Bad Connections

I’ve been on LinkedIn for a handful of years, but I wasn’t really active until a few years ago.  I worked for a company that was and still is very active on LinkedIn and I was encouraged to get active myself. 

The first wave of connections were my colleagues and co-workers, so those were easy to say yes to and “accept” as connections.  Then, of course, you get all of the people you know and may be associated with and once again, I think those connections are pretty simple.

Over time, I have branched out, joined groups, commented on and liked articles and I write plenty of my own.  I started to notice others on the site and I have also been noticed, which adds the next wave of connections.  This is where you can start having issues and start gaining bad connections.

LinkedIn is supposed to be a Professional Networking Site and I think, for the most part, it lives up to that title.  Granted, I see some posts that truly belong on the other “social” networking site, I read some posts that have profanity in them (which I think is unprofessional) and I see some pictures posted that I wouldn’t let in our office, but I don’t complain.

I am on LinkedIn for these simple reasons: 

• To expand my professional network
• To read industry related information and expand my knowledge
• To gain professional exposure that may benefit me now or in the future

I really enjoy writing and I always have and I started writing again about a year or so ago and found LinkedIn to be a great medium for that.  I do it because I enjoy it, but I also do it for the professional exposure.  I want you to read my articles, hopefully enjoy them, comment if you’d like and connect with me if you choose to.  I don’t think I am sharing any secrets by telling you that, but that is my motivation.

I’ll share something else and tell you how I choose to accept a connection:

• If I know you, it’s an immediate yes.
• If you are a 2nd connection, I will look at what connections we share and briefly look at your background and then I accept. These are almost always a yes to connect.
• If you are a 3rd connection, I look at little more carefully. I look at the business you are in, if we share any groups and I try to pay attention to how you may have run across me.  Was it in a group discussion, an open discussion or did you respond in some way to one of my articles?  I would say that I accept about 80% of those type of requests.
• The last type is the out of the blue connection and we have nothing in common in any way. My odds of connecting with you are as close to zero as you can get. 

I’m not sure if it’s selfish or just good business sense, but remember what I said about why I am on LinkedIn.  I feel that the site is a great tool and a great resource, but I don’t have the time to shuffle through content that is meaningless to my professional growth.  I have the other social media site for that. 

If you do connect with me, have a point if you choose to message me or contact me.  If you are a vendor, I don’t mind hearing from you and I have said that before.  However, please be professional and be different from everyone else that we get approached by all of the time. 

I have actually made some friends thanks to LinkedIn.  Although it wasn’t the primary purpose of the connection to begin with, there are a select few people that I have talked business with and we ended up being friends.  It’s an unexpected and rare occurrence, but in the end, it’s all about building relationships in a professional manner.

Lastly, I know that I am probably not perfect with everything that I have just rambled on about and maybe I am one of those bad connections to someone else.  If so, we all have the same opportunity to remove that connection.