5 Steps to Stand Out On LinkedIn

Personal development is the currency to give you access to every great door of success.

If you must stay relevant in your career choice or business, you will adhere to your personal development and invest hugely in yourself for a better tomorrow.

Would you like to grow your personal brand, revenue, and network? If so, making the right connections on LinkedIn is one of the most straightforward paths to achieving your goals.

Fortunately, LinkedIn allows you to identify and even contact these highly sought-after connections.

“LinkedIn has stood out as the social media platform where top business executives hang out and also sort connection with like minds and upcoming.”

Unfortunately, in that space, the people who can help you the most are often flooded with other people asking them for assistance or something else.

So how do you cut through the noise and make your voice heard? You do what others won’t: focus on creating a meaningful connection instead of just sending a connection request.

Here are five Steps to Connect With Any Top Business Executive on LinkedIn

How you describe yourself will differ based on who you are and what you do, but just be sure to add more than a simple job title.

Next up, your About section.

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve noticed is that people only talk about themselves in this section as opposed to how they can provide value to a specific audience. I’m not saying you need to be overly humble, but you’ll want to express your background in the context of how you help people or organizations.

Step 2: Determine who you would like to connect with

The point of sending a connection request is to form a meaningful and (hopefully) mutually beneficial relationship. I’m not saying you need to change each other’s lives, but there should be some point in being connected. Maybe you would like to explore partnership opportunities, interview them for a LinkedIn article you’re writing or share valuable information. Again, this will differ based on who you are and what you do. The main point is to be intentional about who you reach out to.

Here are a few reasons why it may be a good idea to connect with someone.

• Seeking press and podcast appearances
• Growing your professional network
• Developing potential partnerships
• Nurturing business prospects
• Landing job opportunities

Notice I didn’t mention engaging with their content as a reason to connect. If you just want to see their posts, you’re welcome to hit the “Follow” button in their profile. This way you’ll see their content in your feed even if you’re not connected. I’m bringing this up because if you reach out and say “I love your content and look forward to following along!” you still haven’t provided a reason for why you should connect. However, we will get to what you should say when connecting soon.

Action item:

Make a list of at least ten people you’d like to connect with and start following them on LinkedIn. Don’t connect yet!

Step 3: Engage with their content

I just mentioned how many people say “I love your content and look forward to following along!” But guess what? Some of them never actually engage with the other person’s content; it’s simply a generic message they send to everyone they reach out to. You’re going to take an entirely different approach by consistently engaging with their content. Not only will you start building a relationship with the person you want to connect with, but your network will also see your comments and learn more about you as well.

I suggest bookmarking a link to their post by visiting their profile and then selecting

Show all activity →Posts

You can then bookmark this URL and/or add it to a Google spreadsheet

Step 4: Send a custom message with your connection request

You’ve put in the time and effort, and now it’s time to finally make the connection. Since they most likely get flooded with a ton of requests, you’ll want to make yours stand out by customizing it. This goes beyond mentioning their name or something you could have learned by quickly scanning their profile. The more customized the message, the more likely you’ll get a response.

Here are two simple ways you can make that happen:

• Ask a genuine question
• Give a genuine compliment

Step 5: Follow up on your request

So, what happens if you do all that and they still don’t reply? First of all, don’t take it personally, they may have hundreds of pending requests and haven’t had time to sift through all of them. After waiting a few days, I suggest mentioning the request you sent as a comment in one of their posts.

See below for an example.

“Hey Charles, thanks for sharing this. By the way, I’m sure you get flooded with connection requests but I sent you one the other day. Hope to hear from you soon!”

Of course, there’s still no guarantee you’ll get a response but if you’ve built a meaningful list, you’ve probably learned a lot from them during the process, provided value to your audience by commenting, and may have formed relationships with some of their other followers.

Either way, you’ve made more productive use of your time and can repeat the process going forward.

Can I get a response from you?

I’m working on exciting new projects to support current and emerging entrepreneurs (stay tuned), and it would mean the world to hear your thoughts directly.