The theme for this quarter (April, May, and June) is College Graduation, 2019 Edition.
I’m talking about your marketing documents in April; in May we’ll be covering the job search, and in June we’ll do a deep dive into the job interview.
If you’re not a recent college graduate, don’t worry – everything I tell the new kids will apply to you as well.
Last week, I gave you my top eight tips for improving your LinkedIn profile. If you haven’t listened to that episode, I strongly encourage you to do so, as these two episodes fit nicely together.
One of the questions I get asked most often by 20-somethings is “What’s up with LinkedIn?” Essentially, they are saying they know LinkedIn is important…they just don’t understand exactly what it is.
Or what they are supposed to do with it.
Last week, I gave you my #1 reason to be on LinkedIn: virtually every employer is going to check out your LinkedIn profile at some point in the hiring process.
It’s not enough to just have a LinkedIn profile, you need a robust one, with lots of connections.
Here’s another compelling reason to play full-out on LinkedIn: you never know.
Who you will meet.
Who will reach out to you, and what they may want or need.
What you will be asked to participate in, lead, or do.
I have gotten new clients from LinkedIn, partnerships, collaborations…so many opportunities that would never have come to me without LinkedIn.
I talk about your profile being your “home” in the LinkedIn community. The tips I gave you last week were to improve the “curb appeal” of your home.
Today, I want to talk about strategies for making the most of LinkedIn. I’m going to focus on those of you who are job searching, but good networking is good networking…regardless of your end-goal.
In giving you these tips, I am not going to talk about the content of your LinkedIn profile, as that was last week’s episode. The only repeat from last week is my first recommendation, which is so important it bears repeating.
Here, then, are my top five strategies for maximizing your use of LinkedIn:

1. Connect, connect, connect.
There’s a magic minimum number of connections on LinkedIn, and that number is 500. Once you reach the magic number, your profile shows that you have 500+ connections.
Forever.
This tells others that you are active on LinkedIn. That you’re reasonably serious about LinkedIn.
In the case of LinkedIn, the more the merrier, and here’s why: you increase the size of your footprint.
Think about Google. When you search for something, you probably don’t look at more than the first page or two of results.
When someone looks for someone with your qualifications on LinkedIn, they will likely do the same thing.
The way you move up – that is to say, the way you become more visible on LinkedIn – is to have more connections.
It’s math.
Let’s say you have 500 connections, and each of those connections has 500 connections.
Your existing connections are called 1st-level connections; their connections are called 2nd-level connections.
I call this your “footprint.” Who you’re connected to, and who they are connected to.
In the example above, your footprint might be around 250,000 people (500 X 500).
Stated another way, you can be found relatively easy by a quarter of a million people.
Sounds awesome, right?
Now let’s look at my footprint on LinkedIn. I have a little over 4,600 connections right now.
Using the same math as above, my footprint on LinkedIn would be 2,300,000.
Stated another way, I am easily found by more than two million people.
Big feet.
Here’s how this helps me: when people are looking for someone who does what I do, I am very likely to show up near the top of their results.
If you have fewer than 500 connections, I recommend going for quantity over quality. Get that number up.
Then you can reach out to people you don’t know and people who are at a higher professional level than you.

2. Set up your job agents.
If you are job searching, LinkedIn is one of the best job boards out there, in ter