Are you using LinkedIn to your advantage?

I connect with lots of people on LinkedIn (but only those I can help). When I connect, I send a quick email introducing myself and sharing my contact details.

The only people who respond are those who are out of work or actively looking for a job.

Everyone else ignores the email or reads it but doesn't respond.

I follow up about 3 months later, I still get no response.

Then after 6 months I politely follow up again, asking if we can connect for five minutes and introduce ourselves, I get no response.

Then 12 months later, I might get a call out of the blue asking to catch up. They are about to lose their job and they need my help.

Most executive assignments take 6 - 12 months to complete - but this person wants me to find them something now, they don't have 6 - 12 months.

The connections you make today might take years to pay off. You have to cultivate and nurture relationships.

Imagine each LinkedIn connection is a seed. Nurture and tend to those seeds and six - twelve months later you may have a flower.

Or you could just toss them to the ground, forget about them and hope one day, you will wake up to a beautiful garden.

Hope is not strategy - don't connect and forget.

Author: Dexter Cousins, Director - Tier One People