The LinkedIn Connections edition

Hey everyone!

It’s me, Dana - your LinkedIn data fellow, who tries to share valuable LinkedIn insights with you.

Remember back in the day when we’d all scroll through LinkedIn’s “Suggested for You” section and add anyone we knew, regardless of whether we actually considered this person a real-life contact?

I used to do this for sure. When I was starting my career, I thought having a network of 1000+ people would make recruiters and potential employers go “Wow, she’s well connected; she must have tons of experience”. Pitiful is the youth’s lack of confidence. These days are gone (thankfully), and LinkedIn has changed a lot since then.

Still, I had hundreds of such “filler contacts” in my LinkedIn network.

Why does this number matter, though?

The point is that the number doesn’t matter. The type of connection does.

See, in my connections list, I had people who I’ve worked with for a week in some odd old job. They’re not even active on LinkedIn.

(Most people with a LinkedIn account aren’t; they only remember about LinkedIn when it’s time to look for a new job.)

This is called a “dead connection”.

(If you’re an inactive user like the one described above, this issue of the newsletter probably won’t be very valuable to you, tbh.)

But you’re a content creator, listen up:

These dead connections seem to affect the visibility you get.

It’s algo talk time again! Here it goes:

Your posts are shown with priority to the people in your network.

The way the algorithm prioritizes how your content is going to be pushed in terms of impressions is:

• The more (or the fewer) people engage with your content when you post, defines how your post is going to rank in the main feed.

So now let's think about this. If you have 2,300 connections and out of them, only 30 engage when your post comes out, where does this put you in the algorithm ranking?

I’ll tell you, it won’t be high. If you have 500 connections and 30 of them engage with your post when it gets out, this is going to rank you way higher.

Is this written anywhere in the LinkedIn User Manual?

Of course not. Until a week ago, to me this was just another myth.

So I went ahead and removed half my network (600+ contacts).

The result: 51% increase in impressions.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I don’t place much importance on impressions in terms of a growth metric.

But the impressions metric matters in order to show how much of your network you’re effectively reaching.

In the past 2 weeks, I’ve spoken to a few creators (5 to be precise) who all have the same problem:

• Their content is pretty good

• They’re engaging enough

• They’re clear about their ICP

Yet they get very few impressions and engagements.

The common denominator among all of these 5 wonderful people is:

They all have thousands of connections in their network. Which basically means their active follower base is made up of potentially ~80% (or more) dead connections.

If you have the same problem, you may need to think about all the connections on your list.

What’s your connection-to-follower ratio? For example, I have 3,550 followers and 623 connections, which makes the ratio 5,7. This means that for each connection, I have almost 6 followers.

If your ratio is close to 1 that’s bad; it means you only have these followers because they’re a connection too. It makes you highly dependent on these connections for how your content’s reach will perform.

In case you’re keen on cleaning up your network and your connection-to-follower ratio is smaller than 3, you should know you’ll lose followers. Possibly lots of followers if you go into it with full force.

If that matters to you - it’s your call. Personally, I don’t give a dime about the follower count. I know some people do - actually, today someone told me I don’t have the credibility to talk about LinkedIn growth given I have 3K followers. My response was: I do have 3K followers, yet I’m having 3–4 calls with quality leads every week. So how much followers count matters to you - I’ll leave this one to you to gauge.

The takeaway so far:

→ Dead connections affect visibility

→ If you clean up your network, you’ll lose followers

How to clean up your network

This is largely dependent on your goals, and no, I don’t advise you to automate it.

You do need to go into each person’s profile and ask these questions:

1. Do I know that person? If yes, do I like them?

2. Could that person be my ICP?

3. Is there any activity at all on this profile?

Don’t forget that the largest group of LinkedIn users are lurkers. They will rarely post, comment, like, repost etc. But they’re there, watching. And they could be clients.

So, be smart about this.

Here are the types of people I removed:

1. Old acquaintances I don’t insist on being in touch with

2. People who I don’t know and who are definitely not my ICP

Before we wrap this up:

If your content is bad, unclear, and inconsistent, this cleanup won’t do much for you.

The same is true if your content is not targeted at your ideal audience. Which will be next week’s newsletter topic 🙂 

See you next week!

Dana

P.S. If I wasted your time with this newsletter, please unsubscribe. And then tell me on LinkedIn why you did. I want to improve.