20,000 thank you’s for connecting and sharing

I recently reached the landmark of 20,000 followers/connections on LinkedIn and thought I would say thank you to everyone who is following me or connected with me. I also wanted to analyse who I am connected to and also pass on some tips as to how I went from 250 connections when I first came to Asia to 20,000 today, 6 years later.

Who I am connected to?

Even though I based in Singapore only 9,000 of my connections are in Singapore. 1,600 are from the United States, more than my home country the UK where I have 1,100 connections. I even have more in Australia and New Zealand, 1,500, than I do the UK and I have the same number in Hong Kong as the UK. This very much reflects where my Black Marketing company does business.

I am connected with 4,000 business owners/partners, 2,000 CXO’s, 5,500 directors and 4,500VP’s.

10,000 of my connections have more than 10 years or experience.

Industries that I am connected in are 30% in marketing services of one kind or another, 25% in IT/online media/internet, 10% in management consulting and training,

Functions people list that they are in from my connections are marketing, sales, business development, entrepreneur, consultant and PR.

Size of company in number goes 11-50, then 51-200, 1-10 and 1000-5000. More SME focused than MNC.

How did I get to 20,000?

I don’t take the more precious approach that some do (and what they do is not wrong, it’s a personal choice) I connect with anyone that I have met at an event, met for business, met by chance, met through other people. I also connect with people who comment and share my content and whose content I like on LinkedIn and where I share and comment.

As i use all the LinkedIn profile gamification aspects I come up high in searches. Therefore I get many people asking me to connect on a daily basis. I actually don’t say yes to everyone. Surprising as this may sound but if they are clearly spam, pretty girl/less than 50 connections I decline, if they are African dictators who wish to use my bank account for the $110m they were given by Saddam Hussein/Colonel Gaddafi/Idi Amin/you name it I don’t accept. Same apply to those unfortunate people who have my name and died with no relatives leaving a fortune…..

Even if they seem genuine but are clearly not in the right country e.g. an English bank in the mid states of America I don’t accept. If they are using the same set of words in their summary section or same format as other spammers i don’t accept. If they are slightly strange I Google their image and see where it has been taken from, then don’t accept if the image is different to the copy.

I do though like to connect with people from organisations that my company, Black Marketing, work for on a LinkedIn company page basis. It’s good to engage and connect with people whose company page we are managing on LinkedIn and encourage them to share and comment on the content shared thus enhancing their company brand on LinkedIn. This will make their company page more successful.

This includes for example Marketing Magazine, the American Chamber of Commerce (new page coming soon), the Institute of Advertising Singapore, Human Resources Magazine, Next Bank, Collective Works and many others.

I also connect with people from organisations where I run events, therefore as I am Chair of the British Chamber of Commerce ICT Committee I connect with other members to enable them to make suggestions to me about events and also to enable me to share events with them to share with their networks.

I connect with fellow members of the CMO Council and within organisations where I blog, SAP’s The Customer Edge for example.

I do though personalise all my invitations. A simple message saying how we know each other or how we are connected and what we have in common makes a dramatic difference to being accepted or not. It also makes a great deal of sense to the person that I’m sending the invitation to, they know why they should be connected with me and where they know me from.

I passionately believe in connecting and networking in a business context. LinkedIn is an amazing catalyst for this and has enabled me to build a global business by offering a service that enables senior executives globally to connect with their peers and grow their business anywhere in the world.

As my late Grandad told me when I was 9 years old, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” and LinkedIn has proved him right. Thank you for connecting.