LinkedIn doesn't suck so bad... if you follow a few basic rules

Hating LinkedIn has become popular. Oddly enough, sharing your disdain of LinkedIn on LinkedIn has also become a thing. Some folks like Mark Birch hated it so much they deleted all connections, just to start over building his profile - sounds a bit like a bad breakup, no?

I have been using LinkedIn quite a bit and while it can get annoying at times, I found that if you follow a few basic rules, it ain't so bad. The funny part is, you should have known these rules already:

1) Don't get in the car with strangers

I essentially use LinkedIn as the public discussion forum of my Architect Elevator Blog. That site is static (hosted for free on Firebase Hosting) and adding a forum is more hassle than I want to deal with. So I share new posts here (and on Twitter) for people to give feedback and discuss.

That means, I should be connected to people who have something meaningful to say. I primarily connect to people who slug it out in depths of enterprise IT, chasing windmills and herding cats, and migrating their legacy zombies to the cloud. So, I don't accept just any connection request (please don't be offended, it's a fuzzy process). I have 499 pending connection requests at the moment. Which leads me to rule #2:

2) Don't try to keep up with the Joneses

Come on, you sure do have follower envy! I know I do. People gain 35k followers by posting studio photos and sharing uplifting stories. Others tell you how to gain that many followers by paying them $50 on gumroad (no link here). The Joneses will always have the bigger car and fancier house. If you don't like it, move to a poorer neighborhood.

Although a sizable followership can be an asset if you work independently, it's not just about the numbers. And you know "influencer" is not a protected trademark, so call yourself what you wish. I am quite happy with my 7k followers. Would I take more? Sure, but that's not my main goal.

Depth of engagement is just as important as breadth for my use case. After all, the movie wasn't called the Followership of the Ring... which leads us to rule #3:

3) You show me yours, I...? Hey, wait!

LinkedIn is perennially conflicted as to whether it wants to be like Facebook (mutual connection) or Twitter (one way, anyone can follow you). The default seems to be the Facebook model, i.e. making connections, but these connections can come from just about anywhere, leaving you "connected" to a whole bunch of people who aren't your "friends".

I therefore set my default to "Follow" - I am happy for many people to follow me, but I don't need to be connected to everyone. The setting is a bit hidden under your "Privacy" options:

Connections will see quite a bit about your other connections (unless you make them private), so for example sales folks may be looking at your new connections to see which clients you are engaging with. I admire the initiative, but not something I wish to support. Nope, don't need to show you mine.

Only about 1/3 of my followers are connections, so I run an about 33% Facebook, 66% Twitter model. Many of my connections comment regularly on my posts, which I enjoy. I don't restrict connections to people I know in real life - that'd kind of defeat the purpose of a virtual platform. For example, I am always happy for comments from devout fans like Giovanni and Daniel am happy to give tips to Kaine from Nigeria who's considering writing a book. Then there's great stuff like Vadym posting a series of highlights from my Cloud Strategy book.

4) If you see something wrong, say something

Will you get trolling? Yes, you will! You'll get comments like "great post, almost as great as my product <link>" - I don't spend a ton of time weeding through, but if it's too blatant, I flag it and have it removed. As any good architect knows, a little pruning here and there keeps the garden in order.

So, I'm alright with LinkedIn. It allows me to keep track of former colleagues and boosts my poor memory for names (not a good thing in a customer facing role).

If you're wondering about the image above - that's the marriage market in Shanghai's People Park where parents advertise their children to find a worthwhile partner. While many of us will find that odd, somehow LinkedIn reminded me of it.