B2B Social Media Creeping

[stevefidelity]

I recently posted an (insightful) comment in a LinkedIn group. I can see that someone from this group has taken a look at my profile, so I'm assuming that they read my comment and they were at least a little intrigued as to who exactly I was. I would regard this person as a prospect. Maybe a slightly unlikely prospect as there's a couple thousand miles that separate us geographically.

I'm wondering what sort of etiquette/best practices there are for connecting somehow with this person/company. Initially I thought I'd follow them on Twitter, maybe like them on Facebook, but they have no such presence. I like the idea of connecting with them that way because it's a 'soft' connection - not too aggressive.

Doing something like emailing or calling and saying 'Hey, saw that you looked at my LinkedIn profile', seems creepy & desperate. Even sending an invitation to connect seems a little too forward.

I feel the only thing to do is to continue to involve myself in this group by posting thoughtful & insightful comments in order to get noticed further that way.

[EricPratum30]

If you can contact the person directly, consider them a lukewarm lead. It's not like they filled out a lead gen form or otherwise told you they're interested in your product/service, but they're not exactly cold either. That being said, it is entirely possible that them looking at your profile was not motivated by any thoughts of purchase, so you don't want to go in too strong.

If I were you, I'd email them or send them an LI message and just say that you know that you're part of the same LI group, or that you're in the same field, or something like that and that you just want to say hi and learn about their business... or something to that effect. If they're not interested, they'll say no or not even reply. If they're interested, you've opened the door to inform them about what you do through asking them what they do