Networking to make a connection

Welcome to The Inbox Coach nudge, a small nudge to help you stay on track with your career development. This week I’m going to share how you can use LinkedIn to support your networking.

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“Wanting to improve is a never-ending journey” Eleanor Alberga

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I love LinkedIn. I think it is a great tool to support your networking and learning and development goals, but I know that not everyone feels the same way I do. This week I want to share three practical ways you can use LinkedIn when networking and none of them involve posting any content of your own.

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Making a connection

I struggle with brain fog and my memory is really bad. This can make networking hard, because I struggle to remember people’s names and if we connect, remembering who they are and why I thought they were interesting weeks after meeting them can be hard. This is where I love LinkedIn. Not only do I use it to connect with people in my existing network, but I use it to record new people I meet. Rather than emailing people I’ve just met, I’ll reach out to them on LinkedIn and send a note with a connection request. This reminds them about who I am and why they want to connect with me, but it also helps me to remember who I want to get to know better and why.

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If you are new to LinkedIn, don’t forget to connect with the people you already work with or have worked with in the past. I regularly see updates from people I worked with 5 or 10 years ago, and there have been many times when a new venture for someone else overlaps with something I’m working on and proves to be useful. Which brings me onto the newsfeed…

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Continuing to learn

I hear lots of people say they don’t enjoy LinkedIn because their newsfeed is full of updates of people in their network getting a new job and little else. Whilst your newsfeed is made up of updates from your connections it will also contain updates from people you follow. There are lots of people and organisations who are talking about current topics in their area of work and sharing resources. By following people and companies who are experts in their field, your newsfeed can become a tailored personal development opportunity. You can look at your feed a few times a week and you might find a useful article or point of view that can help you in your work.

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If you have connected with someone on LinkedIn it is likely that they will take a look at your profile, and this is a great way to showcase the things you want to be known for that I was talking about last week. Your headline, about section and the images you use all tell someone looking at your profile for the first time a bit about you. You can use this space to make sure it tells people about you in a way that you want to be seen. Something people often overlook on their profile is the activity section. It shows what you have posted, but it also shows what you have liked, commented on and shared. You don’t have to write your own content, but the posts you engage with will show up here and are another way to showcase what you are interested in. Why not look at your LinkedIn profile to see what it says about you and if you aren’t sure what you could be doing there are lots of great resources like this one that can help you.

“Wanting to improve is a never-ending journey” - Eleanor Alberga

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This week I stumbled on the Instagram account of Linton Stephens who is posting about a different black composer every day throughout October. I happened to find his account when he posted about Eleanor Alberga, and I’ve been down a rabbit hole listening to her music ever since. I love a project like Linton’s, so many people throughout history (and sadly still today) don’t get the recognition their work deserves so making an effort to seek out and learn about people who haven’t been widely known becomes so important.

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This quote really spoke to me. I sometimes worry that my constant desire to improve means that I don’t appreciate what I have in the moment. In my career today I am doing so many things that my past self of just a few years ago would be amazed at. But at the same time, I don’t want to get complacent about what I know. I think this is where I find networking very energising. Meeting new people who have shared values, but different perspectives has been so helpful for me. I think it has allowed me to deepen my learning, and rather than feeling like I’m seeking to improve through a lack, it’s more that I want to explore what I know on a deeper level. It’s not so much that I’m not grateful for what I have done, but more that I am able to build on that knowledge and expertise to have an even greater understanding.

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You can find out more about the project here.

I’ve found LinkedIn to be a valuable tool in developing in my career. I’ve used it grow my knowledge and expertise, I’ve made connections with people who have helped me and as a coach it is where a lot of my clients find me. The one piece of advice I would give anyone using it, is to figure out what works for you. Lots of people will tell you what you should do on LinkedIn to make it work, but I believe that it is better to use it in a way that works for you, rather than trying what someone else tells you to do only for it not to work and you lose interest. I’ve found my own way to make it work and I hope my thoughts on how to use it will encourage you to experiment and see if it can be a tool to help you with your networking.

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I’ll be back next week with my final thoughts on networking ??

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See you then

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Laura

P.S You can access all previous editions of The Inbox Coach and get exclusive subscriber offers when you sign up?here