There is a lot of competition on LinkedIn. Whenever a company posts a job, hundreds of applicants submit their applications for it in the next moment, making it tough for a beginner to succeed in the search. But it is not impossible, as many beginners have also been successful with secret strategies, one of which is collaboration.
Even if you have heard many success stories on YouTube or TikTok, this is what happens behind it. They become successful on LinkedIn quickly by using such strategies. Despite so much competition, in this guide, you will learn how to collaborate with industry leaders on LinkedIn, step by step. How do you get them to notice your profile, and how do you create valuable content that will be shown to them? That way, your respect in their eyes will increase, your value will increase, and how about some message templates that you can use to beat this crowd starting today
Why Collaborating on LinkedIn Matters
So, the question that often comes to mind is: why is collaboration important for growing on LinkedIn? There is only one answer to this. There are two ways to grow quickly on LinkedIn. One is to post daily, share valuable content, do cold outreach, and strengthen your network by visiting people’s profiles daily and sending connection requests. The second way is to collaborate with the leaders of your industry, with the help of which you can build your authority in a short time, and your visibility on LinkedIn is high. You also get new followers this way.
This is a very easy and fast way to grow because when you collaborate with someone, and they talk about you, they discuss working with you. With someone, instantly, whoever they like, they pay attention to you, which increases your followers. You will also get more clients, and partnerships, jobs, and many other opportunities will open up for you, no matter how smart or small your LinkedIn profile is.
What Makes an Industry Leader Say Yes?
Industry leaders do not collaborate with anyone just because the person saying it is saying it to them in a very nice way; rather, they collaborate because they see value there. If you also want to get a positive response from any of your industry leaders about you and want to say yes to collaboration, then you must follow these three things.
Value You Bring
Instead of telling them I want to collaborate, show them that if you want to send a nice message to someone for collaboration, don’t tell them about direct collaboration, but tell them the benefits that your collaboration can bring to them and you.
For example, you can tell them I will help you with contact research, I will edit your videos, or I have your audience, or you have any audience that you want to share with them. If you have an idea, you can tell them about the idea in a nice way. That means you should never say direct collaboration, you will not get replies, but you have to show them the value, you have to show them the benefits of collaboration, so that they can automatically say yes to you.
Credibility Signals
What is credibility for calibration? Even if you are a beginner, you can build credibility, which can give you opportunities for collaboration and can make you a library with the big people of the district and with the leaders, that too in such a way that you have to make niche-specific contact, share your knowledge through posts, results, experiences and case studies, highlight your skills in the headline and banner, and completely optimize your profile.
Relevance
Remember, leaders always collaborate with those who align with their audience and messages. You don’t need to be a professional person. Even if you are a beginner, you just need to develop these few qualities in yourself. You will be able to collaborate with the leader. The number one thing is valuable content, relevant content, and professionalism. You have to develop these three qualities in yourself. After that, you should collaborate with the leaders of your industry on the biggest LinkedIn platforms. There are high chances that the leaders will collaborate with you.
The 6-Step LinkedIn Collaboration Framework
Now I share with you seven such steps that if you continue to work on them with consistency and follow them, then these steps will prove to be very beneficial for you, even if you are a newbie. And those seven steps are:
Step 1 — Optimize Your Profile for Collaboration
The simple meaning of optimizing your profile for collaboration is that whenever a visitor comes to your profile, he/she get an answer to a question instantly, and the question that he/she get an answer to is why you want to collaborate with him/her. You have to write this answer in the headline of your profile, the About section, and especially in the banner,
by writing a branding message like “Available for Collaboration.” This will ensure that whenever someone searches on LinkedIn and your profile is shown, they will see the availability of collaboration and will interact with you. If they are interested in collaboration, then even if you are a beginner, this method will work for you because LinkedIn often shows the profiles of beginners, which are basic, to industry leaders. This means that whenever industry leaders see that a profile is available for collaboration, If the person has shared availability on the profile and availability on the profile, they will send messages to you, which will build your confidence.
Step 2 — Identify Industry Leaders in Your Niche
Not every big creator is right for you, but you have to look at those people who create contacts with your expertise, share similar content and audience with your service, and engage actively with them, that too with comments. How do you find such people? Simply, you have to use industrialized keywords for search, hashtags like # marketing, etc., and you have to create a competitor engagement list, and then you have to send a personalized message to each competitor manually, and I have shared the personalized message template in step number seven.
Step 3 — Warm Up Before Messaging
A big mistake that people make is that they start sending messages directly, but they never get a reply from them, and this becomes a big frustration for them. But the simple and easy solution to this is to warm up your messages before sending them.
This means that instead of sending direct messages to the leaders, you first have to like some of their posts, comment on some, repost some posts, and answer some of their audience questions that are in the comments below their posts. In this way, your name will become more familiar in one to two weeks, and your name will be shown in front of the leaders of your particular industry, on whose posts you are commenting, etc., and engaging. After that, when you send them a message, they will never ignore your message and will not skip your message, even if you are a beginner.
Step 4 — Offer Value Before You Ask
Before you say anything about collaboration or even anything, provide some value to your industry leaders or offer them some value so that they can trust you and understand your personality and know your professionalism. If you are a writer, write posts for them, create scripts, if you are a marketer, help them promote any of their products, if you are a designer, design some templates, visuals, etc. for them, and if you are a beginner, just share your search research with them, what you have researched, and ask them for a suggestion on it. Directly, if you say collaboration, they will not collaborate with you, so you have to give them a reason first.
Step 5 — Send a Personalized Outreach Message
Here are the copy-paste templates that you can use by copying and pasting, and can take full advantage of them. These are enough for your calibration. Apart from that, I don’t think you will need much more research after using these templates.
Template A — The Warm Collaboration Pitch
Hey [Name],
I’ve been following your content on LinkedIn and really appreciate how you talk about [specific topic].
I recently worked on something related, and I believe we could create something valuable together — maybe a joint carousel/post / live session / mini-guide for our audiences.
If you’re open, I’d love to explore a small collaboration idea.
— [Your Name]
Template B — High-Value Collaboration Suggestion
Hi [Name],
I’ve studied your recent posts about [topic], and I created a content idea + outline that might interest you.
Thought it could be a great collaboration opportunity for both of us.
If you like, I’d love to build it together!
— [Your Name]
Template C — Beginner-Friendly (Soft Ask)
Hello [Name],
I really admire your work on [topic].
I’m new but learning fast, and I would love to help you with [skill] or even co-create a small piece of content.
No pressure — even your feedback is valuable.
— [Your Name]
Step 6 — Follow Up Without Begging
If you don’t get a reply to your messages, then you shouldn’t skip them at all, but you should definitely follow up, but you shouldn’t follow up in a way that you are begging them for something. Rather, you should follow up in a professional manner. I will also provide you with a template for this. But first, you have to wait for four to six days, then follow up politely, send a message, and offer them a concert idea or a sample or a draft, whatever it is. You have to send it in a follow-up message, and the follow-up message template that I am going to provide you is this.
Just checking in 😊
I created a mini sample of the collaboration idea we discussed. Sharing here — would love your thoughts.
Value + persistence = response.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
So many people complain about this, even professionals complain a lot that they do not get replies. No matter how hard they work, their hard work goes completely in vain. The reason for this is some mistakes that they make and they do not get replies. And those mistakes are these. They also make mistakes without engaging, that is, they do not engage first. They throw messages like this with someone’s content, then they start using generic templates, which look like spam.
And one thing to keep in mind is that the tablets that I have provided should not be printed as is, but modified according to their expertise, and then used again. And the same mistake is that if they upload to the living room, they also lack clarity. That is, if they start the story from the beginning, they will tell the whole story from their childhood to old age,
but they will not tell the main point in it, that what I am doing. Can I do it or how can I help you and not only target people related to your industry but also those who are big names outside the industry and want to connect with them and talk to them,
so how can you meet them from there when their industry is not the same, so this is also a big mistake and they try to collaborate quickly, which is not at all recommended. You have to build trust first, after that, you have to suggest the offer of collaboration to the person in front of you, and then it will be easy for you to collaborate
Collaboration doesn’t need followers — it needs value.
I have shared with you six steps that you can use to easily collaborate. It is my duty to make it clear about this fact so that your comment becomes clear. And if you are a beginner, then the reason for your concern is that no collaboration is ever done on the basis of followers. It is not that if you have fewer followers, no one will collaborate with you.
This is not the case at all. Rather, it is that the more value you provide, the more your chances of collaboration increase with the big creators of the industry. But most of the time, followers are also needed. I am not saying that your work will work without followers, but it has become a mistake for people they keep creating and publishing various posts just to gain followers, and they do not think about how we can create such valuable content that we can use.
We should be able to collaborate as soon as possible and even get clients at a high level. They just keep creating useless content in the pursuit of gaining followers. They only increase their followers by finding trending topics, and then when they send a message to someone for collaboration, they don’t get a reply, and then they get sad. So you have to always keep in mind that you always have to provide real value. If you can create one post a week, that’s enough. If you create this post, but create that post so richly and so richly valuable that whoever sees this post, they can’t stay without following you and trusting you.
And if you want to build your personal brand on LinkedIn and grow it and market yourself very strongly through your personal brand, then check out this article that I wrote and explained in detail.