Isn’t it annoying on LinkedIn when you connect with someone and you want to see who they know but they’ve hidden their connections. Kind of weird on a networking site isn’t it?
Wouldn’t it be good if there was a way to unpick some of those connections that they’ve hidden from you without them even realising? Well you can, let me explain …
1) When they hide all their connections it doesn’t hide all connections, it only hides the ones that people connecting with them don’t already share a connection to.
So, if you’re connected to a competitor you can see the clients they have if you’re connected to them too. It exposes the shared connections to the people you connect with making it easier for you to target them.
2) You may not have also thought to look at their feed of activity (if you’re connected or not) as you can see who they are interacting with and this most often is their own connections, and hence that exposes them to you as well.
3) When they share an update telling people about how fab they are or the latest role they are almost always done publicly and hence any casual viewer (connected or not) can see who interacts with their status update and these are most often their connections.
4) Their skills section is visible to all viewers and hence you can see everyone that has endorsed them, and they are all their level one connections. You can also see all the people that have recommended them too.
So now you can see who interacts with users on LinkedIn, unpick some of those relationships and start to make it work just a little bit better for you.
LinkedIn is one of those tool sets; it is huge and often misunderstood, but thinking about how you could use it, how to apply it and where it can add some significant insights and value could really help you to move forward.