I am going to shamelessly pile onto this outstanding post by my one of my favorite LinkedIn experts, David J.P. Fisher.
If you are looking to nurture and grow your professional network (and every single one of you should be doing this), don’t overlook the power of intentional commenting on other people’s posts.
I have been talking about the importance of LinkedIn to every single client this past week, so I thought I should share it here as well. This is the post:
When I shared it, I added:
Yes! Make an effort and write something thoughtful. It truly does build relationships and connection.
Frequent contributor to this blog, Ben Baker, commented:
Thanks for sharing this Catherine Morgan and David J.P. Fisher you are 100% correct.
The best relationships that I have created on LinkedIn and the ones that have been the most profitable are the ones where I am actively seeking out their posts and trying to add value where I can.
“I agree” type responses do not cut it.
You have to be authentic and you have to help further the conversation.
And jumping in and selling yourself and your services in the middle of someone else’s post just is not cool.
Because he is a LinkedIn expert, David J.P. Fisher thanked me for sharing his post and acknowledged our relationship to back up the points in his post:
Thanks for sharing, Catherine! It’s such a small activity that can have a big impact. We’ve certainly built our relationship through our online conversations which has made the offline conversations that much better!
And someone I don’t even know jumped into the conversation with a juicy comment.
It doesn’t take a lot of time to be thoughtful in your response. Go one step beyond reacting and pull a sentence or short paragraph from the post and call out why it spoke to you.
Or, respectfully state your point of view or personal experience, which may be different from the author’s.
Do you see now how important thoughtful commenting can be for building and deepening relationships?
Pro tip: It also works to establish your interest and credibility in a subject. This can work incredibly well in emerging tech or market trends – AI, data transformation, behavioral change, ESG, NFPs, crypto, etc. I think I will cover that in another post.
