I recently upgraded to VIP status ExecuNet membership and was quickly captivated by your weekly column in the Saturday newsletter. A quick search revealed older Ask Ann posts on the site and I have now read all of them. This one (How Do I Make My Online Profile Discoverable?) got me wondering what types of things I should be doing on a regular basis to nurture my LinkedIn network. Would you be willing to expand on the last paragraph? It seems like there may been some routines I should get into if I want to make good use of LinkedIn.
For starters, becoming an ExecuNet Platinum member was a smart move. It’s WELL WORTH the small cost. It’s the place to be for executives, no matter what stage they are in their career. The networking and job search advice is the best out there, even if you take me out of the equation! And their coaches are all senior-level. You don’t sign on and get pushed to some junior person; that’s not how they operate. (I say “they” because I don’t work for ExecuNet)
Regarding LinkedIn, I think if you carve out a minimum of 2-4 hours per week to invest in growing your LinkedIn network, that should help it start to grow. Ideally, 15-30 minutes a day because LinkedIn is essentially a news portal and it is great to be able to respond to things real time.
If you do not have the time on a daily basis, next best option is getting into the habit of carving out a block of time, same day every week, where you build relationships in your LinkedIn community. During that time, take note of the announcements in your feed. You will want to look at HOME as well as NOTIFICATIONS tabs. Congratulate anyone that got a promotion, and then read some of your connections’ posts, and comment when appropriate. You would be surprised how much even C-level people at Fortune 500 companies appreciate positive commentary on their social media posts. By “Liking” and either “Commenting” or “Sharing” you are doing something for them, and it is an awesome way to get on their radar. By seeing and then sharing content to your network, you are providing good information and staying on their radar screen.
If you want to speed up your job search and really get serious about finding something, I recommend the ExecuNet Master Class on LinkedIn How to Get Noticed on LinkedIn When You’re Job Searching. This is a terrific class that’s done by a recruiter and ExecuNet coach and provides fantastic tips and direction to help you land the job of your dreams and really tells how to nurture a network. There were also some good articles in the ExecuNet VIP newsletter CareerSmart Advisor that you may have missed. Here they are:
Ask Ann,
Have a question you’d like a recruiter to answer? Write to me at AskAnn@execunet.com
