Business & Money | Monday 10 October, 2016 6:29 am |

Effective visibility boards don’t happen by chance or by inviting hundreds of people to join you on LinkedIn. Effective visibility boards need planning.

At the moment you might have 200 contacts on your LinkedIn and 500 email contacts. If you have a full time job it is very difficult to keep in touch with all these contacts and build quality relationships with all of them and you might even find that 80% of the list are people you have not spoken to in a year. In fact, if we follow the Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule that states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes), you might find that 20% of your network is the group of people you want to strengthen the relationship with as they somehow linked to 80% of your success. Your Visibility Network’s members are usually included in these 20%.

 

• Secret 1 – your connections should be from people across different levels and functions in your organization and within your industry.

Even better if they are from different demographics (eg. different age and nationality). The stronger your relationship is with people from different levels and demographics, the more influential you become in your organization for having the skill to transfer information across boundaries.

 

• Secret 2 – your network should include people who do not know each other. This allows you to make introductions and helps you give back to your connections.

 

 

• Secret 3 - Include people you trust and who trust you. These are usually people you have worked with or shared a meaningful period with (working towards a promotion, a difficult time at work or a challenging project).

 

Assess your network now and have fun making meaningful connections!