LinkedIn

How to use the world's largest professional network more effectively...

I was sitting down in my home office working one day when I heard the front door bell ring. I walked over to the door, opened it, and saw a man standing there.

“Hello, may I help with you something?”

Silence. We stood there staring at each other for a minute before I got weirded out and closed the door, making sure to also lock the deadbolt.

About twenty minutes later, I got another buzz at the door, so I go to the door and cautiously crack it open to see who was there.

I see a tall woman, well-dressed, with her arm outstretched before me.

“Uh, hi, what’s up?” I wearily utter.

“Greetings! I noticed we have a lot of the same friends. Let’s also be friends!”

“Ok, but have we ever met before?”

She does not respond. She just continues to stand there with her arm outstretched. I’m not taking the bait, so I shut the door and get back to work.

Then, an hour later, there was another doorbell ring. I hesitate for a moment to open the door, but figured what the hell.

It is a short guy in a shabby suit. Saying nothing, he stretches out his arm to shake my hand.

This day had gotten super weird. I am in a perky mood though, so I shake his hand to see what his deal is.

“Thank you for meeting! I lead a sales agency and I would love to schedule 12 minutes of your time to talk about how we can 10x your pipeline!”

I look to my left and right to see if I am being punked on some sketch comedy show, then slam the door in his face.

This is kind of like what using LinkedIn feels like these days. You get a notification, you open the app, and it is just an ongoing string of connection requests from people you have never met and have no common interests with.

Do not get me wrong, I am a big power user of LinkedIn myself. When I first started learning about it back in 2005, I saw the promise of a platform that could do a better job of connecting professionals all around the world. By connecting, we could learn from each other, collaborate, and find opportunities to make money and build cool things.

What we have twenty years later is a chaotic mess. It is not the cesspool that X/Twitter has become, but it feels gross in the opposite direction. Beside the endless notifications of irrelevant connection requests, the content clogging up the feed leans heavily toward the preening, self-absorbed, overly-deferential, congratulatory posts that add little value, but merely feel good (just look at all the flowery job resignation posts). In a way, it is like Instagram, but with more words and fewer AI enhanced photos.

For most professionals, however, it is all that we got as a network. As of January 2025, LinkedIn had over 1 billion users across 200 countries and 67 million companies registered. About 134.5 million users actively use LinkedIn daily and almost 50% are active monthly. While not all countries are on LinkedIn as much as the US, India, and Brazil, almost every white-collar professional on the planet has a profile on the platform.

Instead of bashing the thing that we all acknowledge could be much better, the better approach is to figure out more effective ways to use this vast network of humans. As someone that has used LinkedIn extensively for business development, community building, recruiting, and content marketing, there are some strategies and tactics I have refined to help me get the most from this social media channel.

Clean up your LinkedIn profile

Most people spend little time on their LinkedIn profile. They post a profile photo, add some experience and education, create a headline, and maybe include a bio. It is the “set it and forget it” mode of LinkedIn. However, if people are checking out your profile, whether people you meet at a network event, hiring managers, or folks looking for expert advice, you do not leave an impression that highlights your authority and experience.

Here are some quick fixes you can make to elevate your profile:

• Use a professional profile photo where you look friendly – Would you put an ugly photo of yourself on a dating app? Of course not! You want to appear approachable and put together. This does not mean a stiff, corporate looking photo, but one that looks like you have an actual job. That means full face shot, no busy backgrounds, good color and contrast, and appears like your current self.
• Create a relevant, but concise, headline – People do one of two ways here, either they just list title and company, or they pack the headline with all the buzzwords. Instead, write a one sentence bio that highlights what you can offer to people visiting your profile. If you look at my headline, it reads “Stealth Startup Founder | Global Community Builder | Author”, which gets to the core of what I do.
• Add a profile banner – This is free digital real estate, so use this banner to promote your work or that of your employer. There are 1584 x 396 pixels of space, which I am using to promote my book. You can use it to promote your business, announcement an upcoming event, or direct people to your website with a QR code.
• Only list your career greatest hits – Most people mistake LinkedIn for an online resume. Huge mistake! Remove irrelevant stuff from LinkedIn and only list the work experiences that are recent, relevant, and show your talent. This is especially relevant for older professionals to tackle ageism. The stuff you did twenty years ago (and the dates you went to college) are not important, so delete from your profile.
• Optimize your work experience to show impact – Most people share what they did in their job. A better approach is to share how your work generated business results or resulting in professional recognition. Include metrics or success stories to stand out and more active language like action verbs to show personal initiative.
• Include your certifications, top skills and industry – Adding these helps people searching for your particular skills and industry focus to find you. You can also receive endorsements on your skills from your network.
• Ask for recommendations from people that know you – These appear towards the bottom, but can provide more color into your work experience and provide social proof that bolsters your profile. Aim for recommendations from peers or people more senior in their careers to maximize the effectiveness of the recommendations.

Craft your professional story

I did not yet mention the About section of the LinkedIn profile because what you write here can be valuable in many contexts such as a resume, an elevator pitch, and intros at network events. Sadly, this space is often wasted on bland work history or is blank. This is your opportunity to tell your story by weaving your work experience into a narrative that shows why you are someone with authority worth knowing. When I say “authority”, I mean the knowledge and experience that makes you one of the best in your professional field. For example, I mention community building experience in my About section because I am an expert in that field. When crafting your story, you must consider the following:

• Connecting the dots – You need to tie together your work experience and explain clearly what you can offer others in terms of your authority. Ask yourself what is the big vision of your life’s work that gives you meaning and enables you to help others?
• Focus on clarity and conciseness – Many people write a novel for their About section, but people do not have time to sift through that. Focus on highlights, not details, and be a ruthless editor in cutting out weak words and meaningless phrases.
• Have a strong opening line – Your first one or two sentences should stand out as to why you are unique, like a personal unique value proposition. Also note thatthe LinkedIn web and mobile apps only show the top four lines of your About section.

Curate your professional network

There was this affliction years ago with people that would connect with everyone else on LinkedIn. They were known at “LIONS”, or LinkedIn Open Networkers, and would have LION as part of their headline or even in their name. I deleted all of their connection requests.

The value in any network is having people you know, trust, and can be helpful. I get between 20 to 100 connection requests per week depending on my activity, like attending an event. Most of these are unsolicited from people I have not met or have heard about before. In 99% of the cases, they do not provide a personalized note why they want to connect. Another 0.5% of the time, they send a personalized note, but it is a pitch for whatever they are selling.

This approach to using LinkedIn to spam people is not effective. Here are some suggestions on building a more valuable, curated network:

• Do not connect with everyone – I mostly connect with people on LinkedIn that I have met in person or have been introduced by a trusted source. This is because I use LinkedIn as a way of helping others through my network and to help me when I need some advice or expertise. When you connect with everyone and anyone, it defeats the purpose of building a useful network.
• Have a process for handling cold outreach – I may connect with people on LinkedIn from a cold connection request if they are 1) not trying to sell me stuff immediately, and 2) respond to my question asking why they want to connect. I have a simple template asking more about them and sharing who I am. If they do not respond in a few days, I delete the request to connect.
• Never use tools to automate connections – I get a lot of requests and messages where it is obvious that the person used an automation tool. It feels inauthentic and I delete these messages immediately. Never use this approach because people don't like being spammed and it defeats the purpose of building a trusted network.
• Avoid sending connection requests without a note – It is common sense to give the person you wish to connect with a reason why you are reaching out. In fact, I even add a note when I connect with someone I met in person to remind me of how we first connected. Here is a template for writing a personalized note when connecting to someone I do not know on LinkedIn that can fit within the 300 character limit for messages (and an example below of a more authentic message that is concise, provides context, and has a clear ask for the recipient):

Hello [FIRST_NAME],

[INTERESTING THING ABOUT THEM]. [MY REACTION TO INTERESTING THING]. [WHO I AM]. [WHY I AM REACHING OUT]. [NEXT STEP].

Thanks, [MY NAME]

Hello Mark,

I enjoyed your post “Why Startups Suck”. I also think startups are painful. I am a newbie founder struggling with launching my startup and you share great advice. Can I connect and ask you a few questions about startup marketing?

Thanks, Lisa

Create or share content regularly

Sharing content is one of the toughest things to do consistently. Even as someone skilled at content creation, I struggle to do this when I get busy. The upside, though, is posting content can bolster your authority and get you noticed by people that can be useful down the road. Instead of getting stuck trying to come up with stuff to create from scratch, here are some easy ways to get started:

• Share what you are already using – Take the useful content you are reading or researching in your work and post those on your profile with a few sentences as you why you are sharing and one interesting insight from the content piece. Do this consistently on a weekly basis, and you will attract more views to your profile from people within your field.
• Use AI chatbots to reduce the effort – I often use AI chatbots to summarize key points of an article or podcast, then have it write a short post. While the content AI produces can be amazing, people can pick up that it was not human-generated. Instead, use chatbots for ideas, then edit the output to reflect your unique voice.
• Regularly engage others’ content – If you are busy, you can simply like, comment, and share content from other people on LinkedIn. While sharing articles does not get the wide reach of originally posted content, it can help complete your profile and add to your authority. It also helps you establish connections with?people you admire and may want to work with later.

Use these four tactics to elevate your LinkedIn game and make it a more valuable business tool for whatever you are doing, whether launching a startup, building your career, or expanding your business opportunities!

Mark Birch

So I finally did it! I completed the second edition of my book Community-in-a-Box!

This book was a hell of a journey. My plan was to release a small update in November, but I got super busy with events. As things slowed down in December, I began to write but just stalled. I had more ideas to share, but was totally drained after leaving AWS.

I went back to the drawing board in January. I finished a draft by month's end and realized I had an irredeemable hot mess of a manuscript. I threw it out and started again.

The big idea that dawned on me was the growing challenge for businesses wanting to tap into the power of community but frustrated by the inability to measure and direct that potential into impact.

Now that I had a vision and a plan, I wrote furiously for a month. The new content covers:

• Defining useful metrics to assess community activity
• How to tie community activity to business impact
• Defining viable business models for communities
• Ways of monetizing community and pricing offerings
• Succession planning and exiting a community
• Choosing digital platforms for hosting community
• What the future looks like for the community domain
• Understanding how communities evolve over time
• Insights from over fifty experienced community builders

The book is now live on Amazon for Kindle, Paperback, and Hardback (went live on March 18th, my birthday). The book will be exclusive on Amazon for at least the next month, and if you have Kindle Unlimited, you are read for free using your subscription.

If you been wanting to get the book, buy this edition! If you already have the first book, consider getting the upgraded version. And if you have read the first edition, please consider leaving a positive review??