Build your network with this tiny daily habit
The last time I formally applied to a job was in 2013. For the last decade, I let my network help me take the next step in my career, and today I want to share a tiny daily habit you can establish to help you do the same.
The Challenge:
You don't feel confident in the size and quality of your network. It's a mix of old high school friends, random connections from work conferences, and your current colleagues. If you needed to ask for advice or help, you wouldn't feel confident that you'd find someone in your network to reach out to.
The Solution:
Build a network with connections you value and whom YOU can help as much as they can help you.
Easier said than done? Like many things in your professional life, it comes down to deliberate practice and action. I promise it won't be cringey.
Take a deliberate approach
From my experience, people tend to either have huge networks for which they accept any connection request, adding people no matter how strong their mutual interests and whether they know them or not. Or they don't grow their network at all, ignoring when someone reaches out to you and making no effort to find other professionals themselves.
Taking a deliberate approach to growing your network means finding people you want to learn from, exchange ideas with, buy from, propose ideas/products/services to, etc. There are a range of reasons why you could connect with someone or why they want to be connected with you.
I recommend being deliberate and thoughtful about it, so you don't end up with 1000s of connections, but unable to find the right person for your question or idea.
Technology makes it easy to increase the size of your network, but, for example with LinkedIn, hasn't made it equally easy to manage and maintain that network effortlessly. So it pays to think about how you want to go about your networking.
What's worked for me
I want my network to be full of people who benefit from being connected with me and who would also help me out if I needed advice or ideas, if I wanted to help someone else or if I was looking for a job. I don't accept all connection requests and instead look for 3 criteria:
Do I know the person already? --> connect straight away
Have they sent a message that's not a blunt sales pitch? --> connect
Do we share many connections and therefore interests? --> connect
The Next Step:
To grow your own network, start small, but go beyond the incoming request.
Set yourself a goal of connecting with one interesting person each day and include a short message, simply because it's the polite thing to do.
Where can you find these people? Start by looking in these places, for example:
The comments section of posts by people and companies you already follow
LinkedIn groups based on your personal and professional interests
Employees, customers and partners of your own company, as well as companies in your partner network
Speakers at conferences you've attended or will be attending
Technology user groups
Thought leaders in your area of expertise
Making one deliberate connection every day means you'll have over 350 new people in your network by the end of this year. In the age of social media statistics that might not sound like much, but 350+ people whom you can reach out to with questions and ideas gives you a lot of options and opportunities.
Start today - I promise it gets easier over time.
Are we connected yet?
Have a great week!
Eva
