How to Grow Your LinkedIn Profile - Connections Breed Connections

My journey on LinkedIn started the same as everyone else - 0 connections. My aim for LinkedIn was to generate business. At the time this was to me a stretch goal, since I had no idea of the power of the platform. I attended a LinkedIn master class hosted by Sam Rathling, (which I highly recommend!) knowing I needed some help and was tempted by the potential and value of an unknown opportunity.

From the first day I started using LinkedIn I have been fascinated with the influence and the reach one post can have. I always thought it was some sort of miracle that a post could reach an audience of millions like those which go viral. I pondered, who would care what I have to say? Who would interact back to me? Would my thoughts matter?   

The milestone of 20,000 connections was something which I was incredibly proud of and got me thinking of what potentially can be gained from such an audience. The way LinkedIn works means your network consists of three types of people - 1st degree, 2nd degree and 3rd degree connections.

Which means your 1st degree connections are the number of people which you are directly connected to and have accepted an invitation to connect. 2nd degree are all those who are connected to your 1st degree network and 3rd degree are those who are connected to your 2nd degree network.

With this LinkedIn structure even someone with just a few hundred 1st degree connections can in theory reach an audience of potentially hundreds of thousands. The result of greater reach and post visibility comes business opportunity.

I’m often asked how to grow a network, and for me the first few hundred connections are some of the easiest to obtain, because you can just go through the list of people who you are already networking with. To name just a few: family, friends, colleagues, suppliers, business associates and people from your hobby groups are those who can be targeted immediately. For my network this list for me took me to around 500 people. With this network you could realistically start the snowball effect of obtaining new connections.

The ‘snowball effect’ is something which cannot be underestimated. As the title of this article suggests - connections breed connections. This is because people who you connect with are able to interact with your content and by doing so your 2nd degree network will now be able to view your content. The bigger the 1st degree connection number and the more interaction you obtain the greater the reach of your posts. From snowball to avalanche…. 

In addition, with more connections comes more influence and authority, this can do wonders for your brand. Because LinkedIn is all about building relationships your personal brand is at the forefront of your business and if you post content to an ever growing audience people will develop a connection to you. Once an attachment like this is established you can develop a significant strategic advantage with people using you as their first and only choice in that industry.

At what point does one person have too many connections? Or when is ‘enough, enough.’ This is a thought which has started to weigh on my mind. LinkedIn has over 500 million users and it is estimated that with a network of 20,000 connections you have a reach of nearly 10% of total users, 50 million ish - which is approximately the entire population of England. A sobering thought when you consider it.

One thought which goes through my mind is that putting time into LinkedIn is only worthwhile if you are generating business from it. So is a network of approximately 50 million an effective use of time and resources? Of course that depends on your industry and target market but for many I would estimate 50 million clients is more than most businesses can take on and this comes back to my earlier question, when is ‘enough, enough’?

If you are looking to grow your LinkedIn network you need to consider the balance between meaningful connections to generate immediate business verses the impact and authority that building a personal brand can achieve - and the potential revenue that can come from this.

How do you turn contacts into contracts, I guess it’s about asking the right questions, reaching the right audience and moulding your snowball. A worthwhile quote, visibility + credibility = opportunity (Sam Rathling) reminds me the point of this discussion in the first place. Engage, interact and embrace and see what you can achieve.

The unnecessary surplus connections that will be never be your customers should still part of your plan and then there may never be too many.