Is your focus on LinkedIn to collect contacts as a primary social media strategy like putting eggs in a basket hoping they’ll hatch OR is your focus on communicating/interacting with your network (LinkedIn Connections)?
So many individuals jumping on the social media are allocating way too much time in just acquiring contacts. There should be a good balance between acquiring contacts and communicating with your network.
In drafting my latest Lesson for the Chair e-Course on Leveraging Social Media, I was covering this exact issue. I was so bold as to suggest that the process of collecting contacts without high engagement/communication was a worthless activity – bordering on a complete waste of time.
Although you might want to sustain a continuous level of acquiring contacts, such as sending invites, researching contacts, seeing who is connected to your contacts – I’m going to recommend at least 50% of your time on social media should be spent communicating, interacting, sharing, and responding. This is how you build a loyal, dedicated following of interested folks who are passionate in absorbing what you have to say and your thought leadership.
I’m very curious how you engage, communicate, interact, respond, question, share on LinkedIn with your network.
What’s the frequency of your communication?
What tools do you use?
How often do you look for opportunities to interact/respond?
What have you found to be the most valuable approach for you in engaging your LinkedIn network?
Barry Deutsch
PS – If you’ve not done so yet – is it now time to take our FREE e-Course for Chairs on how to leverage social media to find and engage with potential CEO members?
