Getting a bigger pictures of the way things are interconnected is helpful in any aspect of life, helping reveal more about how things work with one another. And with the abundance of social media connections and a world where who you know can make or break your career, education and networking efforts, understanding the way one connects with others is imperative.

Visual Perspective and the LinkedIn Network

Understanding how the different types of connections within one’s LinkedIn Network fit together in the grand scheme of professional networking efforts is vital to knowing how and where one can improve. The way one’s education, professional, association and other connections fit together as part of the networking puzzle helps reveal various ways one may be lacking when it comes to transferring real world networking efforts to social media, where it can be effectively managed and nourished.

Professional Influence

InMap offers a unique perspective that allows users to measure their influence by highlighting the influential players that make up one’s networking efforts. By locating the influencers on one’s InMap, one can gain a greater grasp on valuable connections the may deserve a greater amount of nourishing. In addition, the way influencers connect with others in one’s LinkedIn network can highlight the importance of using connections to introduce and continue to grow and encourage those connections.

Getting a visual comprehension of the way various connections relate with one another and understanding how one’s connections can be grown and encouraged is a valuable aspects of leveraging tools like LinkedIn to improve business, educational and professional connections and the way busy people relate to one another on that level.

Comparing LinkedIn Networking Efforts: Past and Present

Creating a visual map of one’s connections is a great way to understand current networking efforts and how connections relate to one another. But a visual map of professional connections also reveals where improvements can be made. Offering a visual measure that allows LinkedIn users to compare past networking efforts with current improvements can be a motivating tool that provokes care and attention to efforts of connecting and staying connected.

There is no magic networking tool that automatically improves one’s efforts to network professionally. Instead, even with the use of social media tools like LinkedIn to nurture relationships on a professional level, those relationships and connections continue to require attention and encouragement to experience growth and transfer into business results and relationships. In addition to endorsing, recommending and growing connections, professional networking requires constant contact in order to maintain relationships, improve them and continue to expand connections by adding more connections and professionals to one’s network. While taking a visual look at the way connections are inter-related is important to understand where progress is being made and where efforts can be stepped up, it’s no replacement for the nurturing and building of relationships required to make LinkedIn a truly valuable business and branding tool.

To create your InMap, go to http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com.