If there's one social network that advisors are using, it's without a doubt LinkedIn. "The Professional Network," as it's called, is a perfect tool for advisors to use to find potential new clients. One of the best ways to do this is by searching through your existing LinkedIn contacts.

If you specialize in a niche market, LinkedIn can be your best friend for prospecting. As you scroll through your existing connections on your LinkedIn account, maybe you've noticed that beside each contacts photo is their current job title and company. When you select a contact, you can also view their LinkedIn connections.

As you check out the contacts of any of your LinkedIn connections, the platform also displays which connections are mutual and, if you're not connected, it shows how many degrees of seperation exist.

For instance:

You may be wondering how this make prospecting easier. The magic happens when you find a potential prospect with whom you share multiple mutual connections.

Instead of trying to explain how this works, here's a real-life example from Advisor Websites CEO, Bart Wisniowski.

Bart's buddy Chris initiated the mutual contact seamlessly. Check out Bart's introduction email.

Next, Bart updates Chris and provides a little additional information.

And finally, success!

So, we have to ask: who else has had success with prospecting using LinkedIn? Of course we can't expect every connection to happen as seamlessly as this example, but this just goes to show that it works. Please let us know your experience with prospecting on LinkedIn in the comments section!