The Networking Mistake I Made for Years

If I could go back and do my LinkedIn networking differently from the start, I would.

Back in 2020, when I started spending more time here, I made a mistake that I think a lot of people make without realizing it: I assumed that a large follower count meant someone was active and creating valuable content.

So I connected with anyone who had 10,000+ followers, without checking whether they were actually doing anything with that audience.

Here's my number, measured through Sales Navigator: less than half of my connections have posted anything in the last 30 days. I'd guess a meaningful chunk of my network has never posted at all.

That's my own network, and from everything I've seen it's better than average.

Here's why this matters: if you're trying to build an engaged audience, connecting with people based on follower count alone is close to useless. What actually matters is connecting with people who are active (posting, commenting, showing up) and building real relationships with them.

Otherwise, you end up posting into a network that's mostly silent, wondering why nothing lands, when the real issue is that most of the people you're "reaching" aren't even checking the platform.

Once you internalize this, LinkedIn starts to look less like a broadcast platform and more like what it actually is: a massive word-of-mouth machine. And word-of-mouth, as anyone in sales or marketing knows, is about as high-quality a referral as you can get, but it only works if the people in your network are actually around to pass the word along.

Originally posted on Linkedin. Join the conversation here.

Hi5,

LD 🌶️