What are LinkedIn connections?

LinkedIn connections are professional contacts who are in your network. You can have three different types of connections on LinkedIn: 1st degree, 2nd degree, and 3rd degree. The degree of your connection with a person determines the type of interaction you have with them on LinkedIn.

Here’s what you need to know about what the varying degrees of LinkedIn connections mean and how they can help grow your business.

What Are LinkedIn Connections, and How Do They Work?

A connection on LinkedIn is a person in your network who you know and trust on a professional level. Your network includes the people connected to your connections. How you can communicate with them depends on how closely connected to them you are.

You can communicate with connections and learn more about them by sending them messages or seeing their updates on your LinkedIn homepage.

Connections on LinkedIn imply that you know the person professionally and they are a trusted business connection. There is a difference between a contact and a connection on LinkedIn. To change a person from a contact to a connection, they must accept your invitation to join your network.

1st Degree

1st-degree connections are people who invite you to connect or people you invite to connect. Once either side accepts the invitation, they become 1st-degree connections.

2nd Degree

These are the people who are connected to your 1st-degree connections.

3rd Degree

These are people who are connections to your 2nd-degree connections.

What are the Benefits of Connections?

When you grow your LinkedIn network and increase your number of valuable connections, you are more likely to appear in peoples’ search results, regardless of their degree of connection. You also appear on your connections’ homepage updates whenever you create a post. These are huge benefits that can significantly increase your LinkedIn presence and increase lead generation/sales.

Limited connections mean limited visibility. Your visibility significantly increases when you have an extensive network of connections. When you publish a post, LinkedIn notifies your connections, meaning that the more you have, the higher the chances that users will see your content, which can boost your LinkedIn presence and significantly improve your marketing efforts.

When your visibility improves on LinkedIn, a wide range of potential customers and thought leaders in your industry see you.

Building Your LinkedIn Network

To start building your LinkedIn network, you must begin accepting invitations to connect with people you know and sending out connections to professional contacts. Having an extensive network can significantly increase your exposure and help market your business, which is why growing a network of valuable connections that include other people and businesses in your industry is essential.

When you nurture your connections and put in the work to create a valuable network, you get more targeted connections to people in your industry, which helps your business reach the people it needs to reach to increase its exposure.

Creating a network on LinkedIn can help your business build credibility. Over 30 million businesses use LinkedIn to market, sell, and connect with other professionals in their industry, reach potential customers, and connect with other thought leaders. A dormant LinkedIn profile could cause you more harm than good. Do not miss out on potential leads and increased business exposure with a LinkedIn profile.

HyperSocial Can Help You Build Your Network and Generate Qualified Leads

At HyperSocial, our goal is to change how you do your B2B marketing and sales.

Many businesses underestimate the importance of LinkedIn. We can help turn your LinkedIn profile into an automated lead generation machine that customizes and suits your business goals.

LinkedIn is the number one place for B2B sales. It is crucial to have a LinkedIn profile to help connect you with clients and grow your business. We can create a customized outreach campaign for your business by optimizing your LinkedIn profile for social selling, singling out your ideal prospects, and connecting you with hundreds of leads every month.

Learn more about how we can help you here.

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