How do I get to 500+ connections?

When I look at the freelancers I’m connected with on LinkedIn, they tend to have 100-175 connections. That’s understandable, they probably haven’t met that many people through work yet. And the average freelancer doesn’t proactively look for connections on the platform, you’re more likely to connect on Instagram.

I was coaching on animator who wasn’t getting anything out of linked in, and when I looked at his profile he only had 165 connections. His feed wasn’t particularly interesting and he barely used it. However, LinkedIn only comes alive when you have enough of the right kinds of people in your network, posting the kinds of thing that are relevant and interesting to you. I think the target number to hit is 500, as long as they’re relevant to you.

Throttle your Connections

I don’t mean strangle them. I just mean this is a job that you need to do over months. If you send too many requests in too short a period, and especially if people ignore your request and say they don’t know you, LinkedIn will block your from connecting for a month or so. This is definitely a job to set weekly targets for – send 40 – 50 connection requests a week, no more. That’s 10 a day. You’ll be surprised how quickly your network grows.

Who to connect with

A) Connect with people you know

You’re probably connected with a lot of people you know already, but it’s surprising how people slip through the cracks. Or you just assume you’re connected with them. Go through the people you work with in your head and type their names in – do they come up? Are you connected?

B) Upload your contacts list

You can upload your email address book, and let LinkedIn suggest contacts to you. Be wary of this. When you first upload it, they’re give you an option to email every single contact asking them to connect, you don’t want to do this. Somewhere on the screen, it will give you an option to skip. Also, once your contacts are in there, they will keep pushing them to you in the “people you might know” section, even if they don’t have a LinkedIn account.

For more information, here’s LinkedIn’s tutorial on this.

C) Search for people by job title

LinkedIn keeps shifting its platform, but currently if you’re employed by Production Managers, then you need to put “production manager” in the search bar, and people. You should start seeing people with Production Manager in their title. If the search results are a little cluttered, then click on the “all filters” at the top.

This will take you to a screen where you can search for “Production manager” specifically in the job title field. This will give you more specific results.

D) Search by company

Do a search for a company you want to work for by putting in then name, and selecting companies. On the company profile page, you can usually see who’s working for that company and look through for relevant connections.

E) Google for connections

I’ve found that sometimes LinkedIn’s search can be a little clunky. You’ll know the name of a person, but they don’t come up in search. They may have opted in their privacy settings to have their name not available to non-contacts. Also, LinkedIn search can be a little clunky. Plus, you only get a certain number of searches per month.

One trick to get around this is to jump out of LinkedIn, and search “person’s name + company + LinkedIn” in Google. Often this will find a person easier than LinkedIn’s search!

F) Search within Groups

LinkedIn has plenty of groups for every interest and job and company. They’re easy to find and join, but my experience is that a lot of them are just full of people who are selling. The classic is to read a post with a headline which is a question:

“How do I find more connections on LinkedIn?”

When you click on the post, this isn’t actually someone asking and starting a conversation, it’s a post by someone all about finding connections.

Anyway, once you’re in the group, you can see a list of members. You can then connect away.

G) People you may know

When you click on the “My Network” icon on the top bar, you’ll see any open connection requests, plus a gallery of people that LinkedIn thinks you might be interested in connecting with.

H) People also viewed

I’ve left this till last, but it’s actually a very powerful one. When you look on people’s profiles, to the right you’ll see a “People also viewed” list. These are often people from the same company, the same job title or just related people. This can be a really interesting way of going to your connections, and finding more people like them.

Is it weird to connect with people you don’t know?

Yes. And no.

I ask myself the following questions when choosing to connect:

A) Is this contact relevant to me?

Do the post particularly interesting stuff I can learn from? Can I give them work? Or might I buy there services?

B) Am I relevant to this contact?

Is the stuff I post going to matter to them? Might they need what I do? Might I need their services?

As long as I can broadly say yes, I’ll extend a connection request.

What’s the worst that can happen? They can decline and block you.

The critical thing for me is not immediately jump on them asking for work. In fact, I put in my message to them “I promise I won’t pitch my services the moment you agree to connect”.

I then wait a month or two before then starting a potential sales conversation.

Next Steps

So there you go. There’s no excuse for not finding people that are relevant to you. Set yourself a target and within a few weeks you’ll have grown your network!