Because of how everything and everyone is moving into the online space, networking through LinkedIn and other online platforms have become more prevalent.
Online networking, while obviously being important to one’s professional career, may feel like a difficult task for others who are shy and struggle with social interactions with people, even in an online setting.
Normally, the advice you would get when it comes to networking is to put yourself out there, but that ignores some emotional struggles other people face like feeling embarrassed or shy during certain situations.
However, online networking doesn’t have to feel like this. Once your emotional barriers are lowered, the actual networking part becomes a lot easier for you.
Here are some networking tricks that for the shy professionals on LinkedIn:
1. Reach Out and Interact
When trying to connect with people on LinkedIn, always try to send them a message and make sure that you personalize your message as well, don’t just send something scripted.
If you view their profile before sending a message and find something interesting about their past experience or work, you can include that in your message so it becomes more personalized.
Since people are always looking for positive interactions in websites like LinkedIn, they will likely respond to you and even remember you as a notable connection.
While this may cause some anxious feelings, the absolute worst thing that can happen is that they will just ignore your message. Nothing will really change if you aren’t connected in the first place.
However, if it does pan out well for you and your invite gets accepted, the connections you will build with these people will feel great since they start out pleasantly.
2. Don’t Forget to Give
It can be difficult to instill the mindset of wanting to give something to others when you’re looking for a job or worrying about your own career.
However, you have to reiterate to yourself that you have the ability to give things like your knowledge, attention, and generosity even if you have your own worries about your career.
You can give your knowledge by sharing insightful and informative content with your network and also sharing relevant experiences you’ve gone through either through your posts or private messages.
You can give your attention to your network connections by tagging them on relevant posts, commenting on their own posts, and messaging them about certain topics or issues that they’re more familiar with.
You can give your generosity by liking someone’s post on your feed because you thought it was valuable, introducing them to your other connections they may find relevant, or messaging them an article that is relevant to their industry and career.
3. Offer Valuable Content
Lastly, the best thing you can do as someone who is more introverted or shy online, is to post valuable and interesting content on your LinkedIn feed.
Posting content is great for LinkedIn and for nurturing your networks because it adds value to your connections and also allows you to indirectly share more about yourself and your interests.
Offering this valuable content helps you communicate who you are, what you like, and what you do to you to your network without even having conversations with them.
You can post different types of content to your feed. You can share text posts that have stories or anecdotes, online articles, photos, and videos as well.
You should mix up your content to avoid looking stale and to avoid having your content look too similar or repetitive for your network.
If you’re looking for content that will give the most value to your connections, then you should focus on creating informative and entertaining video content.
Posting videos on LinkedIn is an effective way for you to gather engagement and create conversations within your network about your company or your industry.
You don’t even have to be in these videos to make them effective as long as your video contains elements that are interesting, relevant and entertaining to your connections.
Our team at VideoBlast can help create these videos for you which you can post on your LinkedIn profile and feed.
With VideoBlast, you can have videos that don’t even need your presence as we have everything that you need to show the value that you or your company adds to your networks.
Our videos fit all of LinkedIn’s specific video requirements and formats and also include subtitles which makes them more accessible and viewable to your connections. Let us help you nurture your LinkedIn network with interesting and engaging videos.
Lucky for you, you can avail of our limited time offer of receiving a free video that you can use for your LinkedIn feed.
