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Understand the purpose of online networks - Why?
The theory is simple. Your future opportunity is very closely connected to your ability to learn and to keep on learning. The most meaningful way to learn new things, is to learn from other people. Yes you can learn from books, and yes, you can ask Google questions, but the best way to increase your knowledge is to link to other people who are like yourself, and to share knowledge with them. Many people are strangely reluctant to do that. Frightened of the unknown?
Of course the incentive to join a group of people you don't yet know is weak. Don't let that stop you. Extend your network outreach to include a few hundred people, you don't really "know". Along the way, some of those people will strike you as being particularly interesting. Maybe you'll exchange letters about matters of shared concern. Perhaps you'll see new ways to think about your own work. Three or four of these people might indeed become "friends". To make that possible first you have to throw your net. Who's out there?
Imagine a large and useful future network
Think about the community in which you live. Of all those people you have maybe less than 4-6 close friends, perhaps 30 friends, maybe 200 people you know by name, a 1000 or so you recognise as "locals" and all the rest who are still members of your community but who are not really connected to you at all.
When you go shopping, attend a function, or join a club, you are helped all the time by people you don't know by name, by people who are not really connected to you at all, except in the weakest of ways. It's the same online. You need to directly connect to people who you don't "know". Most of the people who will help you will not be your friends, and often not even known to you until the time that they offer to help.
Imagine therefore, a large network of people, several thousand, who might be useful to you at some future time. Your job is to build pathways that enable the possible connection. You must work to build the network before you can choose to use it.
Build your network steadily
It takes time to build a large useful network. You start slowly and in the beginning you need to do most of the work. Once you are better established other people begin to approach you and the task gets easier. In a LinkedIn group it's quite easy to invite other group members to be directly connected to you. Your shared network is in most cases a good enough reason. It's in the mutual interest of all members to expand the number of connections you have. But linking only to group members is taking an approach that is too narrow. That's why we recommend the following approach.
Build in three different directions
Close and personal
Targeted and purposeful
Diverse and random
Use the advanced search on LinkedIn to find people who live in your own city. Link to them. If they have made email addresses visible, that's so much easier. Which raises a point: Have you made your own email address available? Something like "gordon AT xtra DOT co.nz" will do.
Use the advanced search to find people in your own profession, or in related professions. Professional people are always keen to extend their connections to others in their field. That's probably all the introduction you need. Direct contacts are fine, but if you are uncertain ask to be introduced.
Finally connect to diverse and random people. The people who describe themselves as "Lions" or "Top-LinkedIn" will give you the best results, especially when your own network is small. There must be several hundred people with over 5000 connections. Most of the people with more than 500 connections are quite open to adding more. Just ask politely.
Develop a plan to use your network
When you build links with local people and professional people, please make the effort to involve the people with 1, 2 or 3 connections. It's unrewarding work but that does add to the quality of the network. Offer to help those who know less that you do.
The greatest reward for effort is in connection to people who are "Open Networkers" ("Lions" or "Top-LinkedIn").
Once your network has some depth, start to use LinkedIn Answers. Start by answering some questions. When you see how that works, ask some questions of your own. Are you starting to see how you can find people who might be useful to you now?
Find ways to profit from collaboration with others
LinkedIn Groups are a great way to find from the millions of LinkedIn users, those people you are likely to share interests with. There is a search process for "Groups" which will allow you to find groups allied to your interests. You can join up to 50 LinkedIn Groups. Most people are in none, or too few, and typically the groups joined lack diversity. Try not to make those mistakes.
One of the best uses of LinkedIn is to find people who might support a task you are working on. There are two ways to do this. To directly search your connections, to see which of them might be interested. (Most people with fewer than 100 connections won't get far doing that.) Alternatively you can search "group members" which might give you access to several thousand people.
Combine asking related questions with forming a group of interested people on any topic you choose. It's quick and easy to do, and often produces excellent results.
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