Some Differences Between Connecting and Following On LinkedIn?

By default, people who connect with you and people who follow you will be shown your content when you publish on LinkedIn??. More on this in the next section, but there seems to be no real difference between what a connection will be shown or a follower will be shown.

What additional benefits do you receive from connecting with someone on LinkedIn????

There are two big ones. The first is you can send each other messages directly over LinkedIn??. This doesn’t replace email, the phone or whatever messaging system you use, but it does come in handy for LinkedIn??-centric messages such as referencing someone you know mutually on LinkedIn??, or drawing their attention to someone or something of interest on LinkedIn??.?

Connections also show pathways to other people on LinkedIn that you didn’t know exist. You may find someone on LinkedIn?? and see the little “2nd” postscript after their name and then the person or people both you and that person are connected with on LinkedIn??. You can then use that mutual connection or one of your mutual connections in a couple ways: as an intermediary, and ask them to introduce you to the person of interest to you, or just to ask them for coaching and information about your person of interest.

What additional benefits do you get when you Follow someone??

From my standpoint, there are two benefits in following someone. Both are marginal, but take a bit of explaining.?

The person you are following can see that you are following them.

The question here is not so much that they can see you are following them, but if they will see that you are following them. Then what? I ask this because I know there is a whole weird little subset of people on LinkedIn? who think, “If I follow them, they will see that and maybe ask me to connect.” Well, I am here to tell you that that is highly unlikely. First of all, not everybody looks through their followers on a regular basis. And even if - like me - they are someone who does, they are unlikely to ask you to connect. The way I see it, in following me you have shown a slight level of interest in me, but not enough to ask me to connect, so I am not going to ask you.?

So the connection angle is a long shot. What other benefits do you get from following someone on LinkedIn???

All of their content will be shown in your feed, if you ring the subscribe bell on their profile and specify you want to see all their content. This is the big one of course. I follow you because I don’t want to miss out on your content and LinkedIn??tells me that I will be notified when you publish on LinkedIn?.?

What benefits do those being followed get??

Again, there are two benefits that I can see. The first is an extension of one mentioned above, and that is that you can see who your followers are. And yes, you can choose to message them (if you have a premium plan or know one of the work around hacks to send free messages on LinkedIn?) or ask them to connect. But as I mentioned above, why would I decide to ask someone to connect when they have already indicated that they would rather just follow?

The second benefit - and don’t underestimate this one - is the ego boost from having a lot of followers. LinkedIn??knows this as they put your number of followers in a prominent place near the top of your profile.?

To summarize:?

1) I have a lot of followers on LinkedIn?. When I publish a post or article, it will be somewhere in my followers homepage feed. They may see it.?

2) Regardless of whether they follow or are connected, if they also click the notification bell on my profile, and specify "all", they will be notified when I publish something.

3) I have a lot of newsletter subscribers on LinkedIn?. They will be notified and they can decide if they want to click on my content and read it.?

In the first case, LinkedIn? decides who sees my content. In the second and third cases, my subscribers decide. That’s why regardless of whether someone is a connection or a follower, I want them as a subscriber.