i think you've heard it pretty much everywhere your network is your net worth everyone is trying to grow their network but to me most people don't start the right way and in the end kind of fail at building a network recently kashif reached out to me saying that he wanted to grow his network whenever you want to grow a network you should always ask yourself this first question why do you want to grow your network to grow your network you need a goal is this to get a job is this to meet super interesting people
and just learn new things is it to grow your business is it to get rich is it to find your wife i don't know it can be pretty much like anything but if you don't have a goal for your network i can guarantee that it's gonna be a failure because without a goal you can't define a plan and without a plan you can't do once you know why you want to build a network you need to think about your linkedin profile your linkedin profile is basically like your website people are going to visit your linkedin
profile and the conversion that you would normally see on a website is basically the connection or accepting to meet with you exchange connect so the profile should be all around hardware design so instead of hardware design engineer i would put something like i've created hardware design to help achieve xyz just something that would trigger the curiosity of people and for them to be willing to look at your profile first things first i will always add a banner it can be anything that shows social proof or anything that translate what you're passionate about so it can
be like something regarding adware or whatever your about section should answer your why and answer the question to the people visiting your profile what's in it for them to reach out and connect with you so here i would put something like hey if you are like a hardware designer you came to the right place my name is kashif and i've been working on that topic for more than 15 years and my passion is to exchange with people across the globe about hardware engineering design and then i would give a lot of example of project that
i work on and also things that i'd love to connect and exchange with if you are open for networking you can also put in there like i love to spend 30 minutes to an hour discussing with other peers around the globe on how we can make hardware designing even better on specific topics and once you have the perfect profile here comes step number three which is how exactly do you attract people so you can grow your network well you have several ways the first one is outreach the second one is post and the third one
is engage outreach means you reach out to existing people who you find super interesting you tell them why you find them interesting what you can bring to them and then you send a message hoping that they will meet with you or connect with you directly on linkedin the second part is all about posting posting means creating content around the topic that you master and you're passionate about the goal here is again build more trust the issue with it is that whenever you don't have an existing network it can actually take time for you to build
that audience which comes down to the third way of actually engaging and networking with people which is engaging on post you can engage on people's posts but you can also engage with people's comments it's much easier you know to connect with someone saying hey i was reading your post about this topic found it super interesting would love to connect that's pretty simple but it shows that you actually care and that you've seen what people posted about very easy step very few people do it and after that to find the right people to connect with well
i will just do a simple linkedin search for example in hardware design and as you can see here you can split by people post etc so you can have all the information that you need to connect and reach out to the right persons to sum up the first step is to really understand why you want to grow a network is it to find a new job is this to grow your company is this to learn new skills answers that simple question once you know your why on your linkedin profile you should build trust and also
answer one question what's in it for people to follow you share the work you've done write posts that are well written so people understand how you think and also try to answer that question directly in the about section and the third step is all about attracting people so how do you attract people in your network outreach posting or engaging if you're just getting started engage with people on linkedin engage with people's comments and then once you've engaged start to reach out step by step it takes time but so do relationship building so spend that time
building meaningful relationships and step by step once you start having a network you can start posting more meaningful content therefore the people you've connected with might interact a lot more with your content and down the line you can even do also outbound so directly reaching out to people and then start connecting with them on a much more regular basis see you tomorrow and stay awesome
