Find More Members For Your Business Group Using LinkedIn

You can use the search facility on LinkedIn to easily find people in specific professions located close to your meeting place. You can then invite them along by facilitating an introduction via an existing connection or directly via a LinkedIn group.

This gives you the power to select the type of people you want to invite to your business group, not just wait for somebody to walk through the door.

You do this by: Selecting the “Advanced” search feature on your LinkedIn Home Page.
Entering an appropriate keyword e.g. Travel Agent Entering your meeting location or post code e.g. 2000 Selecting an appropriate distance from your meeting location e.g. Within 40kms Selecting an appropriate area in the Industries section e.g. Travel, Leisure & Tourism. Selecting the Relationship as 2nd Connections and Group Members (only).

Review the resulting search by: Perusing the profiles. Selecting those people you think would be good quality potential members for your group. Sending them an invitation to a group meeting by: (a) clicking on “Get introduced” on the right hand side of the individual results and completing the resulting message areas. (b) clicking on “Send message” on the right hand side of the individual results, if they are in a shared LinkedIn group.

For the invitation, something along the following lines might be appropriate:

“John, I'm part of a business group who are looking for a professional travel agent to refer business too. Would you be available to come along to one of our get-togethers and meet with the other members? Our group is City Networking and we meet for breakfast between 7am & 8.30am every Wednesday at the City Restaurant, 100 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000.”

Note:With most LinkedIn accounts you can only have five “Get introduced” messages in progress at any one time.

This technique can, of course, also be used to find prospects for your own business. And it is another great reason for continuing to expand your LinkedIn network. The larger your network, the better the results your search will achieve.

© Business Connection Resources 2010