Linkedin is a social networking platform more pivoted around advancing your career and growing your professional network. Every user on LinkedIn uses the platform for a different reason. There may be some individuals who are on the outlook for new job opportunities, recruiters looking to add resources to their organizations, expansion of the professional network, or seeking out the best profiles for specific tasks like training and workshops.
The basic version of Linkedin is free for all users, but you can choose LinkedIn Premium to unlock new opportunities and additional perks,
How Do You Find Linkedin Prospects?
The hunt for relevant prospects on Linkedin will depend on your purpose. Why do you want to hunt for them on this social networking platform? How to locate relevant prospects will be quite different if you are a recruiter as compared to an individual seeking top of the line trainers to conduct workshops for their organization. Search and keep looking through profiles until you find the one suited to your current needs.
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However, if everyone was to start filtering through the dozens of profiles that end up in their generic search results, it would take forever to find the right prospects to add to their social network. There are ways to make this exercise less tortuous and more productive.
The first step: ask your self, why you are looking for new prospects
Once you have defined your purpose begins by using specific keywords in your search bar without any words ‘like’ and, ‘if’ and ‘but’ since they will dilute the search results.
An example would be searching for a trainer to conduct workshops on marketing for your company. However, if you end up searching for trainers in the LinkedIn search bar, you will end up with an endless list of profiles, including gym trainers. You can try a better approach by looking for keywords that people use when searching for trainers who conduct workshops. One such keyword could be digital marketing, which will result in top profiles in this field to appear among your search results. You can further fine-tune these profiles by only viewing people who are either your 2nd or 3rd connections to avoid absolutely random and unrelated profiles appearing on your list.
Alternatively, start by tapping into your existing social network or workplace colleagues who are not yet part of your network on LinkedIn. This is more of a friend of friend approach for LinkedIn to find the right prospects for yourself. Since your colleagues may be working in similar fields as yourself adding them to your social network allows you to engage with other such prospects they have as their connections on LinkedIn.
If you have an account on LinkedIn, you have either entered the workforce or are looking to enter into it. This means that you have an academic alumni network that you can tap into for prospects on LinkedIn. Alumni networks tend to be quite diverse and are a brilliant pool for potential prospects to expand your network.
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Why Do You Want to Find Linkedin Prospects?
LinkedIn is a digital version of a career fair or physical networking of individuals seeking to expand their professional networks. In the current digital world where individuals are seeking a job, recruiting new resources, or seeking prospects for a particular objective like training, tends to extend beyond geographical boundaries, LinkedIn is the perfect platform to find prospects.
It is highly effective since, just by a quick glance at the profile of an individual, you can gauge if they are suited to your requirements of a prospect or not. Furthermore, there are some premium LinkedIn profiles with the golden badge that are relatively more reliable as compared to other profiles on the platform.
Every individual part of the professional sector is present on this network. The physical means to look for prospects is highly limited and restricted. The pool of prospects available on LinkedIn is by no means comparable to people you can meet physically and add them to your network.
LinkedIn is beneficial in terms of helping you expand your professional network, seek better job opportunities, and assists in recruiting the best talent for your organization. It boosts your profile when you increase your prospects on this social network. This helps your profile become more visible to other individuals seeking prospects. Furthermore, its learning division helps you attain certifications in a wide range of disciplines, which can elevate your professional standing.
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Adding more prospects on LinkedIn also allows you to increase the pool of people with whom you share your achievements and content. This makes you become noticed to a greater pool of people and increases the chances of your name being remembered when they are seeking someone to recruit or cater to a task in their organization.
Tips To Find the Right Prospects on Linkedin
- One of the easiest ways of seeking the right prospects on LinkedIn is to revisit people who have endorsed you for certain skills on this platform. Review their profiles and see if individuals in their network may serve to be relevant prospects for your LinkedIn profile.
- It helps if you search for a particular profile in a certain area like Social Media Marketing. Once you click on a particular profile within the search results, you will see on the right-hand side, “people also viewed section.” These are profiles similar to the one you are viewing that has been viewed by other people based on similar criteria.
- In case you belong to a particular organization, you should start by looking at the profiles of people who have commented or liked your posts, mentioned your company, or shared your content with their own network. These people are those who are interested in the topics of content you share and may share similar professional interests. This is a good starting point in case you are seeking resources for your organization, relevant prospects to expand your professional network, or an experienced professional to conduct a training session for your organization.
- When attempting to connect with individuals on LinkedIn, write brief and professional emails that introduce you, highlight your purpose of writing the email, and how their professional experience can be of assistance to you or your organization. The way you approach other connections on LinkedIn to become your prospects can make or break the possibility of them accepting your invitation to join your network.
- An unconventional place to begin your search for prospects will be the network of your professional competitors. At times competitors networks can house the most relevant people that can become prospects for your LinkedIn network.
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Conclusion
LinkedIn has more than 20 million companies within its connections, over 14 million open job opportunities at one point in time, and 75% of B2B businesses prefer working with people who are part of their professional network. Given how integral the platform has become for the growth of individuals and organizations, it is integral that neither stagnates their profiles in terms of their network and keeps adding new prospects to expand it.