I’ve always been leery of LinkedIn but there’s no denying it has established itself as a go-to resource if you want to learn more about business contacts. But one item that continues to rub me the wrong way is the emphasis on quantity of contacts over quality.
It’s no secret this business makes Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon look like child’s play. As such, who you’re connected to carries far more influence than your overall number of connections.
Case in point, if you’re a VP of Artistic Administration, 75 connections that include conductors, soloists, artist managers, composers, and similar professionals is far more valuable than 500+ where the majority are from fly-by-night consultants that don’t even operate inside the field.
Having said all of that, putting together a useful LinkedIn profile can be tough if it’s a new platform to you. As such, I published an ArtsHacker article that points to a terrific resource for crafting an effective profile along with some arts-admin oriented considerations.
Capacity Interactive (CI) recently published their fourth annual Arts Industry Digital Marketing Benchmark Study (h/t Thomas Cott) and some of their findings are worth…