1. Use LinkedIn as your ‘discovery tool’ for finding targeted contacts to network with.
Many professionals around the globe use LinkedIn.com as their main mode for sharing professional updates. That means it’s often the place that has the most up-to-date information about where an individual is working, their professional background, and educational history.
Use LinkedIn’s built-in filters to narrow down your searches (based on location, past/current company, school, etc). If you want to get really specific, build your own Boolean search strings.
2. Then, once you’ve identified who you’d like to contact, consider your options for reaching out to those contacts. Email is still the best method with the highest ROI in my experience.
You may as well use the few free LinkedIn InMails you’re given, but for most users with free accounts, paying for additional InMails can become expensive quickly. One often unexplored way to get more free InMails each month is to join groups that are common among some of your target contacts, and use the extra 15 free 1:1 group messages each month as a way to potentially contact individuals.
Another approach if you share a common school affiliation is to look the individual up on your alumni database to find their alumni, personal or work email address.
A third approach is to use tools like Seamless.ai or Hunter.io to find an individual’s email address. **Be very careful** with using these tools in that you don’t want to be seen as a spammer when trying to network!
