Ned, at this point we are full on shills for LinkedIn because yesterday we had a tip about LinkedIn and today again we have a tip about LinkedIn. So what, what's your advice? How can I best utilize that-- this platform? LinkedIn is the number one way to network in a social media place. It is great to find people at companies you wanna work for. It is great to find people offering services you need. LinkedIn is wonderful.
However, LinkedIn is only wonderful if you can figure out how to get in touch with the people that you need to talk to. That requires referrals and introductions and cold emails and things like that. So, LinkedIn feels like a place where the smartest thing to do is connect to as many people as possible. That is incorrect because if you don't actively know the person you're connecting to, they don't have value in your network and they are gumming up the search features of LinkedIn.
When you start searching for things on LinkedIn, either at companies or by name or by location, it'll show you first, second, and third connections. First being people you are directly connected to. Second being people connected to people you're directly connected to. And third, being kind of like a wider mix that's connected to some close enough connection that you could figure it out. And if you're connecting to random people, that blows up your second and third connections list.
And what LinkedIn is best used for is searching for something, seeing that you're a second connection to someone, and figuring out who you're connected through and asking them for an introduction. And if you don't know the person you're connected to, then they can't make that introduction for you and they're not really a second connection.
So the tip of the day is on LinkedIn don't blast out connection invites, don't accept connection invites willy-nilly, only accept connections that you actively know and are comfortable reaching out to so that your LinkedIn networking is significantly improved. And that is this week of tips on LinkedIn tips that may or may not help you. We're back next week with more LinkedIn tips that may or may not help you. Uh, LinkedIn should sponsor this podcast.
This podcast is actually called Daily Tips that may or may not help you.