January 26, 2009

LinkedIn – But Who’s Counting?

I don’t usually think of myself as immune from making the same mistakes as others, or even from repeating my own now and then.

Sometimes when we’re working on building our business networks we either rush in without a plan and just try to build the biggest network or we lose sight of the plan and focus on the numbers and not on the results we’re seeking.

I haven’t made good use of my network on LinkedIn and I will be the first to admit that I got carried away with adding warm bodies when I first started using it and totally lost sight of why I would bother. I currently have my profile set up to passively attract people interested in business networking and I’ve really only begun using it to any extent since they’ve recently expanded it’s capabilities by leveraging the power of RSS. (Facebook is the master of leveraging that power and it shows in their results; it’s why you either love it or hate it.)

I will say I was impressed today when I stopped in and really examined what was going on with my netowrk.

Tracy Phaup on LinkedIn

Almost four thousand people is a lot of people and way too many to actually spend time adding to the depth of my connection with more than a handful of them, but it was a bit sobering to look at the reach I could have by leveraging my connection to these people – my 2nd and 3rd degree of connectiveness is over a million and almost eight million respectively.

Wow.

So – next mission? Leverage the power of that network into some tangible results.

I’ll post more late on how I set up my profile to passively attract people looking to network – it’s time for me to be dashing out of the house now – but if you go ahead and pop over to my profile there http://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyphaup you’re likely to spot most of the ideas for yourself.

Feel free to send me an invite – I rarely respond to requests for invites more because of the hectic nature of my life than anything else – but I do love meeting and greeting and you’re no exception!

If you’re more of a Facebook user I’m easy to find thanks to the unusual last name or you can use http://facebook.tracyphaup.com

Wishing you all the best in your networking endeavors,
Tracy Phaup – your social media marketing maven!