LinkedIn Connections – Quality Vs Quantity

We say why not have both!! The LinkedIn Connections – Quantity vs Quality debate is alive and well, and just as pointless as it ever was.

There’s long been an (often) animated debate as to the “right” way to approach networking and particularly to building your network on LinkedIn. It doesn’t matter if we are delivering a key note, conducting a workshop or presenting a webinar, a question that seems to always be asked is:

“When building my network is Quality better than Quantity?”

And typically in the audience, you will always have two vastly different opinions. There are people who are advocates of a quality-based approach whereby only connecting with people they either know well or who are directly relevant to them and what they do. And on the flip side, there are net-workers who believe “Quantity” is more important than quality and therefore connect with everyone and anyone.

“Which is the best approach?”

In our opinion, there is no right or wrong and in fact, why not use both. The path you choose really depends on your personal choice and the marketing objectives you’re looking to achieve.

For the purpose of this article, let’s just assume our founder Alex is a business coach who specializes in helping “Lawyers” grow their practice and his goal is to bring on board 10 new clients within 6 months. One of the marketing channels he’s going to use is LinkedIn; now at this point, he has three choices:

1. Reactive:

He could build his profile and insert the right key words so that when Lawyers search for an advisor such as himself he has given himself the best possible chance of being found within the search results.

2. Proactive:

Or he could be proactive by searching, connecting and building a relationship with his core target market (lawyers).

3. Both:

Use both strategies so that you do not only have an optimized profile when others search for you but at the same time you’re reaching out and building your network. In our experience, we have come to realize that 90% of the results we’ve achieved on LinkedIn can be mainly attributed to the fact that we have been proactive in our marketing efforts and only 10% based on those who have found us.

When you build your connections based on what you are looking to achieve within your marketing efforts and not just connecting with others for the purpose of building your network you set the foundation that ensures you create a network that is highly targeted and extremely relevant. In doing so, you achieve both “Quantity” and “Quality” within all your connections.

Just like with all marketing and social media, think purpose, then message and finally method. Your Purpose is typically the toughest bit to work out, but when you crack it, the other 2 pieces will fall into place quite easily.

Whatever idea you subscribe to we would like to suggest that your networking principles depend on your purpose (marketing objectives). If you are happy with your network and use LinkedIn only to chat with people you know, then perfect keep it the way it is.

That is it for today, join us next week as we share with you the 5 key areas in your profile you need to optimize with keywords in order to rank high in LinkedIn search results. There are over a billion searches a year on LinkedIn. While it’s true that many of these people search for individuals and companies, they are also searching keywords.

Optimizing your profile can help you get your profile and message in front of the right target market. Happy linking. Creating a large following of people who engage with your content and are influenced by your actions online requires advanced knowledge, time and action.