This article was originally published on January 24th, 2011. This was one of the first books on networking that I ever read and it still holds a special place for me. It was the first book that I read that married the strategies with the tactics of professional relationship building. I still highly recommend it. It was good to reread Keith Ferrazzi's Never Eat Alone 5 years after I first came across it. As I dove into it again, I realized how much of Keith's philosophy and tools I have incorporated into my own networking over the past few years. In some ways, it felt like I was going back to the source material, the original ideas, that … [Read more...]
How to Ask For Help On LinkedIn
One of the challenges with using social media for business is that it's so new. LinkedIn has over 500 million professionals on it, but it's not even 15 years old yet. It makes perfect sense that we're still grappling with how to actually use the platform in our day to day business lives. Especially because in business, there's a lot on the line. We know that if we post an embarrassing picture on Facebook, a few of our work friends might see it. But if we make a mistake on LinkedIn, all of our professional connections will see it and it could hurt our career. I was recently talking about how to ask LinkedIn connections for help with a … [Read more...]
The Magic Number of Networking Connections
I often get asked about the ideal number of connections you should have in your professional network. The topic often gets muddled because our first impulse is to equate networking success directly with the number of connections we have. I’m here to tell you that you don’t need a huge number contacts to have networking work for you. It’s much more important that you have strong relationships with the people in your network. But if you are really looking for that magic number of connections, here it is: One more than you have now. That’s the key to success. What’s really important isn’t the overall number of connections, but the … [Read more...]