I’m sure you have heard of “‘6 degrees of separation”. It’s where you are just 6 steps away from someone you want to meet. You do it through a friend of a friend, of another persons friend, who knows the person you want to meet.
LinkedIn can help. By showing who you know, your connections, who knows someone else to lead you to the person you want to meet.
You may have noticed that your LinkedIn connections are tagged with “1st” and “2nd”. This is following the idea of 6 degrees of separation. Your direct connections are labeled as 1st. People you know or meet through those first connections become 2nd connections. And so on.
Here is how you do it. This only works if the person you want to meet is on LinkedIn.
Lets say you want to meet or contact the CEO of Banner Health, here in the Phoenix area. I dont even know who the CEO is, so I can’t search by a name. But with LinkenIn I can search for “banner health ceo”. The list I get back shows David B is the Phoenix area CEO of Banner Health. For me, he is tagged with a “3rd”.
When I click on David B’s name I am presented with his profile. Along the right side, LinkedIn shows how I’m connected to this person. I can see that 2 of my connections could help me with reaching David B.
You can do this too. Who is it that you want to meet this week? Use LinkedIn to help with your networking. Use it to see your connections who can help.
Of course, you need some connections to get this started. Take some time every week to search for co workers and friends on LinkedIn. Connect with them. Did you collect some business cards from people this week? Connect with them too.
As your connections grow, you’ll be able to extend your reach to meet anyone in the world.
Enjoy!
