This article is part of the Marketing Yourself skill set articles which can be found at Marketing Yourself. This article, like all the other articles in the series can be read by independently from the other articles. You can find the Marketing Yourself introduction here.
While I keep the size of my network up to date on my LinkedIn.com Profile I want to help people understand what a large LinkedIn Social Network means and the possibilities of these numbers. Its a practical answer to the Social Network quantity vs. quality debate.
Let’s start by showing you what the numbers are as of January 17th, 2008. This is what your LinkedIn Social Network would look like if you were only connected to me, Zale Tabakman.
But, why do you care about these numbers?
Simply put, connecting to me creates a large network for you to access. With that access you can do business locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.
A LinkedIn Social Network is not only for finding customers, finding a job, or recruiting. While it is most effective for these things, it’s a limited view and it limits you.
Think of LinkedIn as a resource for your business operations, finance, training, marketing, importing, exporting, and other parts of HR. Its a giant yellow pages of people and experiences that you can access for the purpose of doing business and for living life. Its a file of resumes of experts in every field. Its like walking into a networking event and knowing everything about everybody in the room.
I know that many people see LinkedIn’s ability to search as a limitation. But I believe its because they focus on the whole network rather than on an individual in the social network. The LinkedIn Social Network power is in its ability to create useful one-on-one business relationships. It is not about mass e-mail marketing blasts, rather is about contact e-mail marketing.
When you approach LinkedIn as a way to create a one-on-one business relationship with the appropriate connections and contacting an individual with an e-mail, everything in LinkedIn makes sense and everything in LinkedIn works. Reaching the LinkedIn invitation limit and the fact that search results only return 50 people doesn’t matter.
I am frequently asked, “How many people can you really connect up with in a meaningful way?” or some variation on that question. Reading between the lines, I believe the question really being asked is – “How Can Zale Maintain A Meaningful Relationship With So Many People and why does he want me in his network?“. The answer is obvious, I can’t and I don’t even try and I am pretty positive that most of the people in my LinkedIn Social Network are too busy to want a relationship with me at first meeting.
However, I do know something else which is key to everything. I know that every person in my Social Network at some time or another want or need something that will help them achieve a goal in their life. And when I am part of helping them achieve that goal, then we have a meaningful relationship.
If the question is reworded to be “How many people do you need to connect to in a meaningful way?” the question answer becomes interesting and valuable.
Let’s look at a practical example, when I am inviting people to a CATA Lunch With Leaders program, there are only 15 to 20 seats available. To find the appropriate people, who are qualified, who are available, and who are interested, I need an initial list of about 60 people to whom I can contact. Using LinkedIn’s search capability I identify thousands of people. Using the ordering features, I start reading names, titles, and profiles to select my initial contact list. I then start my invitation process. (Feel free to contact me about finding out more about The Lunch With Leader’s program.)
Within two hours I can find from 9 million people the 60 or so people I want to invite to the CATA Lunch With Leaders. I know who they are and I can provide a number of reasons why they will want to attend. The others at the table all win and the lunch is a success.
How is that for prospecting? And this was about providing people a free lunch so that they can network with a particular leader in industry,
What’s the bottom line of a connection to Zale?
You immediately have a Social Network of over 1,000,000 people to solve every one of your business needs.
What Should You Do Now?
- Click here to learn all the details about getting LinkedIn contacts on the phone.
- Connect up with me through my groups. There are two advantages to connecting up with me through my groups.
- You can connect up with many people with whom you have something in common. My groups are pretty specific, so most of the members are interested in the topic.
- If you have run out of invitations a great way to connect up to me is with my LinkedIn Groups. When I get invitations, I send them to members of my LinkedIn Groups, before I send them to anybody else.
- You can find out more about my LinkedIn Groups and how you can use LinkedIn Groups here.
- If you are not connected to me – Grow your network by 1,000,000 people by clicking here and using the Contact Directly button. You will find the e-mail for the invite on my profile.
- For more information about LInkedin for marketing yourself, I have created a lecture called Seven Ways You Can Generate Business Through LinkedIn and it can be accessed here. The lecture teaches you how to generate business with LinkedIn. I step through the various features of LinkedIn and explain how they fit together as part of the a whole.
The lecture has some great content, but the underlying expectation is that you have a large network and know what how to contact people in the network, try to read the article about getting LinkedIn Contacts on the phone.
I believe in living a life of Balance. I believe in being successful. My approach to life is called Success Through Balance. Marketing Yourself is just one skill in the components of a successful life. You can find my description of Success Through Balance by clicking here.
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