Relationship Building 101: The LinkedIn Way

Create meaningful relationships or die.

Bold statement isn’t it?

Think about it, the lifeblood of any entrepreneur, CEO, or person is the ability to create meaningful long lasting relationships.

There’s an emphasis on long lasting relationships for this reason. If you’re in it for short term gain, you’ll fall flat on your face.

Don’t believe that? You’re not ready to succeed.

If you read the “Why Social Media is the Ultimate Icebreaker” post, I talked about how effective social is at creating those meaningful relationships.

In this post I’ll be focusing on the power of LinkedIn and how you can leverage it to create a powerful network no matter what your niche is.

After that I’ll give you a step-by-step guide that will show you how to find new relationships using LinkedIn’s useful groups feature.

But first…

LinkedIn relationship building

Building relationships takes work.

If you’re not willing to put in the work close this post. Seriously, I mean it.

Are you still with me? Excellent.

If you’re still here, you realize the power of relationships and you want to build them using the awesome tools that are available.

Tools like LinkedIn.

Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this post, allow me to put this common thought to rest…

LinkedIn isn’t just a job board

Ask anyone who isn’t engaged with LinkedIn and they’ll tell you it’s just a job board.

Wrong!

What they don’t realize is that it’s the largest professional network on the internet.

What does that mean for you? A huge opportunity to create relationships with people who are in your industry or share your interests.

I call it, ultra targeting.

With that being said, let’s take a look at the secret sauce of network building, LinkedIn groups.

Using LinkedIn groups step-by-step

Here are the steps you should use to start the relationship building process using LinkedIn groups:

Step 1 – Decide the best topic that aligns with your interests

Think about what people you want to connect with. If you have a business in the video game industry you probably want to connect with industry professionals and gamers.

Step 2 – Locating groups

Locate those professionals using the LinkedIn group search.

There’s two ways to search for groups:

• The first way is to hover over the groups tab (green arrow) and then click on groups directory. From there you can type in keywords that will point you to the appropriate groups.
• The second way is to click on the drop down menu on the search bar (red arrow) and then click groups. Make sure you have your keyword typed into the search field.

For example: social media or entrepreneurship.

Step 3 – Picking the right group

Once you’ve chosen a keyword or phrase to search within the directory, you’ll see the results.

This is what you’d get for the keyphrase video games. -- The rest of Step 3, More Tips, and Complete under30CEO article