One of the great advantages of LinkedIn is that it allows you to widen your network, especially beyond academia. Unless you’re careful, though, it can quickly turn into another Facebook. You don’t want a feed full of self-promoting posts from people you’re never likely to meet or work with. In this guide, I’ll suggest a strategy for thinking about who should connect with and how you’ll engage with them.
1. What are you offering?
The first step is to create a strong LinkedIn profile. If you’re asking people to connect and read your content, you need to explain why that’s a good use of their time. Your profile should explain who you are, your research interests, and what you’re currently working on.
2. What’s your relationship?
You can think of your LinkedIn network as three concentric circles:
- Inner Circle - Close Collaborators: People you need to stay closely connected with. You want regular updates on their work and activities. Examples: direct collaborators, research team members, mentors, close colleagues in your field. They also want updates on what you’re doing. This is why posting on LinkedIn is important.
- Middle Circle - Active Network: People you need to maintain meaningful connections with, but don’t need constant updates from. You might interact a few times a year - commenting on significant posts, congratulating on achievements, or contacting when relevant. Examples: conference contacts, former colleagues, collaborators on past projects, academics in adjacent fields. They might just check your profile occasionally, so make sure it’s up-to-date.
- Outer Circle - Wider Community: People whose work interests you, but you don’t need direct interaction. You’re happy to see their posts occasionally but won’t engage regularly. Examples: thought leaders in your field, authors whose work you follow, organisations or institutions you want to monitor.
3. To follow or connect?
If you follow a LinkedIn member, you get their content in your feed but they’re not in your network. Depending on their settings, you might be unable to message them or see their personal contact information. Following is appropriate for the Wider Community circle. You get updates that provide useful information or context for your activities, but they’re not expecting anything from you. But you do have the option to like or comment on their posts.
When you connect to a LinkedIn member, you also get their content in your feed but you can interact directly with them through messages and see more of their content. If you’re not enjoying their content but think it’s prudent to remain connected, you can unfollow them. They won’t know you’ve done this, so it’s a good way of reducing the noise in your feed without damaging the relationship. But consider the consequences of missing out on important updates, such a new job or tasty research opportunities.
4. Who should you connect with?
There are no hard and fast rules here, but it’s best to only connect with people you know directly. You don’t need to have met them, but you should have some kind of relationship. For example:
- Current and former colleagues
- Collaborators
- Students
By adding these people to your network, you get connected to their networks, too.
LinkedIn is an excellent way to stay in contact with people you meet at conferences, too. Sending them a connection request with a short message (see below) could be more comfortable than requesting their email address.
Sometimes it’s OK to connect with someone you don’t know. Perhaps you’ve found their profile and think you have a lot in common. If so, send a message explaining why you should connect. Don’t just click on people who look vaguely relevant - that’s like handing out business cards at an in-person event and not actually speaking to anybody.
5. How to connect
If you already know somebody well - e.g. you work in the same department - there’s no need to add a message when sending a connection request. Unless they’re spectacularly unobservant, they’ll recognise you. For more distant relationships, add a short message to jog someone’s memory: “Hello X. We did our postdocs together at Birmingham. I’d love to connect and find out what you’re doing.” The style will depend on your personal preference, but here are a few tips:
- Keep it short. Everyone is already awash with emails.
- Don’t ask them for a favour. Maybe you can help each other in future, but you need to establish the connection (and trust) first.
- Ignore LinkedIn’s suggestion to rewrite your message with AI. You need to sound like a human.
Not everyone checks their LinkedIn inbox frequently, so don’t assume that no response = no interest.
When someone sends you a connection request, check their profile. Do you know them? Is their work relevant? It’s fine to decline or ignore requests from people who seem to be connecting indiscriminately.
Conclusion
Inevitably, there are dozens of tools that will create a LinkedIn network for you. Don’t be tempted! Although they’ll undoubtedly save you time, you’ll end up with a lot of meaningless connections. Also, people are much less likely to accept a connection if they suspect it’s automated. Online networking still needs to be human: this is just another way of maintaining genuine relationships.
👉 LinkedIn without Tears: A Guide for Academics
This content is part of my workshop on Creating a Strong Academic LinkedIn Profile