Networking in Esports: The Power of LinkedIn

“Hey how is it going, I’m Brandon and I do esports things” is probably not the way you want to start out a conversation with professionals in the esports industry. There has been quite a bit of conversations about how to get involved in the industry from starting a team, joining organization staff, launching a company, or even being a commentator. With so many options and professional careers in the esports industry available, the demand and quality of networking will continue to grow as well. There is no longer just a select group of people who are apart of esports, there are several growing avenues such as players, owners, marketers, sponsors, and so much more. All of these channels have different reasons and intentions to be networking.

Having experience and knowing people in the industry are the 2 largest factor to landing a job in esports and they go hand in hand. Once you have experience, you have a network, once you have a network, you tend to also have experience. If you are reading this now, you are here because you are wanting to land a dream job and do what you love in esports by building your network, or you already have a network and experience and you want to up your game. As you probably already know, our industry is young, and because of that we face several problems with professional’s kind of having to make up skills as they go because they don’t have several years of other professional development under their belt. That’s not all bad, its makes us who we are.

There is no lie that knowing people can and will jumpstart your career when it comes to esports, but just lying around and twiddling your thumbs is not going to be the answer, one key to networking is knowing what value you give to every one of your connections. Through out this article, we will examine the Linkedin networking platform, different practices for building connections, and then making the most for you. Each aspects requires a different level of time commitment and skill to achieve the best opportunities.

Esports has different platforms which people prefer over others, Esports utilizes LinkedIn and Twitter the most and is why having them set up to represent you is important. Since we will be examining LinkedIn, it is going to important to see the overlaying concepts that go into this platform. A few questions you will need to ask yourself are:

• How do I want to be perceived on these platform? Is it professional, do you focus on making sure that your personal brand is maintained or is it a bit more open and you share almost everything including where you are eating and what’s going on.
• Why would someone want to connect/follow you on this platform? With all of your business connections, there needs to be a reason you are reaching out to them or accepting their connection request. This could be you wanting to learn from them, your future or current endeavors will utilize that connect, etc.
• How will you continue to add value to this connection? This could be you publishing posts, sharing content that they might find useful, and other unique opportunities.
• How do you connect with them? Is it sharing their content, sending them a message, endorse them, etc. Linkedin offers several options to reach out and initial a conversation.

LinkedIn

If you aren’t familiar with LinkedIn, imagine facebook, but orientated for professionals, job seekers, and all things for your career. This social media site isn’t for you to showcase your family, religious views, or pets. LinkedIn is all about your professional side and how you want to be perceived by other professionals.

If you want to network on LinkedIn, you can’t just sign up and slap a picture on your profile. You have to consider how the networking process works.

1. To network you need connections (your friends, coworkers, business cards, etc.)
2. To do so, you will need to look them up
3. In looking at their profile, you can choose to connect with them
4. You will choose how you know them, this is to filter out spam and categorize your coworkers, friends, etc.
5. Now one small trick, is to click the friend filter, it doesn’t require an email, but if they deny you won’t be able to request again unless you have an email. Don’t go about spamming connections, start slow and build continously.
6. You can send them a small message reminding how you met, a conversation you would like to have with them, etc. You can get creative on how you want to make first contact outside of the preset message that LinkedIn has

Now you noticed the bolded words above? One of the unique features of Linkedin, is that unless the person is in paid private viewing mode, you will be notified anytime someone looks at your profile! How neat is that….until it starts to seem creepy. With that in mind, it also means they can see when you visit their profile.

So if someone comes looks at your profile, they will be looking for a few things, such as prior expereiences, recommendations, and even how active you are. Having a complete profile with accurate and reliable information is going to essential to establishing that first impression. LinkedIn has become that first impression for alot of contacts, espesccialy with networking in esports.

Now we talk about activity, I recently wrote a piece about Creating Content to build your Personal Brand, which is why your activity level is important. You don’t need to spend countless hours waiting for new posts to like, especially since your activity level will be different if you are tying to land a new client, if you are an entrepreneur, or even trying to get that dream esports job. Linkedin is considered to be a platform that you don’t want to share tons of content every day. You want to be active, but not spamming your connections with invaluable information.

One of the questions I noted above was how do you add value to your connections. You can do this in a few different paths, you have a path that shares relevant business news or articles, congratulations for a recent achievement, and creating your own content. There are other paths but I won’t be touching on those, you can check out a few more of those here — http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/8-ways-to-grow-your-linkedin-connections/

• Sharing posts that contain information regarding your connections interest, now what I find valuable is not just sharing the article, but also giving your comments about the content. This gives you a new opportunity to strike up conversations, show up on your connections posts streams and start new conversations.
• Did you notice one of your connections start a new company or get a big promotion? Send them a congrats on that achievement. By engaging with these connections, and especially if you have had a chance to message them, it could create an opportunity for them to add value to you and start a new relationship!
• Creating your own content, this can be down through linkedIn Pulse which is similar to medium, but specific to the site and is a great way to engage with your connections and then get engagement from nonconnections.

So now that you have a basic understand of how to connect, add value, and build your profile we need to discuss the importance of chatting with your connections. Now you don’t want to receive a message that just says

Hey, whats up?

If you think about it, its really a waste of your time and theirs, not only does it mean you have to respond, but your response doesn’t even revolve around the conversation or add value. When you are making initial contact, or reconnecting with a connection, it’s essential that your conversation be geared to asking a questions, setting up a meeting, or getting to a point. Have a structured conversation, we are all professionals and typically we are having a conversation to cover a specific topic.

Hopefully when you go out to grow your connections, that by being better at networking you will open new opportunities, don’t let this article stop you from learning about Linkedin. Check out these article about Linkedin Etiquette

Feel free to start networking in esports by adding me — https://www.linkedin.com/in/noltebrandon

Originally published at esportsentrepreneur.com on January 28, 2016.