Networking for High-Paying Opportunities

Initially, I wanted to talk about content today.

But I had some experiences that made me shift to networking. Of course, we won’t be covering the entire thing on networking. And yes, we would also touch a bit on content.

This is going to be a serious deep-dive study.

Who Are You Writing For?

Last week, I introduced you to the concept of niche. If you missed it, you can read it here.

Your LinkedIn niche determines how far you go on LinkedIn. It determines your reach. And it greatly influences the opportunities that comes to you.

Here is one step further from niche – who are you writing to?

Now, it seems like an easy question. But it is actually a tough one.

As you know, my niche on LinkedIn is remote work. The next question then is – who am I writing to?

Who is the ideal recipient of my writing? The more clearly I have that, the better my content can be.

And you always want to write evergreen content. Such that if people see it 2 weeks from the time it was published, it is still great information. So, keep that at the back of your mind.

After a bit of thinking, I resolved that my ideal audience is someone seeking a new job or someone planning a career transition (to remote work) within the next 6-9 months.

That is the person I am talking to on LinkedIn.

So, every post of mine has to pass these two filters:

1. Is this about remote work?

2. Does this help (or encourage) someone looking for a new job or planning a career transition (into remote work) soon?

Even though my expertise is in marketing, I don’t write posts on marketing. Why? Marketers are the ones that read posts on marketing.

Do I want to reach marketers? The answer is no.

I want to reach professionals. I want to reach career people who see the need to build a professional brand on LinkedIn. That is my focus.

That is just an example for you to gauge your strategy. You have to be clear who you want to reach. And when you do, speak their language.

If you want to reach founders, use terms that founders use. Talk about ROI, revenue, runway, getting capital, churn rate, and all of that. If you want to reach freelancers, talk about the things freelancers have to deal with on a daily basis – getting a new client, determining the rate, pricing services, and so on.

And only talk to one ideal audience. This is a lesson I learned just last week. If you are talking to freelancers, talk to freelancers and them only. Do not try to talk to executives too.

I talk to professionals who want to work remotely (or keep working remotely).

Who do you talk to? It must be that clear.

Now, we move on to talk about a trending LinkedIn hack that was discovered just last week and the basics of networking on LinkedIn. People think networking happens in the DM – that is so wrong.

A Trending LinkedIn Hack

Last week, I saw a surprising split test that caught me by surprise.

Apparently, the LinkedIn algorithm is throttling certain kinds of posts. This caught me by surprise.

Someone in my network shared two exactly identical post with one major difference. To see if LinkedIn throttles one over the other. In just about 5 hours, here is the difference:

She put a time on one post and didn’t put time on the other post. I saw the one with the time first. And then I had to go research to find the other one.

The other one eventually came to my timeline. But I guess it was because I engaged with the first one.

This means if you put a specific time on your post, for some reason, the LinkedIn algorithm will throttle it. Now, don’t try to abuse this. Only use when necessary.

For example, my thought on how to use this is to say that my newsletter drops every Tuesday by 1 pm EST.

But that would be only on posts where I talk about my newsletter (which is mostly Fridays).

Here is an interesting way to use this. Let’s say you are writing a post and you want to refer to a meeting you had with someone. It would be very good to include the time of that meeting.

You could say, “I met him at a coffee shop at around 12 noon that day”

And there are many more variants of this. If you have met someone famous, I think you should use it in your content.

If you have a picture to back it up, that is even better.

Try this tip this week. And let me know how it works for you.

Also, there is a sense that the difference in the content is because of the split test that appeals to people (or because of the timing, that LinkedIn prioritizes the latest post over the previous post).

Those are valid hypothesis and I would be testing them soon. But don’t let that hold you back from trying this.

From my experience, social media platforms hate hacks like this becoming well-known online. They actively kill it when there is a lot of discussion around it.

There was a time when the best LinkedIn hack was to spend at least 10 minutes on LinkedIn after making a post to engage on other people’s posts. But that no longer works. They altered the algorithm once people found out.

So, I hope you take advantage of this before they decide to undo it.

Let’s Talk About Networking

People think networking is about sending DMs. It is not.

Yes, there is a DM phase. But it begins long before you enter the DMs.

My LinkedIn account has been growing rapidly since I started going viral. And I get lots of connection requests.

I do not accept 95% of the requests I get. Why?

First, I am aware that LinkedIn has a maximum cap of 30k connections (or in some cases, 10k connections). I am still under 3k connections and the last thing I want is to find a highly valuable person to my network and not be able to connect because I have hit the limit.

This is something you should pay a lot of attention to. Don’t populate your connections with irrelevant people to your career. Be very strategic.

I only accept connection requests from people who are in the remote work movement. And people I deem to be useful to my professional career.

For example, I have a lot of people in tech (i.e. web development) sending me connection requests. And I will not accept any of them except if they are pro members of this newsletter.

I will accept connection request of a pro member of my newsletter regardless of their professional life because that is someone strategically inclined to me.

Apply the same metric. Don’t mindlessly fill up your connections. It is limited. Become picky about it now, and not when you have only 1,000 connections left.

This is where networking begins.

Use the same metrics when you send connection requests to people.

But you don’t start with a connection request, especially if it is someone with a much bigger brand than you on LinkedIn.

Always remember that as you build a bigger LinkedIn brand, it will be easier to connect with people.

The first step of networking is comments.

Decide the kind of people you want to connect with and comment on their posts. That is the first move.

If you are serious about this, make as many comments as you can in a day – 5 or more. Write thoughtful comments that correlates with what the post is about. If you are going to disagree, do it with grace and class. Don’t attack people – people are more fragile than you think.

This is always the first move. Never forget. The first step to networking on LinkedIn is to write comments on the post of the person you are trying to network with.

If they are serious about their brand on LinkedIn, they will reply your comment. When they reply your comment, that is the second step.

If you feel like you are a match to their brand, then send a connections request.

Now, you may or may not get accepted. And that may be due to a variety of reasons. In some cases, they don’t see it (because they get too many). In other cases, they have maxxed their connections limit and cannot accept any new connections. And so on.

But you should still send that connection request. This is the third step.

If (and when) they accept, then you move into the fourth step which is DM. The moment you see your connection request accepted, send a DM immediately. It pays to have a format or structure for that initial DM.

We will continue from this DM step next week.

However, if they don’t respond and you really have to send them a pitch that you really think would be useful, there is also way to go about this without being sleazy or salesy.

Summary

The first 4 steps of networking on LinkedIn include:

1. You write a thoughtful comment on their post

2. They reply your comment on their post

3. You send a connection request (and they accept)

4. You send a DM

If you put a specific time on your LinkedIn post, the algorithm throttles it better.

Always ask yourself – who am I writing to? Write to a defined ideal audience only.

Cheers!

If this has been helpful or you have a question, do drop a comment