If you’re one of LinkedIn’s 414 million members, you may think it’s enough that you’ve joined the site, set up your profile page and started connecting with contacts. But there’s more than one way to go about these basics, and a strategic approach can help you maximize the value of your LinkedIn membership.
It’s true that it’s crucial to avoid misusing the site, as making snafus on social media can cost you a job. But you also need to focus on how to do it right. To that end, how you go about building your network can make a big difference in how powerful that network is in helping you reach your career goals.
[Read: Are You Making These 8 Embarrassing Mistakes on LinkedIn?]
— Network with intention. When joining LinkedIn, it makes sense that one of the first things people like to do is start linking with others on the site — often as many as possible. After sending and accepting invitations to connect with friends, former colleagues and other personal contacts and acquaintances, it’s tempting to go for the low-hanging fruit of padding out your network with people you don’t really know and aren’t likely to leverage in the future. The site makes this easy by feeding you an unending scroll of “People You May Know,” based on your network activities and user profile data. Yet while some of these recommendations may indeed be actual contacts of yours, many will not be. There are certainly reasons you may want to connect outside of your existing network, and that’s one of the reasons to use social media. But not every potential contact is equally powerful for your job search and ultimate career goals. Before randomly sending and accepting requests, regardless of the source, think about what your purpose is for using the site and make sure you’re building your network with that purpose in mind.
[Read: 7 Ways to Advance Your Career With Social Media.]
— Think beyond the numbers. If your goal is simply to amass a large number of links and receive the coveted “500+ connections” logo on your profile page without any strategy behind that mission, you might want to rethink it. Collecting contacts for the sake of having more contacts isn’t necessarily a smart approach. While any contact has the potential to lead to a future opportunity, some are more likely to become strong professional connections who will be involved participants in your network. With that in mind, take a more thoughtful and deliberate approach to building your base, selecting connections who have the potential to help you reach your career goals.
— Vet potential contacts. How do you know which types of contacts may be more valuable in the future? One way to determine this is to communicate upfront with anyone you’re considering connecting with to ensure that they’re willing to actively network with you. There’s no need to rush to reach a certain number of contacts, since the quality of your contacts is in many ways more important than the quantity. Take your time to vet each request that you receive from people you don’t know on the site before blindly accepting invitations. You might consider asking unfamiliar people who contact you to provide a convincing reason why they want to connect. Were you just a name that popped up on a list of third-level connections, or did they contact you with a specific intention related to your professional background? If any prospective contacts don’t pass your screen, then you might want to skip those connections in favor of others that seem more promising for future collaboration.
[Read: The 10 Best Websites to Find Jobs.]
— Target “pure” connections. While it may take you longer going this route to build up to having a large number of connections on the site, vetting your contacts first can help you develop a list of “pure” contacts, meaning people with whom you have authentic connections. For a number of reasons, pure contacts are more valuable than those with whom you share no real connection. You’ll likely feel more comfortable connecting to any of your pure contacts — whether to ask for help or to offer your help — since you have real relationships with them that you’ve communicated about in advance. Also, if one of your connections requests an introduction to another connection, you’ll feel more confident doing so because you’ll know each individual personally. Targeting pure connections offers a powerful, reliable strategy that can assist you in your career development — and it can be equally reliable to anyone who wants to plug into your LinkedIn network.
When you’re more intentional about creating and growing your circle of contacts on LinkedIn, you become a power user. A strategic approach to building your network will help you get much more out of this professional social media site during your job search, potentially opening the doors to your next opportunity and beyond.
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Getting the Most Out of LinkedIn During Your Job Search originally appeared on usnews.com
