LinkedIn Network Quality; Technology Expert Nile Nickel – #RockTheWorld Radio Recap

Listen to our October 3,2011 show !

Is there an advantage to having connections with 20,000 different people?

October 3, 2011

As many of you know, we LinkedIn Rockstars have enormous networks on LinkedIn. You probably often ask yourself, why? Is there an advantage to having connections with 20,000 different people? Is it possible to even know 20,000 different people? Our answer is YES! This week we interviewed Nile Nickel, who just recently reached the 10,000 club (he has 10,000 first level connections), and we discussed the advantages of building your infrastructure to such a scale.

Nile got his start networking the old-fashioned way, but while he was building his business he let his network die. He began to regret not maintaining it, and decided to begin making connections again. He wanted to work with the most modern means possible, which of course meant LinkedIn. He started out a bit slow, hit some bumps along the way, but has now built quite the network! As Nile explains, having such a high number of LinkedIn connections  means that when he wants to communicate with someone at the upper level of a company, chances are someone in his network already knows them, and can help facilitate communication. You know, the larger your network, not only do have a greater number of connections to decision makers, but also the quality of those connections goes up. It raises the bar on the level of connections you have.

Nile had some interesting tips for us on how to solicit invitations. Rather than send out tons of connection requests, he will send an email to someone he has met, saying that if they are on LinkedIn, he would like to connect. He then uses LinkedIn to search for their profile, knowing that they will get a notification that he had checked out their page, and they will use that to send him an invite. With this technique, Nile has yet to go through all the allotted invitations LinkedIn has given him! (Side-note: if you do run out of invitations, write to LinkedIn and they will give you more).

As a reminder, when you do send an invitation, try to write something personal. The same goes if you receive an invite – write a thank you. A thank you can be an excellent way to get communication started, and you can also use it as an opportunity to put in a link to your site which helps drive clicks.

At the end of the interview, Nile told us about a website that he runs called GrowLinx.com where he offers free tips for social media. We think that is so great, there is no registration required; he gives out tips for the sake of helping others. So check it out!

If you are curious about where you rank in terms of number of connections, go to LinkedIn, your advanced search options, change to ‘search anywhere’, sort by number of connections, and you will see where you fall. So we will see you next week!

Tune in Mondays at 7pm, and until then, ROCK ON!

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