Kate Paine
Kate Paine is the founder and CEO of Standing Out Online, working with change makers to help them get their message out and to stand out online.
We caught up with Kate at Social Media Week Lima smwl22 and asked her how we can stand out from the spammy noise on LinkedIn to make real connections with people.
Find Kate on LinkedIn or at StandingOutOnline.com.
There certainly is a lot of noise on LinkedIn. Microsoft is putting a lot of tools in place to make the user experience much, much better. But thereās still those people who are pitching you the minute they ask you to connectāand I canāt stand it!
People who are sending you a pitch right when they connect with you have not earned the right to come into a conversation with you. If somebody knocked on your door and they barged in the moment you opened it, you wouldnāt want that!
So, first of all, donāt be that person. And if a person does decide to do that, donāt even bother connecting with them; just let them go, because there are plenty of people out there who do want to connect with you and who will add value to your network.
Essentially what it comes down to is using your own filters to figure out what content you love and then push all the noise away. You can figure out how to do that by building relationships and starting conversations with people.
Specific to LinkedIn, nurture the connections you already have. Comment on their posts, engage with them. Donāt just expect them to come to you; this is a give and take relationship. Comment on their stuff,
share your thought leadership on their stuff, send them kudos, put out good things. Model what you want your experience to be on LinkedIn for other people.
Youāre also going to be receiving connection invitations from new people, which is great. When they send you an invitation to connect, reply with, āThank you so much!ā. Just doing that simple act, people are surprised by it
because they donāt expect it, and that also can lead to building the relationship and building conversation.
Kate Paine @kate2
Iām the founder and CEO of Standing Out Online. We work with change makers who have a big message to get out to create positive impact in our world. We help them become known and visible online