LinkedIn Not Working For You? You’re Doing It Wrong.

What if I told you that you are settling for less when it comes to LinkedIn? I used to see a lot of complaints on LinkedIn about how it was turning into Facebook and how people were using the wrong medium. Not anymore. Want to know how?

I started to think of LinkedIn as an aggregator and search engine of the people I am connected to on LinkedIn and I started to realize something. My LinkedIn network was wrong. I started to think back to those nights where I would have my phone open to “People You May Know” and I was just connecting with everyone.

My goal was to get to that coveted 500+ connections. And once I blew past that, I aimed for 1000. There’s no telling who I was trying to connect with and I didn’t care because I was padding my social media numbers.

So, what happened? I got stuck with a network of people that mean absolutely nothing to me or my business. And sadly, I started to see the same crap being posted in the newsfeed. Complainers. Spam. Mathematical Equations. Politics. Recruiters. I don’t need any of this.

I started to go through my connections and I just started ripping people out of there. If they aren’t going to do business with me, add value to my network, or post anything that I can relate to, then they are gone.

I removed about 400 people from my LinkedIn connections. Many of these people tried to reconnect with me and I must refuse them. Sorry (not sorry).  Why? Because I must protect my network and my audience.

Now What?

I began to identify key audiences and potential partners and I developed an avatar of who I want to be friends with on LinkedIn. I used resources to find out who these people are and I started connecting with them. I’ve added a couple hundred of the right kind of people to my network. They want to connect with me, and I want to connect with them. And guess what, now I have a LinkedIn newsfeed that serves me better.

There are people I can talk to who understand my worldview. I did it without paying for LinkedIn. You won’t believe what I can do with my new network now that I have it optimized.

If you are sick and tired of LinkedIn, maybe it’s time to clean your network. It’s hard work but it will be worth it. Pull the weeds from your digital garden.

How does your network stack up on LinkedIn? Does it serve you? What are some other ways that you can get more value out of LinkedIn?