Tutorial: How to see how many connections someone has on LinkedIn...in 4 simple steps

Vanity metrics seem to be something that we love to see in social media.

They say you should never judge a book by its cover but unfortunately we do. If you see a Facebook pages with a few likes or an Instagram account with 4 followers you can assume it is not that good based on the vanity metrics....which is not true.

I liked LinkedIn’s approach to this on our individual profiles, which is once you reach 500 connections, it just says 500+.

Today I will show you a really simple 4 step approach on seeing how you can find out the real number behind the amount of people's connections.

Note: LinkedIn changes the layout of their site more than any other platform (it’s annoying). So this is what it looked like in Jan 2016. When it changes again (and it will no doubt), I will update with new screenshots/presentation.

Okay, this sounds interesting....but SO WHAT???

I try to justify every tip, rick and tactic I tell people to do and explain why it is important for building your business…but I am struggling with this one. I think this is purely out of curiosity. If you can think of a good business case for this then let me know in the comments or message me.

I hardly ever do this but I have shown a few people when training and they liked it so I thought I would show you how it can be done.

How to see how many connections someone has on LinkedIn...in 4 simple steps

As always I have attached a presentation for you to view if you prefer learning via images.

1. Click on someone’s profile - You can do this on most level 1 or 2 connections. I saw a great campaign for the film “Taken 3” using LinkedIn so thought I would spy on the most dangerous man on earth, Bryan Mills.

2. Click arrow next to send “name” InMail - With whoever you choose, there should be an arrow next to there name.

3. Click “View recent activity”
4. Look at followers - And like magic the number appears.

Note: Remember LinkedIn can tell the person’s who profile you clicked on that you were looking. I will show you on another blog post how you can avoid that.

Here is the presentation:

Conclusion 

There you go. A simple 4 step trick on how you can find out how many connections others have on LinkedIn. As I mentioned before, I am not sure why you would want to know this but maybe it is because I am not a fan of vanity metrics. If you do see a reason then let me know on the comments below, inbox me or via Andrew Davis on Twitter.

Good luck