LinkedIn Connections help broaden your networking reach!

It is real easy to tell how many LinkedIn Connections you have if you have less than 500. The number shows up on the headline area of your personal profile. But what happens once you reach that magical 500+ number that most people strive to achieve?

Why do you need so many connections?

Part of what makes LinkedIn so useful for anyone is the fact that someone knows someone that might need your services or product. The greater the number of connections, the further your reach is in the LinkedIn network. 30% of the 360m users (as of this writing) are in United States. How can you reach the person you need to reach if you network is small and closely held. Today for LinkedIn to work, you need a minimum of 500 connections. How can you find out how many more than 500 you have?

It is more difficult to find out what that number is. One of the previous versions of LinkedIn used to have the listing of how many contacts you had on the right hand side of your status update stream. When they moved the Home page around, they lost that bit of information.  Now you have to go to your Connections page, click on the settings and find out how many contacts you have there. It will also tell you how many of your email contacts are in your network as well.

Watch this brief video to see where you need to look to find out how many LinkedIn Connections you have.