose your old blog posts and create whitepapers, case studies, and videos into bite-sized pieces to catch viewers’ attention and generate leads over time.
4. Collect Data
It’s a good idea to collect data on the people you’re connecting with, even if they are not in your immediate network.
You might want to add them later or get in touch with them at some point in the future.
You can also use this information for other purposes, such as targeting your content or advertising messages to these people.
Collecting data will help you learn who your audience actually is so you can better personalize your messages and approach for future collaboration.
Pro tip: People love when you remember things about them, and they are more likely to do business with you if you know them well.
With LeadDelta, you can precisely segment your audience and note down information about users that can be helpful when it gets to sales.
To add tags or notes, just enter your 1st-degree connections profile, and after the window pops up, click on the Tags or Notes, enter the info, and then hit “Save.”
It will help you personalize your messages and adjust your interaction according to the information you have about them.
5. Join LinkedIn Groups Related To Your Niche
LinkedIn groups are a great way to connect with people and learn from each other.
What you can do to build a relationship with members is to post questions, share resources, join discussions in groups related to your industry, and find potential customers you might outreach in the future.
The more groups you join and share your content within, the more likely it is that someone will see your posts, connect with you, or comment.
But how do you know which groups are worth joining? And how do you find them in the first place?
Here’s how to do it:
1. Search for keywords or phrases in the search bar to find the group where your audience is. Use “SaaS” as an example keyword below, and after searching, click “Groups” as a filter:
2. Join some relevant business-related groups, and after you get accepted, you can search for the type of content within them.
Just navigate to the search bar when you’re in the group, and it will segment the content according to your preferences.
For example, search for the keyword “marketing” within the group and it will sort the content according to your search.
It will help you find relevant content within the groups so you can join the discussion and identify your prospects.
The more involved you are in group discussions, the more people will get to know who you are as an individual and what you’re doing — which is always good when it comes to promoting your business.
Conclusion
We hope these practical LinkedIn relationship-building tips have been helpful for you and that they will be an excellent investment of your time and energy.
Engaging with your LinkedIn audience is no longer a problem with the right LinkedIn tools, so choosing the one that best fits your needs is essential.
With a LeadDelta social capital manager, you’ll be more productive by viewing and organizing your network the way it suits your needs best.
It’s time to stop with overloaded inboxes, feeds, and screaming notifications but rather focus on building relationships.
Download LeadDelta extension and improve your LinkedIn connections game.
