In a previous newsletter I talked about how hard it can be to do Maria Kondo on your products, campaigns, and channels.
It’s really hard to disrupt your own business when you’ve had success in an area that you may be starting to see change. It’s hard to recognize an inflection point when you are attached to the curve. Hard to let go of business lines that are no longer serving us.
But what about your lists? We have different kinds of list, even social lists. A Maria Kondo of our business can start with a list prune!
I follow a marketing guru, Ian Brodie. I get a lot from what he has to say. A few weeks ago, he was talking about how the Linkedin algorithm works and why it might be a consideration to take a look at pruning your connections.
At a high level, LinkedIn initially shows your posts to a small selection of your connections, then based on engagement will show it to a larger selection of your connections and the connections of people who engaged with it. That’s why your posts can look like they have more traction a day or two later. (There’s a lot more to their algorithm, but I’ll stick with this point here.)
Guy Kawasaki, who I also follow, does talk about first scattering seeds, Cultivating and growing before you prune. And in truth, I take that approach with my own lists. But LinkedIn is a network that is one I’ve had for a very long time and very different reasons than I‘m using it now. So, it is worth me looking at my connections right now.
I was an early adopter, so I have been a LinkedIn member since the 00s. I’ve used it as a job search platform. I’m connected to a lot of past colleagues. Across the world. And people I have casually met at meetups. In my quest to get above 500+ subscribers, I’ve never thought about un-connecting from people. Never thought of doing that with people I know I will never do future business with.
Now that I am using it seriously as a B2B source of business, it’s something I do think about. I’m not a Sales Navigator subscriber (yet), and therefore haven’t integrated it with Salesforce. I put some effort into trying to keep the two in sync. I’ve created some custom fields in Salesforce leads and contacts with information about whether I’m connected to them in LinkedIn.
As I’m using LinkedIn for my business more and more. As I refine my ICA and shift my market segmentation, I am pruning my LinkedIn list as a low priority side project. Things to do on a rainy day.
Starting with removing some old HR contacts who never comment on my stuff anyway, lol. A confirmation really that my use of LinkedIn has indeed changed to growing my business.
What lists could you look at list pruning?
