Become a part of the conversation

The tagline for my business is "It all starts with a conversation."

I've proven for myself that success comes through open conversations more so than hot & heavy prospecting and/or pitching my services to people who do not know me yet and have not expressed an interest in what I do.

Whether you are in business or in a career search, the best opportunities come from open conversations.

These conversations can be in person, what I call kneecap to kneecap, or virtually. They can occur using Zoom, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, telephone, text messages, and/or through social media posts.

On LinkedIn?you can join ongoing conversations by commenting or replying in meaningful ways to other LinkedIn Member's posts. Or, you can create your own post and pull others into your conversations. What's important is to get into conversations.

Have you seen these people before? They show up at a networking event filled with people who are relevant to them in different ways. There are some people there whom they know and many others whom they do not yet know, but again, they are relevant to each other in different ways.

Yet, they show up to the event, grab a biscuit and a cup of coffee or tea and they either hang out around the food tables munching away, or they go hang out with their friends and talk sports or the weather. They never walk up to anyone else at the event and get into conversation with them. This is how so many miss out on discovering hidden opportunities.

"It all starts with a conversation."

Being willing to walk up to a stranger, or get introduced to a stranger, and get into a conversation with them is how we uncover those hidden opportunities. Whether you are at a real-life networking event or using LinkedIn, you have to look for relevant conversations or start relevant and useful conversations yourself.

On LinkedIn,?we can search for Keywords or #Hashtags regarding the Posts or Topics we want to engage on. The platform is full of great diverse and unique conversations waiting for us to join in.

When we discover relevant content we should evaluate who is the contributor (author or sharer) and look at who is in the conversation. If we discover the overall conversation is in fact relevant and interesting to us, then we should comment in ways to keep the conversation going. Reply to a relevant comment which pulls those commenters deeper into the conversation. Comment and mention (@tag) others who are not yet in the conversation, but who would be a good contributor and relevant to the conversation, again to keep the conversation going.

There are lots of other ways to get into a conversation on LinkedIn. What is your favorite tactic?

/Teddy