How to expand your reach on LinkedIn—for free

Before you can even attempt to become a power user on LinkedIn, you must understand who spends the most time on the site.

If your content is going to catch fire, you must know who most of your second-degree connections are, as they are the gatekeepers to the rest of the LinkedIn network.

Most of LinkedIn’s power users fall into these four buckets:

That, essentially, is why your timeline is boring:

So how do you cut through the crap?

First, LinkedIn is not simply a social media platform, it’s a community, and its members want to relate to and identify with others like them.