LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform with over 850 million members. As a LinkedIn user, you can connect with colleagues, clients, partners, and other professionals in your industry or location. Tracking your LinkedIn connections allows you to stay in touch with your network, nurture relationships, and expand your reach.
In this comprehensive guide, we will discuss the importance of tracking your LinkedIn connections and provide step-by-step instructions on how to do so effectively.
Why Track Your LinkedIn Connections?
Here are some key reasons why tracking your LinkedIn connections is essential:
Stay in Touch
LinkedIn is all about maintaining an active network of professionals. When you connect with someone on LinkedIn, you are expressing interest in staying in touch and developing an ongoing professional relationship. Tracking your connections ensures you can continue to engage with them by liking and commenting on their posts, sending messages, and meeting up in-person when possible. This nurtures the relationship over time.
Discover New Opportunities
Your connections are one of the best sources of new job opportunities, business deals, partnerships, and more. But you can only capitalize on this if you know who is in your network! Tracking connections lets you discover which of your contacts work at companies you want to work with or have complementary offerings to your business. You can then reach out accordingly.
Expand Your Network
The people you are connected with on LinkedIn likely have their own broad networks. By tracking your existing connections, you can uncover 2nd and 3rd degree connections that you can then request to connect with. This allows you to exponentially grow your network.
Segment Your Network
Not all LinkedIn connections are equal. Tracking your connections lets you segment them into logical groups like colleagues from a former company, college alumni, industry partners, clients, etc. You can then customize your engagement and communications accordingly.
How to Track Your LinkedIn Connections
LinkedIn provides several tools to help you easily track your connections and their activity. Here are the key methods:
1. Connections Page
The LinkedIn Connections page provides an overview of your entire network. To access it, click “My Network” from your LinkedIn homepage and select “Connections” from the dropdown menu.
This page displays the total number of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree connections in your network. You can browse the list of your 1st degree connections here or search for specific individuals using the search bar.
The Connections page also has filters allowing you to segment your 1st degree connections by criteria like location, company, industry, school, and more. This enables you to analyze and categorize your network.
2. Stay In Touch Reminders
LinkedIn’s Stay In Touch feature provides reminders about connections you may want to interact with again. The reminders appear in your LinkedIn feed and suggest connections you haven’t interacted with recently but may want to reach out to.
Stay In Touch reminders are triggered when:
- Someone celebrates a work anniversary
- Someone has a birthday
- Someone gets a promotion or starts a new job
- You haven’t interacted with someone for a prolonged period
Stay In Touch provides an easy way to re-engage dormant connections and maintain active relationships across your network.
3. View Profile Visitors
You can see who has viewed your LinkedIn profile within the last 90 days. To access this:
- Click the ‘Me’ icon in the top navigation bar
- Select ‘View profile’ from the dropdown menu
- Click the ‘See all’ link within the ‘Who’s viewed your profile’ section
This displays a list of profile visitors including any connections. Tracking profile visitors gives insight into which connections remain interested in you and your activity.
4. Relationship Insights Chrome Extension
The LinkedIn Relationship Insights Chrome extension provides detailed analytics on your 1st degree connections right within your LinkedIn feed.
With it, you can see which connections you interact with most/least frequently, connections gained/lost, profile viewers, and other engagement metrics. Install the extension here.
5. LinkedIn News Feed
Carefully reviewing your homepage news feed provides visibility into your connections’ activity including:
- New jobs / companies
- Work anniversaries
- New skills added to their profile
- Posts they like and articles they share
- Comments where they are mentioned or participate in discussions
Regularly checking your news feed keeps you updated on your connections’ professional development and interests.
6. LinkedIn Search
LinkedIn’s robust search functionality lets you find specific connections quickly. After entering a search query, toggle the filters to only show results from your connections.
This provides an easy way to check what connections may be relevant to research on a company, job opportunity, group discussion, or more.
Best Practices for Tracking Connections
To get the most out of tracking your LinkedIn connections, here are some top tips:
Customize Your News Feed
Tailor your news feed to showcase updates from your most important connections. You can adjust the feed preferences here.
Send Regular Check-In Messages
Proactively reach out to connections you want to maintain relationships with using LinkedIn messages. A simple check-in message every 90 days can go a long way.
Segment Your Network
Organize connections into buckets like professional colleagues, personal friends, clients, mentors, etc. You can then customize your interactions accordingly.
Share Value With Your Network
Post regular updates that your connections would find interesting like relevant articles, job openings, or conference announcements. This provides value and surfaces you in their news feeds.
Analyze Your Network Regularly
Schedule time monthly or quarterly to analyze your connections activity and identify any dormant relationships you want to reactivate.
Expand Your Network Strategically
Review your 2nd and 3rd degree connections for professionals you want to connect with. Reach out and provide a customized connection request.
Conclusion
Proactively managing your LinkedIn connections is crucial for maintaining an engaged professional network and expanding your reach. The platform provides powerful tools like Stay In Touch, Relationship Insights, search filters, and news feed tracking to monitor connection activity.
Implementing ongoing diligence by regularly reviewing your network analytics, segmenting connections, and providing value back to your network leads to more vibrant relationships and new opportunities.
Start implementing these LinkedIn best practices today to get the most out of your connections and achieve your professional goals.