LinkedIn: Connections Envy

Okay, so I'm on record saying you need to be connected to a few big
superhubs to get the maximum reach of your potential LinkedIn
network.

BUT then, some people have a tendency to skip the first, and most
important steps of making this LinkedIn system really work.

One thing that is OBVIOUSLY (and purposefully) missing in my free
LinkedIn report, "How To Double Your Income In Six Months Using
LinkedIn" (see message 2400 on MLPF for details), is the idea of
finding lots of connected people to connect to, for the sole purpose
of connecting up to them.

The reason that I didn't bring it up in the report, is that it won't
make you any *money*. You can spend hundreds of hours if you want to,
just trying to connect up with strangers (well-connected or not) in
order to get your number of connections up and your "reach" numbers
up. It might help you "drive for show", but it won't help you "putt
for dough"!

I think the greatest value of the network is in the reach into the
vast number of people who have 5 or less connections. The reason for
that is that you will find that many of the people who have 5 or less
connections, typically have 5 or less connections themselves. In
other words, you cannot reach into the gold held in
the vast "orphans" out there without reaching out to those "orphans".
When you add up those people, they probably make up about 10-15% of
all LinkedIn members (guess?).


Why do we focus on the big connectors? I think it may come from our
fear of rejection. It's easier to send a LinkedIn invite to a
stranger who happens to be a super-connector, than to invite your next
door neighbor, or your son's baseball coach, who just might say NO!
Then you have to explain the whole LinkedIn thing, that you're not
trying to sell them something, you know, we've all been there... In
the sales business its called call reluctance, and we'll do ANYTHING
to keep from making HARD calls, or HARD LinkedIn invites. We think we
can make up for it by doing a lot of easy invites, instead of the hard
ones.

I've been guilty of this also, at times, so don't think I'm pointing
the finger at you! I know three of those fingers are pointing back at
me! I did a check of my network (by going to
https://www.linkedin.com/network?trk=tab_net) and found that my 682
connections have 116,200 connections between them, an average of over
170 each! That's insane! It should be much less than that. I
checked a page worth (57 to be exact) of Christian Mayaud's first
level connections and found that they have an average of 15
connections each, vs. my 170. To me that means that his network has
much greater diversity and uniqueness than mine, even on a "per
connection" basis, and certainly in the aggregate. He certainly
deserves credit for evangelizing LinkedIn. I was surprised to see how
many people he is connected to who have him alone as their single
connection. That means he is walking the walk, not just talking the
talk!

Does that mean I will stop attempting to connect to super-connectors.
May it never be!!! But I will endeavor to continue to develop
*relationships* with more people, especially those weak in connections
so that they don't remain strangers to the network for long.

This was a lot easier when the whole network was less than 75,000
people. Read this article from the Washington Post last January to
give you a perspective of where we have come with LinkedIn in about 16
months:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18526-2004Jan14.html .

I'd be interested in finding out what the average number of
connections other MLPF members' first level connections have, and your
thoughts on the quality of your OWN first and second level connection
reach.

All the best,

Joe Bartling
https://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=62910