Why A Large Social Media Following is Important

When I meet with career counseling clients, and potential career counseling clients, the conversation invariably includes a discussion about LinkedIn. Are you writing articles? Are you sharing updates? Are you commenting on other people's articles and updates? Are you the best kept secret in town? If so, how do you expect to get a job? If you are active on LinkedIn, why aren't employers contacting you? Do you want to hunt employers or be hunted by them?

One of the issues is that some people just don't know how to behave online. These people are not my clients. I only work with professionals. But here's an example of an exchange I had with a woman who was upset when I informed her that I could not accept her invitation to connect with her on LinkedIn because I am maxed out at 30,000 first-degree connections. (I made it clear, as I always do, that when space opens up I would accept her. I suggested, in the meantime, that she follow me. I have sent that message hundreds of times without incident.) This was our brief exchange:

This is important because I actually may have been able to help this woman with her job search. I have many connections in her industry. (For the record, she won't see this; I blocked her.) But I now know that she is the type of person who cannot accept being corrected. If she had clicked on the link to the LinkedIn article, she would have seen that LinkedIn makes it clear that 30K is, in fact, the max. She could not be bothered. And then there is her vocabulary...

I removed her photo and name since this was all done through messaging and not a public post. It would not have be fair to do otherwise. Maybe she was just having a bad day. That said, I, as a recruiter, could never risk submitting her to one of my clients (which is why I blocked her).

I do not have to deal with this type of nonsense a great deal, but it does happen. That is the price of being a known-entity. Sometimes, people don't believe me when I say I have 47,500 followers and for some inexplicable reason choose to make a big deal out of it. No problem; I just send them the following sheet (which looks better as a PDF!):

In any event, I explain that not included are my 270 Facebook followers because Facebook no longer provides a count of followers, only friends (of which I have 5,000. Lovely people; you would like them). Then they do the math and see that I am, in fact, rounding down my number of connections. And then one of two things happen: they leave me alone or they want to be friends, real-world friends (which, in some cases, is worse).

You see impression is reality and the impression that you give when you have tens of thousands of followers is that you have influence. Another word for "influence" is "power." Since time immemorial people have wanted to hold on to other people's coattails, so to speak. They still do. They want to take advantage of the work of others' because they are too lazy to do the work themselves.

But that may not be fair. I have been on social media for at least 15 years. I started on a business networking website that LinkedIn put out of business and whose name I no longer remember. (I think the name began with a "Z.") So you have to think ahead. You don't know who you are going to need in the future so you have to make sure that they are "there" when you will need them. That is why I advise college students to accept invitations from everyone and I try my best to accept theirs even though, business is business, and if it is a choice between a job seeker and a college freshman, or a business owner and a college freshman, the students will have to patiently wait.

Of course, you have to make certain that people will want to connect with you. That means providing quality content, either your own work or sharing those of others. If you do not provide them with anything of value, they won't need you or believe you have potential to be needed. And if they don't need you, they won't want you. Who would you rather connect with, a person posting photos of their pets or links to professional articles?

So, in my case, I will take a minute and look at the person's profile. If they can't keep a job or if they post rubbish, political or otherwise, I'll "ignore" their invitation to connect. But if they seem to be professional, I'll accept them when I can. Of course, if in the future, I should see them doing something I don't like, I won't get into a dispute with them, I'll simply block them. Remember, you can never win an argument online. Discuss, don't debate.

It is very hard for a job seeker with only a few hundred followers/first-degree connections on LinkedIn, to make an impact. So start building your network today. And if for you it's rather late in the game, don't fret. The workaround is to join as many LinkedIn and Facebook groups that you can, join discussions and share your articles with those groups, as well as with all your other social media networks. (I don't know if this means anything, but it took me 10 years to get to 2,600 followers on Twitter, but only 4 months to surpass that number on Parler. And, for the record, I post the same exact things on all the sites so it can't have anything to do with politics, which I don't think I have every written about outside of a business/employment context.)

In addition to utilizing groups, create your own blog. Employment Edification is my blog and the way it is set up I cannot subscribe anyone to it. So all those 3,734 persons (who I truly appreciate), who you might have noticed on the PDF image, subscribed on their own.

There is one more important reason to have a large following: Power, or to be more accurate, the impression of having power. I'm going to tell you a secret: 47,500 people are not going to read this post. That is the potential number, not the reality. I'll be happy if a few hundred do. But it only may be a couple of dozen. Who cares? If 47,500 read it and I get no business out of it, but 10 people read it and one becomes a client, you tell me, which is better? (It's rhetorical. No need to actually tell me!)

Two things: When someone is trying to force you to do something you don't want to do, and you share with them that you have publicized the issue, based on my experience, they have a change of heart and ask you to take down the post - if you can prove that you have a following, and everyone on LinkedIn can see how many followers you have on the site. (Never send a message, "If you don't do X, I'll publicize what you are doing," because that could constitute blackmail. Publishing it and then letting them come to you, is not blackmail. After all, they can always comment on the article and reach the same exact people as you have. But if they are ashamed, and they are always either ashamed or scared of publicity, they'll want you to remove the post and you won't have any problems with them in the future. At least that has been my experience.)

Second, if you have a problem and need advice, and want "the wisdom of the crowd" on your side, you need a crowd. For example, years ago I had a client who did not want to pay me. So I posted an "update" on LinkedIn asking for advice: lawsuit or collection agency. I received a third suggestion, file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. But it was all unnecessary. I honestly had not remembered that my client was also a first-degree connection. She saw the "update" and paid. She sent me a message thanking me for not including the name of her company in the "update," which many people wanted to know, and wishing me well.

I'll give you another example:

You can use a large network to help others (and I don't just mean connecting job seekers to hiring managers!) A friend contacted me. He was a contractor working on his first landmark building. (There are volumes of rules and regulations when it comes to renovating landmark buildings.) He asked me if I knew anyone who could help. I introduced him to the contractors in my network but I also posted his question as an update. A second-degree connection saw it and was able to help him.

That's an important point. I was connected to him through someone in a totally different industry. If I had not connected with her, he would never have known about my question and could not have helped my friend.

Remember, when you reject an invitation to connect with someone, you are also rejecting everyone they know. That's why I don't discriminate. I don't care what industry a person is in (except for the "adult entertainment" industry of which there are surprising many on LinkedIn) or how much experience they have, as long as they are in the United States and act professionally on-line. And it works for me:

I once had a search for an economist for a bank in Columbus, Ohio. I contacted all my first-degree connections in Columbus and shared with them the job description. I got a great candidate from one of them, a nice lady who had a client whose husband was an economist who was looking to change employers. Who was the lady? The owner of a beauty parlor!

If I had called the bank and told them that I was contacting beauty parlors in Columbus to find them an economist, they would have politely thanked me, hung up the phone, and called the local (my local) psychiatric hospital to have me committed. But in essence, using LinkedIn, that's how I got them their candidate. Keep that in mind the next time you reject someone. It may be the person who knows the person who could get you your next job!

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Bruce Hurwitz, the Amazon international bestselling author of The 21st Century Job Search, is an executive recruiter and career counselor. He has helped scores (thousands if you include attendees at his presentations) of people, including veterans, not only change jobs but, on occasion, change careers. Having successfully transitioned from academia to non-profits to the recruiting industry, he has been there and done that! A five-star rated speech writer on Fiverr, he is the host and producer of the live-interview podcast, Bruce Hurwitz Presents: MEET THE EXPERTS. He is an honors graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from where he received his doctorate in International Relations, majoring in International Law.