Categories: Articles

The Invisible Long Tail Of LinkedIn

You just can’t control the world of online social networking.
It’s a lesson I learned while on the phone today with Michel Leblanc. He was letting me know that after reading my Blog posting on LinkedIn – LinkedIn Made Me Loose My Mind – he decided to give it a go.
You can read about his exploits (in French) here: Linkedin, le Myspace des gens d’affaires.
I know what Michel is talking about. I went from a small network of about eighty people to two-hundred first-degree contacts – but that’s just the beginning.
Michel’s network is now exploding too – lots of new contacts who know lots of new contacts. The net result? There’s this invisible Long Tail of LinkedIn that is now working in my favor. As Martin expands his network, my network expands exponentially simply because we are connected.
This sort of democratization of contacts and personal networks is all powerful. I was goofing around on the LinkedIn search engine, and I’m stumped. If there’s a brand or company that I’m thinking of, someone associated to it is never more than two degrees away from my personal network.
When marketers are looking for ways to connect to people, there may be a model in identifying individuals who can connect them to the right network. It’s what Malcolm Gladwell talks about in The Tipping Point, only this is faster and geographically agnostic.
Does LinkedIn have the potential to flip the funnel on The Tipping Point?

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.