Your First 100 Quality Connections Are More Important Than 1,000 Random Ones
Now that your LinkedIn profile is complete, it’s time to start building your network. This is where many beginners make their first mistake. They become obsessed with numbers.
500 connections!
1,000 connections!
5,000 connections!
Forget about that. For a PAL Affiliate, 100 useful professional connections can be far more valuable than thousands of people selected randomly.
Start With People You Already Know
LinkedIn specifically recommends beginning with people you already know, including colleagues, classmates, mentors and people you’ve volunteered with.
For a PAL Affiliate, your initial list might include:
- Current and former coworkers
- Former customers and vendors you legitimately know
- Business owners
- Accountants and bookkeepers
- Bankers
- Insurance professionals
- Former classmates
- Neighbors who own businesses
- People from clubs and community organizations
- People you’ve met professionally
This gives you your foundation. Then something interesting begins happening.
Your connections have connections.
LinkedIn calls these second-degree connections. If you’re connected with a CPA who knows dozens of local business owners, those people are now one step closer to your professional network.
Use “People You May Know”
LinkedIn’s My Network area provides recommendations through its People You May Know feature. Don’t simply click Connect on everyone. Look at the person’s profile.
Ask:
Do I know this person?
Do we have mutual connections?
Are we in the same industry?
Do we belong to the same organization?
Would connecting make professional sense?
Quality beats quantity.
Search by Profession and Industry
As your network develops, begin looking for people who naturally fit the commercial finance world. A PAL Affiliate interested in the staffing industry might search for staffing-company executives. Someone with construction experience might look for contractors. You can also begin identifying professionals who encounter businesses needing capital:
- Commercial bankers.
- CPAs.
- Bookkeepers.
- Payroll professionals.
- Business consultants.
- Commercial insurance professionals.
- Business brokers.
But remember that finding someone doesn’t mean immediately sending a sales pitch. You are building a network.
LinkedIn Groups Can Expand Your Reach
Groups are particularly interesting for PAL Affiliates because they allow professionals with common industries and interests to interact even when they aren’t already directly connected. LinkedIn describes Groups as places where professionals in similar industries or with common interests can share information and network.
Look for groups associated with subjects you actually understand:
Small Business
Staffing
Transportation
Manufacturing
Construction
Entrepreneurship
Commercial Finance
Accounting
Your local or regional business community
But don’t join 50 groups and start posting advertisements. Join a few quality groups. Read. Learn who participates. Comment when you genuinely have something useful to contribute.
LinkedIn’s own Groups guidance recommends thoughtful participation, relevant contributions and avoiding excessive promotion. Groups can provide something particularly valuable to an Affiliate:
Discovery.
You begin seeing people outside your immediate circle who share your professional interests.
Don’t Become a Connection-Request Machine
LinkedIn places limits on connection invitations, and this is important for new Affiliates to understand.
There isn’t a dependable public number such as “You may send exactly 100 invitations every month.” LinkedIn applies invitation limits and restrictions to both Basic and Premium accounts, and it does not publicly disclose all of the thresholds governing standard connection requests. Sending too many requests rapidly—or having too many ignored or reported as unwanted—can result in temporary restrictions.
So don’t build your strategy around trying to discover the maximum number LinkedIn will permit. Build it around acceptance. Ten sensible invitations to people who recognize you are better than 100 indiscriminate invitations.
There is another limitation worth knowing: LinkedIn’s current help documentation says free members can add a personalized note to only a small number of connection requests each month, while Premium provides more personalized-invitation capability. LinkedIn’s current general Help page lists three personalized connection messages per month for Basic members, up to 200 characters each.
Because LinkedIn changes limits periodically, always check its current rules rather than designing your marketing around a fixed number.
Follow Before You Connect
Here’s an underused strategy. If you discover an interesting business professional whom you don’t know, you don’t necessarily have to send a connection request immediately.
Follow the person.
LinkedIn allows you to follow someone’s public content without becoming a first-degree connection.
- Read what they post.
- Occasionally make an intelligent comment.
- Become familiar.
Then, if a legitimate reason to connect develops, the request is no longer completely cold. That is much closer to genuine networking.
Your First Goal: 100 Quality Connections
Don’t rush. Perhaps add five people tonight. Another five Saturday morning. Reconnect with several former coworkers next week. Join two professional groups.
Follow several interesting business people. Gradually build toward your first 100 professional connections.
Then 200.
Then 500.
LinkedIn permits up to 30,000 first-degree connections, but a PAL Affiliate will probably never need anything remotely approaching that number. Remember what you’re trying to create:
Not the largest network. The right network. And then target being at the right place, at the the right time, with the right knowledge…factoring knowledge.