A client asked me the other day, “What should I do when people look at my LinkedIn profile?”

I thought this was an interesting question – and I’m pretty sure that most people (me included) think ‘oh that is good’ and not do anything else.

There are better options – have a think about one of the following:

1. The contact is a 1st level contact
How about sending a message saying “thanks for looking at my profile, is there anything in particular I can help you with”?

2. The contact is a 2nd level contact
In this case you have a number of choices:

• Look at their profile, if it is somebody who looks interesting / relevant, send a connection request with a message “thanks for looking at my profile.  Would you like to connect and is there anything I can help you with further?”
• Look at their profile, see if they have listed their email address on the profile and send an email mentioning any mutual contacts and the fact that they viewed your profile.
• See the shared connection(s) and ask for some more information / an introduction to  the person who viewed your profile (if you know the shared connection well enough)
• Send an inmail – see below

3. The contact is a 3rd level contact or out of your network
In this case you can do one of the following:

• See how much of their profile you can see and check for an email address.  You might not be able to see much if the profile has been protected.
• You might want to send a connection request with an appropriate message
• Send an inmail

Inmail

Inmail is a way of using LinkedIn to send an email to somebody you are not connected to.  A single inmail costs $10.  If you don’t get a response, you will be given another inmail by LinkedIn.  I think this is quite an expensive way of contacting people – you really need to make sure they are in your target audience and that there is no other way of contacting them.

Upgrade to Business Account

Another option is to upgrade to a business account.  At a cost of £12.95 / month (billed annually), you can see the full list of everybody who has looked at your profile (rather than just the last 5) and you can see 3 inmails each month.  For me, I just don’t see the return on investment for this.  If you keep an eye on your LinkedIn notifications and email, you will find out when people look at your profile and there are cheaper ways of contacting people.  I can see a need if you are using LinkedIn for recruitment, but not if you are using it as a networking tool.

Progress

Out of interest, my client has just contacted to say that he has contacted two of the people who looked at his profile – 1 was a 1st level contact and 1 was a 2nd level contact and received a positive response from both.  I suspect it is worth giving it a go – so if you look at my profile, expect a message from me!

Would love to hear your thoughts / experiences…..