One Value of Your LinkedIn Profile

Day Two of my journey through LinkedIn. If you are in the job market but you are not on LinkedIn, I want to encourage you to go out there and create an account.

Check out my post yesterday to help you understand where I am going. I welcome you to join myself and Mary Emma of Home Biz Notes. She has agreed to travel with me on this journey of LinkedIn for the month of September. Join us. Leave me a comment below to let me know you are coming along!

Prior to the middle of August, I heard a lot about LinkedIn. But I really had no understanding of the value of the network.Nor did I have much interest in finding out about it. Again, before I share how I shifted to investing my blog writing and my personal time on this new adventure, let me share some statistics.

Last night around 11:00 PM EST, I decided to get out to LinkedIn and create my profile. It took me about an hour and half to complete the profile. Last night, I had no idea that by completing the profile and sending requests to people I already know on LinkedIn, about 40 people, that today I would have seen a significant increase in my network. What do I mean?

Here are statistics from my LinkedIn Account:
My Network 90% Complete

My Connections/Colleagues = 18 people

2nd Degree/Friends of Friends = 5,500+

3rd Degree/Their Friends = 921,800+

Let me back up and explain what I am learning from this information. I know about 40 people who are connected on LinkedIn. Of the 40 invitations I sent last night 18 people have responded to my invitation and connected me to their network. Overnight, 24 hours ago, I was connected to 40 people, tonight I am connected to 921,800 people.

I don’t know any of the 921,800 people, but that is one of the places we will explore on this journey through LinkedIn.

Creating my profile included sending invitations to people I know. Those people by virtue of an invitation, have connected me to more people than I could have ever met in 24hours. That is tremendous value. Chew on that tonight. More to come on the profile tomorrow.