You don't need to be a LinkedIn guru to have a powerful network

Alysha Khan • public
• 2 min read

I'm writing this newsletter on Saturday i.e. 2025 International Women's Day.

I am so incredibly blessed to have a professional community full of badass women. This network has taken a lot of effort over the years to build and it's something I've consciously worked on because of my larger career goals.

But for the average Marketing Ops Joe or Josephine, I think we overcomplicate the process of networking and stress ourselves out. Ask me how I know.

So let's re-define what it means to build a network and to do so, I want to lean on the 1973 paper by Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter called The Strength of Weak Ties:

In a survey he conducted of how 282 men in the United States got their jobs, Granovetter found that a person’s weak ties – their casual connections and loose acquaintances – were more helpful than their strong ones in securing employment.

The Weak Ties theory continues to hold up 50 years later:

...conducted a set of experiments on LinkedIn with 20 million people over five years – the largest empirical examination of weak tie theory in the labor market to date. Their findings, published in Science, revealed Granovetter’s weak tie hypothesis has held up: A person’s weakest ties were the most helpful for career advancement.
The scholars took the theory further: They looked at whether someone’s industry made a difference and found that weak ties were most helpful in more digital sectors of the economy.

What does this mean for us? The bar for networking is low. Much lower than any LinkedIn gurus make it seem and I recognize I may also be contributing to the problem here.

But even when it's low, it's still scary. And that's because we all worry about making a fool of ourselves when we start putting ourselves out there.

And the truth is that you will embarrass yourself. You will want to crawl under a rock or delete that comment or just go find a corner and nurse your drink at a networking happy hour. Again, ask me how I know.

But there is no way to shortcut the learning curve. You have to work through being bad at something in order to get good at something.

The good of building those Weak Ties is really, really good. It's referrals, introductions, career advice, resources, and ultimately, it's feeling like you're not alone and someone has your back. It's community.

Tip for the coming week

Find a recurring 15 minute block in your calendar and choose one low-key networking activity to take part in:

  • Peruse LinkedIn and your various Slack communities and comment on a few posts.
  • Reach out to 5 people you casually know to schedule a coffee chat.
    • Example Template: Hey there! I’ve been following you on LinkedIn for a while now and I think you’re pretty cool! I’d love to learn more about [THING] so wanted to reach out and see if you’d be open to scheduling a coffee chat?
  • Find one conference you want to attend in 2025 and figure out the process for requesting your company to sponsor you.

Snacks optional.

See you next week,

🫶🏽 Alysha

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