The Found Gen

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How to Engage Your Referral Sources Through LinkedIn

LinkedIn has been a staple in business professionals’ lives for more than 20 years, and during that time, it’s come a long way from simply serving as a digital resume board. Today, it’s also a critical tool for growing your business, especially when you leverage your referral sources for maximum impact and embrace grassroots relationship-building to build your network. 

Why LinkedIn is a Powerful Networking and Referral Tool

With more than 200 million users in the U.S. alone, LinkedIn provides an unmatched opportunity to enhance credibility, stay top-of-mind with peers and clients, and generate referrals. That said, simply having a LinkedIn profile isn’t enough, you need to actively engage with your network in a meaningful way. Here are some steps to take:

  • First, ensure you have a solid foundation – Before you start building up connections, you need to make sure your LinkedIn profile is complete and the presence you want to portray is established. That means you have a strong headline, compelling summary and detailed experience section to help establish credibility.
  • Connect with intention – Throwing out connection requests and seeing what sticks might sound like a decent idea when you’re trying to build up a network base, but there’s a much more strategic approach to establish connections and engage referrals – one that will build meaningful relationships that will help grow your business. Try this instead: If you’re targeting a specific business or industry, begin making connections with lower-level employees first before reaching out to leaders. In doing so, you will build up a large pool of mutual relationships so that by the time you reach out to the other business leader asking them to connect, they will see the dozens (or more) shared connections and referrals you have, which increases the likelihood of them accepting your invitation to meet.
  • Make valuable contributions to your network – Another key way to engage your referral sources on LinkedIn is by offering value and meaningful content to your community. Remain visible on the platform by regularly posting content that positions you as an expert as it reminds your network why they should refer business your way. In addition, celebrate wins, congratulate peers and remain generous. When you give, give and give some more, others are likely to return the favor.

LinkedIn can be a powerful business tool when used strategically. Build your network and engage referrals by building trust, ensuring maximum visibility and fostering genuine engagement. If you need help getting the most out of your LinkedIn account, turn to us The Found Gen.

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Are You Getting the Most (Business) Out of LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is the social media platform for professionals, but it’s become so much more than just a place to share professional accomplishments, search for jobs, and connect with other industry professionals — it is a powerful tool to grow your business, especially when you apply some grassroots business development efforts. 

Why LinkedIn is Networking 2.0

Small businesses looking to grow their market share know they need to be on LinkedIn. What they don’t always know is the best way to leverage the social media platform to grow their business. 

Sure, optimizing your business profile is key, as is sharing valuable content and engaging with other people’s posts to improve your visibility and strengthen relationships, but there’s another networking strategy that may not have crossed your mind: grassroots relationship building – starting at the lowest levels of an organization. 

Here’s an example to demonstrate what we mean.

A client of ours wanted to grow their network and secure new business with a previously out-of-reach industry connection. Leaders of the two companies had never met and shared very few, if any, mutual connections. Our mission was to leverage LinkedIn in a way that would allow our client to break into this new relationship by establishing a pool of shared connections. 

Our first step was to connect our client with lower-level employees within the target organization. On behalf of our client, we reached out to numerous employees within the company, asked them to connect and, one by one, began building a network of shared connections. Slowly we worked our way up the organization chart by adding more and more employees from this company to our client’s LinkedIn network.

By the time our client reached out to the other business leader asking to connect, we had already built up a large pool of mutual relationships. Before the other business leader connected with our client, they saw the dozens (or more) shared connections and referrals, which led them to readily accept our client’s invitation to meet. 

These baby steps were instrumental in securing the new connection – and ultimately led to a new business deal between the two organizations. 

Need a Networking Nudge? Call us at The Found Gen for Help

Networking has always been the bread and butter of building a business. The same rules apply when leveraging a social media platform like LinkedIn. With patience and the right strategy, you can grow your network – and your business.

To learn more about social media marketing and getting the most out of LinkedIn, contact our team at The Found Gen today.