It’s now almost an age-old question on LinkedIn: how do you decide which invitations to accept? It’s also one of those questions where asking ten people will probably yield 11 different answers. That question was among those posed to a great panel that came together at LinkedInLocal Boston on Tuesday night at General Assembly, and it’s a good one to think about.
Not only that, but it is one I have thought about and evolved on over the years.
When I first joined LinkedIn over a decade ago, I connected with people I knew. Mostly, this took the form of current co-workers, then college alumni I knew. It would soon expand to former co-workers and people I had met through prior networking as well. But connect with someone I didn’t know? That was seemingly out of bounds. Yet that’s a big part of the purpose of LinkedIn, so I wrestled with it a little.
All the while, I wondered about those who connected with anyone – the LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networkers), as they were known. I thought, why connect with someone I don’t know at all and where the commonalities may be lacking? Would they really make an introduction or otherwise come through if they were connected to someone you really needed to connect to? They were on the other end of the spectrum.
Over time, the platform has certainly changed, as LinkedIn is not just a place to send and accept connection requests now. The news feed is certainly a little more interesting than one entry after another of, “Person A is now connected to Person B.” And along the way, I have changed as well, including how I decide whether or not to connect with someone. Let’s just say I never thought I’d see the day I have over 1100 connections, or connected with people I had never met ahead of their coming to town.
One general thought from the panel that I will certainly co-sign is that you have to know who you want to connect with and what your end goal is. Related to that is using your intuition, something Brian Wallace very ably highlighted, and it’s something we usually do perhaps without realizing it. Doing so will go a long way towards deciding which connection requests you will accept and which you will decline (as well as any you might report as someone you don’t know) and who you attempt to connect with.
Generally speaking, I connect quite readily with former and current co-workers if requested, as well as alumni (high school or college). Only once or twice have I received a connection request that made me report the user as someone I don’t know, consisting of a personalized message conveying that the only hope the person has is to get me to be a customer/client of theirs. Otherwise, I just ignore any I don’t feel a solid reason to accept.
What goes into it for me with someone I don’t already know? A connection request without a personalized message has a big strike against it. If I want to connect with someone I don’t know, I make sure I send a personalized message to convey that there is a good reason for us to connect, that there can be value both ways for us. Then things like circumstances – perhaps I have just met that person at an event or know I will soon meet them – also come into play. Even so, a personalized message makes life much easier, especially one that refers to something we may have talked about. This is, interestingly enough, also what one should do when following up with someone after meeting, whether at a conference, networking event or something else.
At the time of this writing, I have over 30 requests to connect. Less than half of them have a personalized message, and a couple of the ones that do are a reminder that all personalized messages are not created equal.
The idea of this, not only on LinkedIn but in the general course of things, is supposed to be that a relationship is mutually beneficial, and that is something one should always try to convey. Those who get many requests to connect – I get a good number, but I know there are plenty who can blow my numbers away – may get more selective in who they accept, such as only accepting those who include a personalized message. It’s hard to blame them for that. At the aforementioned panel discussion, Mark Metry noted that with a connection limit (LinkedIn allows a person to have 30,000 connections), one may opt to connect with people they know and have a relationship with instead of someone they have no real connection with.
In the end, everyone has to come up with an operating procedure for this that makes sense for them. It comes down to who you are looking to connect with and what you find acceptable in someone’s desire to connect with you. That will guide you to your strategy to either connect only with those you already know, be a LION, or (most likely) somewhere in between.