If you’re using LinkedIn as a digital placeholder for your CV, you are missing a great prospecting opportunity, says Loic Jeanjean, director of sales and marketing with Advisor Websites in Vancouver.

LinkedIn can be an effective tool to help you grow your client base, Jeanjean says. He offers the following tips:

> Join LinkedIn groups related to your market
Don’t limit your participation to groups whose members consist solely of financial services professionals.

Instead, look for groups with members who represent your target market, such as small-business owners or seniors. You can also join groups that relate to your personal interests — book clubs, cars or your favourite sport, for example. If you want to get to know people close to home, look for groups related to your geographical area.

By joining these groups, you can increase the number of people in your network and, eventually, introduce yourself and your services to individuals who might need them.

However, Jeanjean says, the key is patience.

In a live networking event or a community celebration, Jeanjean says, you would avoid asking people if they need a financial advisor. The same goes for LinkedIn.

Engage in conversations with the group members, establish a rapport and wait for that moment at which introducing your services or expertise would not be out of place.

So, if a member in a small-business group is lamenting the upcoming tax season, provide a few tips on what works in your practice to make that period less stressful. That group member might be inspired to ask you for further advice, which may lead to a professional relationship.

> Ask for personal introductions
This works only if you make it a habit to add clients and networking contacts to your LinkedIn connections.

Your connections are considered “first level.” The contacts your connections have (and that you do not have) are considered second and third level. The more people you have on your first-level basis, the more people you can see on the next two levels. Understanding this structure is important; you can mine the second and third levels for prospects.

Let’s say you like working with medical professionals and you have added all of your clients in that field to your LinkedIn connections. Those professionals will inevitably be associated with other doctors and nurses through LinkedIn.

Pull up the profiles of your top 10 or 15 clients, Jeanjean suggests. Make a list of the top five prospects connected to those clients and send a brief and polite private message to your client, asking for an introduction.

Jeanjean calls this a more proactive way to prospect. Advisors often tell him that when they ask clients for referrals, clients find it difficult to think of names on the spot. Instead, with this technique, you are providing the names to your clients.

This is the first installment in a three-part series on LinkedIn for advisors.

Next: Getting the most from endorsements.