The LinkedIn DMs edition

Hey everyone!

This week, let’s talk about DMs on LinkedIn and how to nail them.

Why should you care about DMs though?

Let’s get something straight: there are 2 types of strategies for growing on LinkedIn:

• Cold outreach

• Connections

I’m not for one or the other. There are many factors that affect deciding for one or the other. As a layman in this area, my view is that cold outreach bets on quantity while connections bet on quality.

If you send out 1,000,000 cold DMs/emails you’ll probably convert a very small portion of that audience.

Is it worth it? Totally. Especially if you do it right.

Is this your style, though?

That’s the question you need to answer first.

And it has everything to do with how you want your online presence to speak for you.

Don’t hate me, but this is a part of the favorite cliché term “personal brand”.

Cold outreach is not consistent with mine, so I don’t do it.

Hence, let’s talk about DMs (finally).

DMs are your golden ticket to creating a network.

Content creators often get obsessed with the content itself.

And I get that - once you get into the copywriting mindset, literally everything can be turned into content. And you enjoy it.

But content is about 20% of the LinkedIn effort. Engaging is 25%. DMs are 30%. If you get DMs right, the rest of the time is spent on calls.

If you manage to get to the calls stage consistently, your content strategy is gold.

The order is not arbitrary; content drives people to engage. If engagements are done right, they convert to DMs. DMs convert to calls.

The takeaway so far:

→ You should focus on bringing engagement to DMs

→ DMs are what matter if you want to build a quality network.

So far, so good. Now let’s look at actionable tips on how to turn this into a part of your content strategy.

How to use engagement as a gateway to DMs:

→ Send them a personalized connection request to every new person who comments on your post

The connection request you send out is the most important predictor of whether the person will accept your invitation.

The main secret is that the connection request has to be paired with a personal note (mandatory).

This personal note is your one chance to make sure the person will want to connect with you for real.

Here’s how to write a personalized invitation:

→ thank them for the comment on your post

→ look at their profile and find something in common

→ ask a question about something you saw in their profile

I want to share with you the connection request message I got from the DMs queen, Tara Fitness (if you don’t follow her, you totally should).

“Hey Dana, awesome question on my post. I wrote a short 'DMs 101' for you. Also, love the orange and green on your banner. Noticed you're all about AI? I've been loving using ChatGPT and MidJourney lately. I assume you're into much more advanced AI than this? Keen to connect if you are? Tara”

It doesn’t get any better than that. Who can refuse to connect after such an invitation?

Yes, some people never accept connection requests, and that’s fine. You’ve probably noticed that people who don’t engage with the commenters in their posts don’t accept any connections. And that’s fine.

Before we wrap this up:

Please, don’t add people who you don’t actually want to talk to.

It wastes everyone’s time.

I’ve calculated my “ghosting rate” - the % of people who add me, message me and never reply back to my reply. It’s 20%.

That’s 1/5 of the messages I have in my inbox.

Let’s not be that type of person.

This has a lot to do with who you connect with. Which will be next week’s newsletter topic 🙂 

See you next week!

Dana

P.S. If I wasted your time with this newsletter, please unsubscribe. And then tell me on LinkedIn why you did. I want to improve.