K atie c ouric

Huge Connection Numbers Don’t Necessarily
Have a Huge Impact
Wilcox is really selective about his connections on LinkedIn. He’ll only
connect with someone that he’s met in person, or with whom he sees an
ability to work. He won’t connect to someone just because they’re in the
same industry. Because of this, he’s kept his connection numbers relatively
low.
Often he meets people who have fifteen, twenty, or even thirty thousand
connections (thirty thousand is the max number of connections that
LinkedIn allows, except for people in the extremely exclusive influencer
program
1
). But large numbers aren’t usually beneficial on LinkedIn due to
the fact that when sharing content, it’s more advantageous to have a
personal connection to the majority of your network. When Wilcox shares
something, he has friends and colleagues that actually root for him and
cheer him on—they’ll like and comment on almost everything he puts out
because they’re loyal and care about his success. If you have a large
audience and no one likes or comments on your content, LinkedIn sees that
as less powerful and doesn’t show the content to as many people.
Advertising to Career-Minded Individuals
LinkedIn is the best place to engage with career-minded individuals. When
people are within the LinkedIn ecosystem, they’re more business and career
focused. They’re trying to engage with a business, service, or product, so
when you run ads on the platform you’re more likely to gain that type of
person’s attention.
Facebook is a fantastic way of advertising inexpensively, but very few
people actually fill in their past and current professional information on
their profile. So when you’re trying to target people by job titles, you don’t

---

have the same scale as you would on LinkedIn. Wilcox notes that on
LinkedIn, when you offer someone anything related to work or careers you
have insanely high conversion rates, whereas on Facebook you’re
competing with more content (including photos of people’s grandkids and
pets, which we all know is more compelling).
Wilcox recommends thinking of LinkedIn ads as sniper targets and of
Facebook ads with more of a shotgun approach. You can be much more
precise in reaching the business segment of your population with more
efficiency on LinkedIn.