I recently read a blog post by Lori Ruff on how to expand your LinkedIn network when moving to a new city. As I’ll be moving to Atlanta sometime next year, I found it very helpful…and decided to expand on this info in my blog.
Whether you’re actually moving or just adding to your current contacts, here are some tips to make it easier:
One of the easiest ways to find new Friends is to search by area. Go to Account, then Edit Friends. From there, click Find Friends. Scroll down to People You May Know and click See All. In the Current City box enter the name of the city you’re looking for Friends in.
Facebook will show pictures of potential new Friends, with those you share contacts with first. Since I have over 1,200 Friends, quite a few people showed up. I went to their Profiles to read as much as I could about them, then if I thought it could be a good match, I sent the following Friend Request:
Hi! We have several mutual Friends on Facebook. I’m moving to Atlanta next year and am expanding my network of contacts. I hope you’ll accept my Friend Request.
Virtually everyone accepted my request and many sent personal messages telling me they are happy to help me get established.
There are many ways to search on Twitter. You can use Twitter’s own search field, as well as search.twitter.com. Simply enter the name of the city you want to find contacts in and go from there.
Wefollow and Twellow are two of the biggest online Twitter directories. However, they only find Twitterers who have submitted their own information. Followerwonk allows you to search the biographies of every Twitter profile.
In addition to searching for specific cities, you could also search for company names and organizations that you know are in your target area.
To find people in a specific city, click Advanced next to the search box. In Advanced People Search, enter a zip code for the desired city. You have the option of selecting a number of miles from the zip code to include in the search.
You’ll notice that the results aren’t alphabetic. Rather, LinkedIn shows those who have the most completed Profiles and/or use LinkedIn the most, by degree (1st, 2nd and 3rd) of connection to you—you’ll get the top 100 LinkedIn users for the zip code. Clearly, these are the people you want to connect with! As with Facebook, send them a request to connect, telling why you want to connect.
Groups are also a great way to connect with people. In the Groups search field, I typed “Atlanta” as my keyword, then selected Networking Group. I found two that looked very promising (good descriptions of their purpose and a lot of activity). I posted a new Discussion, explaining that I would be moving to the area and that I look forward to the Group’s posts. Be sure to read the Group’s Rules, if they have them, as one of the Groups I joined specifically forbid anyone to post about wanting to connect. That’s why I kept my initial post more generic.
To Conclude…
As I mentioned, you can use these tips whenever you want to increase your network of connections. The important thing is to tell people why you want to connect, no matter how obvious or what the platform is. It helps improve the success rate for connecting.
Finally, don’t forget to post on your own social networks what you’re doing and ask your current connections for suggestions/referrals.
What tips do you have for expanding your networks?
Like always, a great post. However, I don’t like the fact that you are moving away from Colorado. 🙁 Atlanta is lucky!
Looks like we’ll be testing Facebook’s new video chat feature!
Wow, looks like you’ll have some fun exploring to do. Thankfully I won’t have to deal with that, but I could still use it for local places I don’t know about.
One of the fun things is some of my new contacts are sharing great info about what to see and do in Atlanta. But, I’ve also enjoyed information from those in Denver who are suggesting things for me to see before moving.