How I grew my LinkedIn network from 5K to 22K

When I made the decision to fully commit to LinkedIn in January 2020 as a LinkedIn Visibility Coach, I had 5,963 people in my network, which I’d slowly gathered over 10 years.

In the past 19 months, my follower count has gone through the roof and is now at just over 22,000 followers (the number of people I’m actually connected to is less than half of this at 10,375).

You might be thinking, "Why does the size of my network matter, Mildred? Aren't those just vanity numbers?"

Well, it depends on your goal for being on LinkedIn.

If your goal is to just play around on the platform, make a few friends, draw some inspiration every now and then from someone's post, then you don't need to pay any attention to your network size - just carry on as you are.

If, however, you want to use LinkedIn to grow your business and your influence, network size matters and here's why:

The LinkedIn algorithm only shares your content with around 5-7% of your network at any given time. What this means is that the larger your network, the greater your potential reach.

Conversely, the smaller your network, the harder it's going to be to reach your business goals on LinkedIn.

This doesn't mean you have to aim for 22,000 people in your network - 1,000 to 5,000 connections is enough for you to start seeing some tangible business results, if the rest of your strategy is solid (and that's a big IF!).

3 major actions that will help you grow your LinkedIn network

Are you ready to grow your network on LinkedIn?

If so, here are the three major actions that contributed to my own growth that can help you follow a similar path:

1) I got really serious about using LinkedIn as a platform to grow my business

When you get serious about something, there are three investments you need to make that demonstrate this: 1) a time investment; 2) an energy investment; and 3) a financial investment.

I invested my time, energy and finances into learning as much as I could about LinkedIn in my first year of business (and still now).

I bought books, signed up to training courses, attended free masterclasses, paid workshops... you name it, I was there.

I consumed everything I could about LinkedIn and, more importantly, applied what I learnt.

If you want to grow your network on LinkedIn, you need to commit to investing your time, energy and money (where appropriate) into learning how LinkedIn works.

You won't get the results you're looking for if you miss out on any of these three.

2) I narrowed down my target audience and focused on serving them with my content

It's very tempting when you get into business, especially as a coach, to want to target any and everyone as a potential client.

If you do this on LinkedIn, you won't get very far at all.

A much better strategy is to narrow down your target audience as far as possible and concentrate on serving them - and only them - with your content.

My former business coach put it this way, "You must alienate to resonate". In other words, don't be afraid of putting off people with your LinkedIn content.

Your main concern should be to serve your (narrow) target audience with content that resonates with their pains, problems and aspirations.

It's absolutely fine to alienate everyone else in the process.

3) I committed to actively being visible and posting useful content regularly and consistently

Being visible is the best way to raise your profile, build your brand and attract your ideal clients on LinkedIn (do you have my LinkedIn book, Start Being Visible? If not, you can pick up a signed copy here).

However, it's almost impossible to be truly visible on LinkedIn without becoming a "content creator" (read my article on this here).

Once I committed to posting useful content regularly, five days a week, it wasn't long before my follower count started going up and up.

Commitment and consistency are two underrated requirements for success.

If you want to grow your network on LinkedIn - or experience any kind of positive business result from this platform - you must commit to the process and show up consistently.

If you do this long enough, good things will happen for you.

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So...... which one of these actions do you plan to implement?

Let me know in the comments!

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