Blogger’s Note: This is a two-part serial on approaching these titled populations in ways I hope enlighten or spur energy from you, to them, to open new channels of communication, or reignite interaction after a hiatus. I have made my 2025 mantra, “you have to nourish to flourish.” You can emulate that too. External audiences will be covered tomorrow.
Broadly, LinkedIn injects your thought leadership into multiple audiences, but only if you invoke their attention and imagination, for that purpose, and to rise above the noise, I believe it is worthwhile addressing them on LinkedIn: by planning, executing, editing, and approaching them carefully, thoughtfully, with the intent to impress on them why they should spend time with you, communicating something inspiring or educational to them.
Your ultimate goal: to elicit them corresponding, communicating, conversing around a topic for both parties, you and especially them, to benefit from.
Please bear with me, I have a lot to say here. And I have an “ask” in the last sentence too.
Internal audiences you should recognize, somewhat ordered in terms of degrees closeness to you:
- Your first-level connections, foremost: assuming you really know them, and they you, as a privilege so they root you on, comment back (hopefully in words, not emojis), add to your thoughts with theirs, disagree professionally if valid, and are so moved by your contribution that they share your comments with their selected colleagues.
- Your second- and third-level connections, who recognize your value only if your first-levels respond in some meaningful way, or as stated above, share your post with their LinkedIn network. The viral aspect of this possibility is so enriching for your voice to be recognized and referred to strangers whom you do not yet positively affect in some way.
- Your followers: those you have no direct interaction with except that somewhere along the line they decided you said something, or continue to say something, they want to keep receiving, to learn from you. These are also “your people” but at a distance and with no skin in your game, just a click to follow you. It’s important to point out that followers can become connections under the right business circumstances, and if you read me here you know my take on that process.
- Your fellow Group members, a declining population because Groups IMHO are a broken rung in the LinkedIn wheel, even though some clients report to me that they get real benefit from Groups despite the majority of them being not my best use of time, in my experience.
- Your fellow alums, whom you can find on your university’s LinkedIn company Page, and sort by year of graduation, for an electronic reunion with someone who can benefit from rekindling a relationship with you, and you with them.
- Same goes for fellow employees in the same company somewhere along your career, even if you did not coincide. Whom did you know/what did you work on in common? Both this and the previous bullet point creates nexus. Build on it.
- People who have rung your bell, because they believe they benefit immediately upon your publishing something, notified by LinkedIn on their feed, so they can jump in and absorb your thought and call to action as soon as possible.
- Fellow professionals tangentially connected to you by your academic/industrial area(s) of concentration, whom to better know you contributions, only willingly rely on you for authentic material, reliably sourced, cogently commented upon, adding to the intellectual pursuit of their chosen field(s), presented timely and offered with no hooks or quid pro quo. But for the “willingly” adverb to make you stand out from the crowd, you have to earn, protect, and repeat that reputation with everything you post, as frequently as you have something important to add to the global discussion on LinkedIn.
OK, now I ask you, what group(s) have I missed in this list, and how have you been able to make meaningful connections by posting and commenting on LinkedIn? Yes, please reply to this query.