How to get 10,000 LinkedIn connections in 10 months (or a just 1000 that matter)

It takes time and effort in order to support building your own audiences, whether that be a 1000 people, 10,000 followers, or ultimately achieving something close to an "INfluencer" status in reaching 10's (or 100's) of thousands of people with each post. Here's a little help for you.

About 2 1/2 years ago, I set out on a journey of engaging a specific audience (the 'experienced professional') around the challenges of creating a new venture. On the way, I learned a lot about how that works (or doesn't) in real life. About 12 months ago, I switched from using a blog to Linked In as my primary vehicle for sharing and engaging.

About 6 months ago, I put out a post that showed you "How to go Viral on Linked In without being an Influencer". Since then, the results have been astounding, so I thought I might share them in the expectation that you can use this follow-on information.

My LinkedIn connections have grown from about a 1000 (which took me 4 years of close and personal networking at events, meetups and conferences), to today's grand total that just topped 10,000 interesting, relevant and thought provoking people.

 UPDATE #1, That number has now grown to just shy of 14,000 people in the weeks since I published this article.

I'd like to share with you the why, when and the how, in the expectation that you can make use of my methods. And in succeeding in building  a tribe, you might just pick up some unexpected serendipities along the way. Like when Linked suggested that they'd like to make me a "thought leader" in one of their channels.

First to the Why.

One of the things I share with people that I am mentoring, especially before they quit their day job, is to build an audience or 'tribe' of like-minded people, who care about the things that they care about. And I'm a big believer in 'congruency', so I'd never ask anyone to do anything that I haven't at least researched or attempted myself.

Depending on your offering, you might have multiple paths to your audience. For some, that might be Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest; for others, it will be LinkedIn; for some a blog. Or it could be combinations of any or all (or even none) of these.

Linked In, at least for me, represents a great way to engage with people who want to know what I know, or know what I want to know, and to connect and engage in a meaningful way, without being 'spammy'.

The reality is that if you are imagining an offering to an audience, it won't hurt to have at least a few people with whom to test with, ask questions of, or share information with, before you go bouncing down the road with "the perfect product".

Next, the When -a little history.

I use Linked In now, like I used to use twitter - to gather information, and to connect and to share with a trusted network that cared about what I cared about. Now that last bit is hard, because, as a polymath -and apparently I am very bright - I care about a lot of things. Like "People, technology, business, startups, venture capital, motorbikes, architecture, urbanisation, politics, cultural anthropology, community, education, psychology, personal mastery, entrepreneurship, social mission, law, small business,….". OK, you get the picture? Lots.

A polymath (Greek: πολυμαθ??, polymathēs, "having learned much")[1] is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas; such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.

The term is often used to describe great thinkers of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment who excelled at several fields in science and the arts. In the Italian Renaissance, the idea of the polymath was expressed by Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), in the statement that "a man can do all things if he will".[3] Embodying a basic tenet of Renaissance humanism that humans are limitless in their capacity for development, the concept led to the notion that people should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible. --Courtesy of Wikipedia

Remember when Twitter was a great source of real & relevant news and information? When your feed was populated by relevant article that carried weight and gravity because they were from trusted sources that to you, had personal relevance? Whether the nature of my feed has changed because of who I follow (or don't) or the fundamental nature of twitter has changed (is it more like Instagram or Facebook?), I no longer rely on Twitter in the way I once did.

I lost faith in it as a vehicle to deliver the information about my industry or sector. Finding the real gems became hard. And suddenly, sources that looked interesting started playing the "follow/unfollow 3 days later" game (something I've never understood). It's like people were following some sort of "playbook" to build the best ratio of following/followers, to make them look like some sort of industry heavyweight. I guess the motivation is to invoke a feeling of "This person only follows 50 people but 2000 are following them so they must be worth following".

Back in July 2013, I called it "social-media spamming".

"I get that this is a method of outreach, but what interests me is in the 'blowback' or brand reputation damage that organisations using this approach could be doing to their brand. "

And it seems to have gotten worse in the last 2 years.

And because of the pure volume of tweets coming into my feed, each tweet really only has a half-life of a few seconds. If I missed reading a tweet the first time it comes in, it's very quickly pushed down so far into my feed that it became effectively irretrievable, unless I remembered the name of the poster, and cared enough to go to their twitter account.

And I won't even go into the effects on productivity by entrepreneurs of "bright shiny objects".

Build connections with an audience.

So that's what I use Linked In for now. The capacity to receive, share, view and comment in a meaningful way with the people that know me (some well, some not yet), "Connections" on topics that I (and ideally they) care about. And to share that information with others - "Followers" - who may not know me, but are interested in important issues around topics that I write, comment on, post or share, but without all the 'dross' or personal updates. E.g. "Daniel changed his profile picture to a new photo with a part on the left instead of the right". See - no dross, just relevant and real stuff.

And as an 'open networker', if a follower wants to connect or communicate with me, I'm just a click of a 'connect' or 'message' button away.

Which is a much better way to maintain your relationship with your audience, in my opinion. "All Iceberg, and no tip", to re-phrase a former Prime Minister. Give your audience the depth below the surface, not just the 30 second grab they see in other social or news media. Opinions, facts, implications, opportunities, thoughts, ideas, constructs and new ways of thinking, working and living.

And for the "love of God", please don't post stuff like "the top 10 ways to …."; that's the quickest way to alienate your audience and get unfollowed (at least by me, anyway).

Next to the What

A good friend & peer of mine, James Tuckerman, (and we are, like most entrepreneurs, always struggling to find time to catch up and share), talks often about "eyeballs - bought, earned & rented".  These are the methods he talks about building his audiences through. And if you are "early into the game", 'earned' is the cheapest and most loyalty building, though it'll take a little longer. Ultimately, any source of audience should be on your own list, not owned by someone else.

And that's what Linked In leads to though content engagement (if you aren't sure what that is, you are engaging now with content that I created specifically for you). You can use content to 'sell to' or 'share with', but you can't do both well. And sharing leads to buying, collaboration, learning and relationships, which in my mind is a much better outcome than a one-sided transaction of just making a sale. Strong relationships are never transactional: they are built on mutual trust, respect, care, like, and belief.

I had a thought that I might share some basic profile tips with you, though a search for "how to improve my Linkedin profile" yield approximately 43,200,000 links. So clearly, there is enough already out there on the basics, for me not to rehash them. To start building your profile on LinkedIn, I'd look at the first 10 links, as well as using the "Linked In profile builder".

But here's a few things to get you started anyway

1. Before you go through any profile building exercise, I'd start with getting your professional profile picture up to scratch and complete. You are hardly going to position yourself as a 'thought leader' if your profile is incomplete - i.e. you have no professional headshot or your background and interest are incomplete). Or worse, your professional profile photo is a selfie of you in the car, or of you from a wedding or Christmas party.

This isn't a rant. Being congruent is a big issue;- if you are a builder, then why not look like one? Same if you are a nurse, speaker, lawyer, banker, venture capitalist, car dealer or corporate dynamo. And you don't have to spend $000's to get a good one. Just get someone to take a well-lit, well-posed professional shot with your phone. You can always improve on it later.

I just read a particularly good short article entitled "the Profile Without A Photo", which explains succinctly the likely outcome of not having a photo at all.

1. Linked in has a great series of recommendations about getting your profile to a good standard. Sure there are lots of blogs about it, but you don't have to go overboard, just do it properly. Like in most things "good and done" is much better than "getting to perfection". You know the old 80/20 rule. Well, modify that to update the 80% of your profile that matters, and ignore the 20% that doesn't.

Things like; your work history (for a reasonable time period); some skills (against which your network can endorse you); where you went to school (secondary or post) - which can be a good source of common interest, and in your summary section, a little about your mission. This last bit shouldn't be "War & Peace"; merely 2-3 paragraphs that give people a sense of your authenticity and your bigger vision.

• For instance (this is just a fun example), If you believe that the "earth is flat", tell people a little about why, which allows other "flat-earthers" to connect and then engage with you in a meaningful way. And above all, frame your summary as an example of the help you provide, not some sort of product that you are trying sell.

Your current & recent role descriptions will then round out what you are good at, and what you've done.

And now to the How (Brown Cow).

As I see it, there are a number of main ways to build your connection networks.

In the case of each option, I do advocate the use of custom-tailored messages which are short and focused on their needs, not yours. Give people a real & valid reason why they may want to connect with you.

And unless someone has met you recently (or in the case of #2 below), I would never suggest clicking the 'connect' button. It's cold and impersonal, and not very successful.

1. You can spend lots of time networking and meeting people, and then following up with them to engage and connect (this is my preferred early option when you are just getting started).
2. Connect with people that you know, or have known, in a professional sense. If you have had relationship beyond "good morning at the water cooler", clicking 'connect' is appropriate here. LinkedIn has some good tools to match users on their network with people listed in your phone, or as imported lists of emails, so as to speed up the process.
3. You can visit lots of profiles, of which a percentage will view you back, of which a percentage will invite you to connect. I get the sense that this can create a lot of effort for little return in the long run. Better to find the 10 individuals in your industry that "move & shake" and connect with them, rather than the 990 that don't.
• There are tools that can do this automatically, (up to 500 profiles per day), but you may be risking getting your profile banned by LinkedIn, so it's not something that I'd personally advocate.
4. You can connect with lots of potentially relevant people, through doing lots of custom keyword or industry specific searches, by: - either:
• Sending "In mails" (though unless you are on a top Premium profile, you are limited in quantity), and inviting people to connect
• By clicking "connect", of which a percentage will view you back, of which a percentage will accept your invitation.
• Custom-invites from your desktop (though I think this has been removed on mobile), or
• by asking people (1st level connections) to introduce you to another person (usually a 2nd level connection.). This my preferred option for this group, and although it does leverage the power of your network, it does introduce a time-delay element into the equation.
5. Creating a lot of great engaging & relevant content, which allows people to either 'follow' or 'connect' with you (this is clearly my overall preferred option).

I might also suggest that, if you want your news feed to remain relatively relevant, and your inbox relatively spam-free, that you be selective about accepting connection requests from 'suspect' connections. If someone reaches out to you with only 12 connections, no work history, or skills, no photo, and no relevance to your background or industry, there's a better than even-money chance that they are a spammer/scammer that' s trying to reel you (or your connections) in.

I'm not sure that linked In necessarily looks at the 'quality' of your connections, but it's possible that some of your more higher profile prospective followers might. So make a good first impression by being discerning, an create a relevant, active and legitimate connections base from which to build upon.

Every great structure (just like any great startup), starts with a solid foundation.

The outcomes.

Where a connection is likely to have a relationship with you, they have a higher propensity to ready share, comment and like your posts. Whereas, with a follower , your feed will equally appear in their feed, they have a much lower rate of readying , commenting and sharing - my best guess is about 4 times less.

As you'll see from the image earlier, the level of connections-to-followers that I've achieved is a ratio of 1:4, which seems to be a good ratio. A 'follower' is doing so because you are 'interesting', but you haven't yet proved your relevance or resonance to them. Followers are usually not as active with your posts as your connections are.

The outcome of having a large follower set is the equivalent of a modest connection set, with one distinct difference; followers are 2nd, 3rd, and 4th level connections, so any engagement with them will result in a much deeper reach into distant networks which you might otherwise struggle to get to.

And because followers don't know you, you are more likely to get the direct and useful feedback that you might not always otherwise get from 1st level connections. This is particularly valuable if you are crafting, shaping and forming ideas, testing a value-proposition, a potential product or service offering, or even concepts for a future book that you might be writing.

I can tell you that IF you demonstrate the capacity to do the hard yards yourself first, Linked In may well recognise your capacity to reach and engage an audience by making your task easier. After all, you'll be helping them build value into their eyeballs as well as yours.

If you are planning to change the world, it does help to start in one place, but thinking bigger, perhaps globally, will rarely hurt you. And if you are building a tribe, that capacity to reach and 'drill-down' into networks is the key component in doing so. 8 months ago, my network was mostly made up of Australians that know me. Now it's made up mostly of people that don't know me, from all around the world.

And who knows - in 12 months time, I might be writing a post to share with about actually becoming an INfluencer. That however, is up to you, who read (or don't) the works I create.  Which is the same opportunity for you.

"To Your Success", Daniel

If you like this post, comment on and share it, &  you might also enjoy these other posts by Daniel

• Why I write, and why you can too (2.5k)
  Why women make stronger (and better) entrepreneurs (1.9k)
  Where is the right place to raise money for my startup (66k)
  Are you really an Entrepreneur, or just a small business person (6.4k)
  How To Go Viral on Linked In, without being an Influencer       (2.3k)
  How to raise $5million for your startup idea (and why you shouldn't) (33k)
  Why Pitching to a VC will almost always fail (13.3k)

I'd love to hear from you!

• Find out how/if I can help you via my website.
• Follow me on Twitter @That_StartUpGuy
• Connect with me on LinkedIn 

About Daniel

Also traveling under the alias of 'That Startup Guy',  I am a co-founder of StartUp Foundation (The Startup Accelerator for Experienced Professionals) and am intensely, deeply, passionately dedicated to "The intersection between personal mastery & business entrepreneurship".

My goal is to help you, by guiding you through the steps, and past the challenges and pitfalls, to turn that 'Great Idea' into reality, whether it's a business, a product, an app or just finding an answer to a common problem, via the 1st of my StartUp books due soon for release "Before You Quit Your Day Job".

Review your advance copy of the 1st book.

And if you've got an experience about startup success (or failure), comment about it. If you've got a question, reach out to me via your preferred social media, or download my media/speakers kit. Other posts can be found here on Linkedin.