It’s nice to have lots of connections on LinkedIn but if you don’t do anything to stay in touch with them what’s the point?  Networking, online or offline, works best if you can help your connections in some way – they’re more likely to remember you and they’re more likely to help you in return if they can.

Here’s 3 ways to stay in touch and add value on LinkedIn:

Suggest a Profile Update

Browse your connection’s LinkedIn profile occasionally – have they got a good headline and a great summary?  Have they got recommendations or explained effectively how they help people?  If you think they should add something that would help them then use the ‘Suggest a Profile Update’ button and send them a message with your suggestion.

Activity Updates

Regularly browse the activity updates from your connections on your LinkedIn home page.  If they’ve got an interesting status update then help it get more exposure by clicking the like button, commenting on it or even sharing it with your own network on LinkedIn.

Send a Message to a Group of Connections

If you use the LinkedIn tagging facility in your Connections section you can put your network into different groups e.g. a group of clients.  You can then select that specific group and send a message to them all at once.  Send them a round up of your latest blog posts or a link to an article they might find useful, or details of an event they might be interested in attending.

If you’d like to read more of my blog posts on LinkedIn, click the Categories box down the side of this page.  If you’d like to find out more about me go on over to my LinkedIn Profile – I’m happy to connect if you send me a personalised message

Tags: how to use LinkedIn