17 LinkedIn Ninja Tricks Experts Haven’t Taught You Yet [2017 Edition]

Have you ever wondered if you’re missing some of the functions within LinkedIn that may help you with your business?

It’s hard to keep up with all of the changes and functionality on social media sites. It’s something that my team and I do daily to make sure we stay up-to-date on all of the LinkedIn tips, tricks and changes.

In this article, I’m going to share some of the best kept secrets (old and new) that include extremely advanced LinkedIn ninja tricks and much more.

Each of these 17 LinkedIn tips are simple and easy to implement immediately.

1. Accepting & Replying to New Connections (Updated)

LinkedIn has made it easier than ever to accept a person’s connection request quickly and easily. And while you can quickly hit Accept to any new connection request and move on to other tasks, this won’t help you get to know or build a relationship with your new connection.

The key benefit of using LinkedIn, other than to find your ideal clients and establish your authority on your topic is that it is the ideal place to build a relationship with your connections and ideal clients.

I recommend that you take the few extra minutes and reply personally to everyone who sends you a connection request.

 

1. Start by going to your My Network page. All the requests will appear in a box at the top of the page.
2. Click Manage all, located in the top right corner of the box.
3. Do NOT click Accept yet.
4. If the person has sent you a personalized connection request, you will see a See more link in the box. Click this to see their message.
5. Click the Reply to NAME link located at the bottom of their connection request and reply appropriately to their connection request.
6. If they did not send a personalized message, you will simply see the Message link at the bottom of their request.
7. Click this and send them a note welcoming them to your network and thanking them for connecting, be sure to personalize it appropriately.
8. Once you have replied to them, you can accept their request.
9. Now you can tag them if you have a Sales Navigator account or are using a tool such as Dux-Soup.

2. How To Bypass LinkedIn’s Commercial Search Limit 

Active social sellers and recruiters are likely starting to notice some more limitations popping up on free LinkedIn accounts, one of which is the new commercial search limit. It’s meant to cut down on “commercial usage” of the profile search feature and push power users to premium accounts. Hey, they have to make money somehow, right?

The good news is that there is a cool new tool that you’re going to love if this new change has affected you that could delay your need for a premium account. It doesn’t appear to have a name and was created by Shane McCusker, based on work by Irina Shamaeva.

Go here to access unlimited LinkedIn profile searches 

It’s a super basic interface but it works very well (and quickly too). What’s super cool is that the searches are unlimited and not related to your network so you get different results then you normally would.

3. Free InMails to LinkedIn Group Members (Updated)

Take advantage of your ability to send up to 15 free messages per month instead of expensive InMails to people that share a LinkedIn Group in common with you.

Start by searching for your ideal clients or partners using the advanced search using the keywords or filters. Be sure to only look for your 2^nd and 3^rd degree connections. Then click on any potential prospects to visit their profile.

At the top of their profile in the highlights section, you will see any groups you share, if any.

Go to one of your shared groups. On the top right side of the page, click on the link with the number of group members. This will take you to the page that lists the group members.

On the Member page, type their name into the search box. This will bring them up in the search results. You can then click the message button to the right and send them a message.

Remember that you only have 15 messages to use collectively in all of your groups each month and that unsent messages don’t carry over to the next month. Note the limit includes messages sent directly from your group, to your 1st degree connections as well.

4. Determine the Approximate Size of Someone’s Network on LinkedIn (Updated)

Have you ever wanted to figure out how many people were in someone’s LinkedIn network when they have over 500 connections? Perhaps you want to determine just how connected a particular individual is, but LinkedIn refuses to give you the details.

There is a way to get a pretty good idea of how many connections someone has with a simple trick that most don’t know about.

1. Go to the person’s profile page.
2. Scroll down to their Activity box
3. You will see the number of followers they have listed.

This lists a person’s total number of followers which include all of their 1^st degree connections plus anyone who has chosen to follow them. In most cases (except perhaps well connected influencers) this gives a fairly accurate number, especially if they don’t have any or very little recent activity.

5. Boolean Search

Similar to Google, most people have no idea that LinkedIn search allows the usage of modifiers to help you get even more targeted results.

Quotes

If you want to find results containing an exact phrase, use quotation marks to enclose the phrase. For example, “HR manager” or “environmental consultant”.

AND

If you want to search for LinkedIn profiles that include two separate terms, use the word AND in capital letters between both terms when doing your search.

OR

If you want to combine results of two separate search terms, type OR in all upper-case letters between one or more terms. For example, Pepsi OR Coca-Cola.

Parenthetical

This is where things get interesting. You can combine multiple modifiers to get even more complex search results. For example, “software AND (engineer OR architect)”.

NOT

Want to exclude results that contain a specific term? Use the word NOT in upper-case letters between terms you want excluded from results. For example, NOT “customer service”.

 

6 Use Saved Searches & Have LinkedIn Send You Leads Automatically  (Updated)

When you have found a particular search criteria that populates some great targeted results for you, you can save your search using the Save Search option. You can find the save search feature on the Search Results page on the right side near the bottom.

LinkedIn will send new leads to your inbox based on preferences you decide and the search criteria you specify. This is an amazing feature, be sure to take advantage of it.

7. Search For a Specific Position Within a Company (Updated)

If you have a list of prospective companies and are looking for a specific position or title within the company, go to the Company’s page and click on the See all employees link located near the top right side of the page.

This will take you to LinkedIn’s search page. Then, for example, if you are looking for a VP of Sales, type VP Sales into the keywords section. This will bring up a list of the employees with VP Sales in their profiles. To further improve your results if you are looking for new prospects, only search for 2^nd and 3^rd degree connections.

8. Use The “People Also Viewed” Feature (Updated)

If you find a great looking potential prospect, be sure to check out the People Also Viewed feature down on the right-hand side of the page (some people may have this turned off). This can be an excellent source to locate other similar potential prospects.

 

9. Adjust Your Privacy Settings (Updated)

While this feature mentioned in the point above (#9) can be handy for you to find prospects, it can also work against you. This displays your competitors to potential prospects that visit your profile.

Don’t let people leave your profile to view your competitor. Go into your Settings & Privacy page. Click on Privacy in the top navigation area. In this list locate “Viewers of this profile also viewed” and make sure this is set to No.

 

10. Are You Seen Beyond Your Current Network (New)

While it is awesome to get a lot of views, engagement and shares on your posts and articles, it is even more beneficial if they are being widely viewed outside of your current network (the people you are directly connected to as 1^st level connections).

The reason for this is that not only does this build your authority on your topic but it also makes it easy for potential prospects to discover you, learn more about you and potentially reach out to you.

Start by going to your Activity page. A quick way to get there is to go to your own profile and click the See all activity in Your Articles & Activity box.

Click the views located in the bottom left corner of one of your posts or articles.

This will open your stats box for the post or article.

Here you will see a number of interesting stats about who has viewed or interacted with it. At the bottom, you will see a diagram showing whether your post or article was mainly viewed by your 1^st or 2^nd degree connections. If the 2nd degree circle is larger, this means that most of the views were from people outside your 1^st degree network.

11. Find Warm Prospects (New)

If you post articles to LinkedIn Publisher, you can see those who have liked or commented on your article.

These are people who now have some idea of who you are and have had a positive interaction with the content you create and share. They very well may be potential prospects you have not yet connected with.

While everyone who has commented on your article can be found at the bottom of the article, you can find the list of people who “Liked” it at the top of the article. Simply click the number beside the thumbs up icon.

 

You can click on each person to go to their profile.

If you are already connected and they are a potential prospect, do a little research about them first, before sending them a message. Thank them for their like or comment and perhaps recommend another one of your articles that they may be interested in.

If you are not already connected and you think they might be a beneficial connection, go to their profile and send them a personalized connection request thanking them for their like or comment.

12. How To Reorder Your LinkedIn Skills (Updated)

Have you ever received endorsements for useless and off-topic skills on your LinkedIn profile? This used to frustrate the heck out of me (especially as only the top three are visible), until LinkedIn allowed for a way to re-organize the endorsements in your list.

1. Click the pencil icon in the Featured Skills & Endorsements box.
2. Click on the four lines icon located to the right of each skill, to move it up or down in the list.
3. Arrange your skills in the order you want them to appear. Remember that the top three are visible when people scroll through your profile.
4. To remove a skill from your list, click the X located to the left of that skill.
5. Click “Save”.

That’s it!

 

13. Follow Up Messages

Create a lead generation message sequence that’s designed to build relationships and move conversations offline. Don’t just collect connections…build relationships with something I call the LinkedIn social selling funnel.

Click here for a more detailed breakdown on the LinkedIn social selling funnel.

14. Get Your Account Unrestricted (Updated)

Has LinkedIn restricted your account and banished you to LinkedIn jail? The most obvious sign is that you are now required to know the email address of every single person you try to connect with. This happens when five people have clicked the “I Don’t Know This Person” link that pops up in the bottom left corner of the screen after ignoring your connection request.

If this happens to you, you can reach out to support and ask for forgiveness to have them remove the restriction. Stacey Zapar wrote a great guide to getting out of LinkedIn jail if you want more info.

 

15. Personalize Connection Requests on Mobile

For a long time, one annoying thing about the LinkedIn mobile app is that it never let you send personalized connection requests. That is not so now!

For both Android and iPhones, click the three horizontal dots located in the top right corner of the profile.

Next tap on Personalize Invite.

Create your personalized connection request in 300 characters or less and hit send.

16. Get Conversation Suggestions (New)

When messaging using the mobile app, LinkedIn has made it easier than ever to start a conversation with your connections.  Click the light bulb icon located to the right of the Send button to get one or more conversation suggestions from LinkedIn.

Thanks to Viveka von Rosen for this handy trick.

17. Embed Social Media Posts Into Your Article (New)

Make your LinkedIn Publisher posts more interesting and engaging by including social media posts from Twitter and Instagram right in your article.

Start by finding the social media post you wish to include.

You want to grab the actual link to this post, not the embed code.

Go to your publisher post and click on the box with the plus icon on the right side of the screen (where you want to add the social media post). Click the Links option.

Paste the URL into the space provide and hit enter.

The live, continually updating social media post will now appear within your article.

 

Did We Miss Anything?

Do you know any special LinkedIn tricks that we missed in this article? Let us know in the comments below.

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