Three rules for connecting on LinkedIn

Rule #1: Develop a good profile

You can (and must if you want to get noticed) become a thought leader. It's not that hard, but you have to get past the 3-5 post barrier so that it looks like you have written a lot -- nobody clicks 'read more' beyond the first page. Pick something you've learned about or have experience doing and just crank out 600 words. Without even trying you can usually get about 300 views. I'm planning on posting this to LinkedIn immediately after I write it! You're a founder or early member of a startup so you want impressive people to be impressed with what you're doing so they say to themselves, "Man, I really want to be connected with this person!".

You should also get on panel discussions that are relevant to your work in order to boost your credibility. Most of the organizers for these conferences are looking frantically last minute for bodies to fill seats. If you can find the right person at the right time, you may be able to just 'walk on'.

Rule #2: Aim for a dense network

You simply have to have more than 500 connections. 5000 is better. Your connections should be credible people, ideally in the space that you're interested in. If given the option, pick "We've done business together" since most people won't pay attention to this part anyway. A good practice is also to automate your LinkedIn activity using apps like Buffer or Connected (for iOS).

When looking for people to connect with, say you want to penetrate a large organization, there are a couple good tactics. First, look at conferences and connect with people who are speaking on a particular topic. People who speak at conferences are more likely to give you a moment of their time to someone who shows an interest in connecting. Filtering by location, title, etc. are usually effective, but not necessarily the best tool if you are looking for a new hire. Unless you are targeting a specific person with specific skills, there are better ways than LinkedIn to search for people to fill a position. Finally, an advantage to upgrading to LI Pro is that you can see who is viewing your profile.

Rule #3: Be direct, but not weird

If you want to connect with someone who is influential, for whatever reason, there are several ways to do this. The most obvious, and usually the most effective, is to simply invite that person to connect with you. Ideally you will have talked or met with this person beforehand. If you have never met, there is still a good chance that the person will want to connect IF you have developed a compelling profile. One approach that is usually not effective is to use InMail or the small space that is built in to the connection invite to send the person what amounts to an email. The longer this message is the more likely the person is to be ticked off or simply ignore your request. It's essentially spam, so stay away from this approach if at all possible. If you're selling something to someone, be direct and put your ask out there as politely and succinctly as possible. DO NOT say to a highly busy person, "Hey, I'd really like to get coffee sometime! I think we could do some great things together..." Unless you're George Clooney, the person will feel you are wasting their time.

There is another way to reach someone you don't know but want something from, which is to ask a shared connection for a warm introduction. The best way is the simplest, send your shared contact a quick email saying "I noticed that you're a connection with Bob. Could you give a quick introduction?" Most of the time this person won't mind forwarding this email along, since it doesn't take more than a click and a few words. If the person has to do more than thirty seconds of work to connect you, the odds of it happening go down dramatically.