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Having a strong network is crucial to anyone looking to carve their career in any respective industry. Thankfully, it has never been easier to build one.
A strong network is important for a number of reasons. It’s your safety net, your shortcut and your ear to the ground on latest trends or movements in your space.
More importantly: it’s not something you can build overnight.
One of the biggest issues with job-seeking in the modern age is that it’s often sudden.
Something happens and people want a new job as soon as possible.
This is a tactical approach. It focusses on pursuing short-term wins which might see you compromise on certain values or wants in order to obtain something new as quickly as you can.
The power of a strong network is having a strategic arm to your job search that allows you to know of opportunities well in advance and have a group of peers to lean on for support, referrals and guidance..
The good news is that building a network has no barrier to entry and it can be done immediately and almost entirely from behind a screen.
Here’s our step by step guide to building a network through LinkedIn.
Max out your LinkedIn Connections.
This advice caters to the classic, ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’.
Whether you agree with the sentiment or not, it’s certainly helpful to have a strong audience of peers in your industry behind you. That can only be beneficial.
The traditional method of doing this was going to events or talks and handing out business cards or making small talk. This approach is time-consuming and hard to keep track of.
One of the more tangible ways to do this today is directly through LinkedIn.
Every week on LinkedIn you have the ability to connect with 100 people on the platform.
A connect is different from a follow in the sense that it allows your posts to appear on their feed and them to see yours. You can also directly message them.
A follow would only enable you to see their content.
By carefully targeting and connecting with key-players in your industry you have the potential to build out a network of key-players who you can leverage for future support.
Done carefully for an entire quarter you have the potential to build up - from scratch - a network of over a thousand like-minded individuals.
2. Provide thoughtful and relevant content.
If you have spent any period of time working in an industry or field, chances are that you know a lot and have a lot to say.
What’s stopping you from sharing these thoughts with your audience in the form of updates, 2 or 3 times a week?
You can even schedule these posts in advance. An hour block on a Sunday afternoon can provide you pre-scheduled content for weeks to come.
To stand out, you’re going to have to be authentic. Being authentic means going on your own and NOT using ChatGPT.
As useful as ChatGPT is, it’s not the right tool to build a personal brand. It’s blindingly obvious you’ve used it as there’s hundreds of other posts that look exactly the same.
Secondly, how can you expect to build traction and provide unique insights when you’re reliant on the programmed thoughts of an AI model to back you up?
You also shouldn’t underestimate the power of your silent followers on LinkedIn. These are the people who follow you and read your content without interacting.
One of our biggest client wins from this year came in cold from a client who had followed our content from afar and we had no idea.
They referenced it during their outreach and how it influenced their decision to contact us.
This is testament to the power of consistent and valuable content.
3. Compound your actions.
If you’ve actioned points one and two over a period of time then you have the framework to set yourself up for long-term success.
The hardest part is being consistent with it. Having this network is great - being visible within it is crucial to seeing returns.
Track your followers. Over time, the content you produce should reduce your reliance on sending outbound connection requests, shifting your focus towards creating content that naturally attracts people to connect with you.
The likelihood is that you’re not going to get much traction on your posts in the beginning but this shouldn’t dissuade you.
Like anything, this is a habit which must be experimented with and compounded over time.
Job of the Week.
Account Manager - Abu Dhabi
We are partnered with a leading digital agency who are looking for a talented Account Manager to join their team as they enter a period of growth.
The individual will have previous experience working in an agency previously with regional experience essential. Arabic is also a plus.
The role is hybrid with three days a week on-site. Interested applicants should reach out to Charlie Bowsher on LinkedIn for a further discussion.