Consider this. People in an intimate network where everyone knows each other’s agenda and abilities well are much more likely to help each other. This is true in or out of LinkedIn. If you don’t move the relationship beyond a simple handshake, business card exchange, or connection in LinkedIn, don’t expect much assistance in return.

If you want access to someone’s network or other kinds of help from them, first make a case for why you will be a terrific ally. How clever you are and why you are a “must meet” resource. Your thought leadership.

Honor the other person’s business relationships. At a networking event I watched someone share one of his best client’s name at 3M with someone who wanted to interview there. The lead giver – we will call him Pete – with the best of intentions, called his 3M client and made a case for why the 3M executive should see the job seeker – whom we will call Kate. 3 weeks later Kate had not called, and Pete was embarrassed and annoyed that he had misused the 3M exec’s time. The 3M exec sent a negative reference on Kate to 3M HR without meeting her. He also avoided Pete’s next phone call.

If you want someone to share his/her resources, respect and cultivate the relationships that go with them.

If you want to be more memorable and influential in a sea of other executives, separate yourself from the pack at every opportunity:

1. Elevate the thoughtfulness, strategic depth, and currency of all your conversations. Talk more about the latest trends in your industry, and cutting edge technology. Show thought leadership.
2. Demonstrate your ability to sell ideas, build consensus, and grow business. This goes beyond showing you are a good networker and relationship builder. Your community needs to know how well you can influence key decision makers, facilitate across departments, get results, and create revenue.
3. Create opportunities to network with business peers on a deeper-level than possible in a typical monthly networking event or occasional networking lunch. Increase the percentage of people in your network with heavy business influence.
4. Upgrade the quality of your interpersonal interactions. A salesperson I know never ends a conversation without asking “what can I do for you today?” He stands out amongst the thousands of sales people I know because of the way he communicates it. He really does mean it. His customers and network know it.
5. Improve your LinkedIn profile and activities. It says volumes about you. Whether or not you have self-awareness about your value to employers, and can communicate and sell your ideas. Whether you are interested in helping others in the industry, or just want their contacts. Whether you are willing to read and comment on someone’s blog or discussion in a LI group in exchange for reading your sales pitch. I believe most LI profiles are doing more damage than good to their owners.
6. Update your clothing and hairstyle, look less generic. Be more hip. Have a professional quality picture in LinkedIn.  Free, generic business cards are out. Even your email signature matters.
7. Lastly, once you have turbo-charged your brand, create “buzz” and sustain it.

The key is to establish and maintain your brand in terms that are as relevant as possible to current business needs. Your brand needs be memorable and easily repeated by your fans. (Most elevator speeches are not.) Your pitch needs to have focus and a theme offering synergy amongst skills. Emphasize how you are different, not how you are similar. Highlight what is most in demand in the marketplace.

If you don’t groom and maintain your brand image, you may have no recognizable value to the community or a very muddled image that makes people avoid you for fear of a poor return on investment. Establishing a positive brand in the industry for future contingencies takes time and is crucial to long term stability and growth. It takes little time to damage a brand and forever to repair negatives.

But if you have a finance or family in the targeted city, and you rent, you have a better chance of successfully relocating.

• If you have friends or relatives in the new city, and you could stay with them for a short time, put two addresses on your resume. It makes it look like you are easier to move emotionally and physically. Show two phone numbers if possible also.
• An employer may not pay to fly you out there for an interview depending on your salary level and the ease of finding people like you. (Web Designers are easy to find, Marketing Managers with Fortune 100 consumer packaged goods experience are not.) So you may need to organize a lot of interviews around a few trips you pay for. Call recruiters and potential interviewers and tell them you will be there the third weekend of every month from Thursday to Tuesday and can they arrange interviews for you while you will be in town.
• Find recruiting firms that have offices in both cities. The references from the current location recruiter office will make you much more appealing to the remote office (because the local recruiter can verify the quality of your clients and work.) You can look up recruiters in both cities by using the printed Directory of Executive Recruiters published by Kennedy Publishing, Fitzwilliam, NH. You can buy a copy for $40 on www.amazon.com or find it a $300 version of it in a business oriented public library. If you are junior or your title is common in the job databases, you can use www.indeed.com to do the same thing.
• If you frequent a church or temple, go to the elders’ council of the sister church/temple in the new city and network.
• If you belong to a professional association that has chapters in both cities, join the chapter in the new city months before you want to be in the new city and attend some meetings or a regional conference. Network with the Board of Directors. Write an article. Give a speech.
• Look for opportunities to do part-time contract work in the targeted city before you move. Use that employer as a reference to other employers in the new city.
• Look for companies with a large percentage of telecommuters. They will be less threatened in the transition stage.
• Look for companies with hundreds of global offices. Many of my contacts at one employer travel 50-70% of the time anyway and as long as they live near a large airport, the parent company does not care where “home” is.
• Interview current employees of the firm to understand why the potential employer is willing to go to the hassle of importing someone. Sometimes you will uncover problems for the firm with its reputation in the local market.