LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 722 million members worldwide. As a professional, having a strong LinkedIn network can help you build your personal brand, connect with potential clients or employers, and gain industry insights. To maximize the benefits of LinkedIn, it’s important to regularly analyze your network and refine your connections. This allows you to focus your energy on nurturing the most beneficial relationships.
In this guide, we’ll explore different ways to analyze your LinkedIn network. We’ll look at tools to examine network statistics, identify influential contacts, clean up inactive connections, and optimize who you follow. By spending time analyzing and refining your network, you can ensure you get the most out of LinkedIn for your career or business goals.
View Your Network Statistics
LinkedIn provides profile statistics to help you analyze the size and composition of your network. Here are key metrics to examine regularly:
Number of Connections
How many 1st-degree connections do you have? The size of your network matters, but quality is more important than quantity. Focus first on connecting with those who can clearly benefit you professionally.
Connection Distribution by Industry and Location
These stats show the industries, companies, titles, and locations of your connections. Analyze these to ensure your network aligns with your goals. If your connections are clustered in one area that is less relevant, focus your outreach elsewhere.
How You Rank for Profile Views
This shows how you rank among your connections for profile views in the last 90 days. High ranking indicates an active presence and strong interest from your connections. Low? Perhaps boost activity or refine connections.
Your 3 Most Viewed Skills
These are the top skills your connections are most interested in based on profile views. Feature these appropriately on your profile and in content to attract the right contacts.
Who’s Viewed Your Profile
Regularly check this list of who has viewed your profile recently. Follow up and connect with relevant contacts.
Identify Your Most Valuable Connections
Rather than focus on the quantity of your connections, pay more attention to the quality. But how to determine who is most valuable to your goals? Here are some of the top ways to identify your dream team connections:
Sort by Relationship Strength
LinkedIn shows who you interact with most through likes, comments, profile views, and sharing updates. This reveals who you have strongest engagement with.
Look for Mutual Connections and Shared Experiences
You likely have deeper relationships with 2nd and 3rd degree connections you share a lot in common with. Look for overlaps in education, career experience, location, skills, and interests.
Notice Who Engages With Your Content
Check notifications to see who consistently likes and comments on your posts. These members are most interested in connecting.
Find Those With Large Followings in Your Industry
Connecting with influencers expands your reach tremendously. But focus on those most relevant to your goals. Follow them and engage consistently.
Interact With Contacts at Target Companies
Want to work for a certain business? Connect with current and past employees, especially in roles you aspire to. Offer value by sharing their content.
Search by Specific Criteria
Use LinkedIn’s advanced search to find connections matching your ideal criteria such as title, company, skills, location and more.
Remove Inactive Connections
Do you have lots of connections you never interact with? It may be time to do some pruning. Here are some ways to clean up your network:
Sort Connections by Most Recent
This view shows which connections you haven’t interacted with for the longest time. Disconnection them first.
Remove Connections You Have No Personal Interaction With
If you’ve never actually engaged directly with a connection, they are unlikely providing value. Be ruthless here.
Delete Contacts Who Have Left Relevant Roles
When connections change careers or companies in an area irrelevant to you, reconsider if they still belong in your network.
Disconnect From Contacts Who Don’t Share Updates
If someone hasn’t posted or interacted in ages, they likely won’t expand your reach or provide industry insights.
Remove Recruiters Who Haven’t Placed You
No hard feelings, but delete recruiters who haven’t landed you opportunities after connecting. Add new recruiters in your industry instead.
Optimize Who You Follow on LinkedIn
Carefully curating who you follow on LinkedIn ensures higher quality content in your feed. Here are some tips:
Unfollow Irrelevant Contacts
Only follow those sharing valuable insights in your industry. Unfollow connections posting irrelevant or promotional content.
Follow Company Pages in Your Industry
Follow company pages not just to get their updates, but to see what articles their employees share. Great way to find influencers.
Follow Influencers Posting Top Content
Identify LinkedIn thought leaders creating content that resonates and provides unique value for you. See who colleagues recommend too.
Follow Hashtags Relevant to Your Interests
Discovering hashtags like #softwareengineering or #blockchainmarketing surfaces additional content and leader to follow.
Join Industry-Specific LinkedIn Groups
Groups enable you to follow whole communities of like-minded professionals in your field.
Curate a Content Stream That Inspires
Be picky. Your feed should share news, ideas, and resources to help you achieve your goals – not just random updates.
Conclusion
Analyzing and optimizing your LinkedIn network is essential to maximize its value in your career or business. Focus on quality over quantity of connections. Identify and nurture the relationships that best align with your professional goals through engaging with valuable content and sharing knowledge and experiences. How you manage your network directly impacts what you gain from LinkedIn, so devote time regularly to examining your connections, following relevant professionals, and cleaning up outdated contacts. This keeps your LinkedIn network current and optimized to support your objectives.
