Should you accept all those pending connections?

Have you noticed that you are getting more LinkedIn connection requests now than ever before?

Someone recently complained to me that there are too many people connecting and they have no idea what to do.

“Joe, I am kind of frozen because I don’t want to throw away a good opportunity but at the same time, I don’t know if I should accept or email them first. HELP!”

First piece of advice is BREATHE and understand what is going on.

LinkedIn has opened up the ability for people to send connection requests to 1,500 people at a time without raising too many flags. The maximum amount of connections anyone can have on LinkedIn is 30,000.

It used to be that you needed to REALLY know people on LinkedIn to connect with them and LinkedIn decided to change that now.

If you kind of know someone or you kind of want to get to know someone and they are a connection of a connection, you can just hit the connect button and you are good to go.

Especially if you are using the Mobile App, it's easier than ever to hit connect to hundreds of people within minutes.

LinkedIn wants to drive people to use the social network because they see that most people are only logging in a few times a month.

Facebook figured out how to get 50% of users to log in a few times a day.

Social media creators figured out how to make the notifications stimulate the parts of the brain that create a real addiction.

You can say that some people are starting to get addicted to LinkedIn now and are connection hungry.

It's good to be hungry but you need a good strategy before you start just eating anything in sight.

You might get connection diabetes soon and have to cut off your account.

So how do you create a strategy on LinkedIn? The first step is to define your very own “Connection Strategy.”

I teach this method in my LinkedIn seminars and webinars.

Start by asking yourself a few questions. Here are three popular questions that will help you craft your very own connection strategy.

1. Do I know this person?
2. Do I want to get to know this person?
3. Is this person strategic to help me in some way with one of my goals or priorities?

If the answer is a resounding NO to all those questions, I just leave it pending because it makes me happy to see I have a few hundred people waiting to connect with me.

Let’s break down those three questions a bit more.

Do I know this person? Maybe this person is a someone I met at a networking event or at a tradeshow recently. Maybe this person worked at the same company as me and I used to know them. Maybe I know their face but not their name. The brain has a special place where it stores faces, separate from where it stores names and facts. This person can be someone who knows the people closest to me or the people whom I consider very strategic. They might be part of the same community that I am part of and know me! Once you are sure you do not know this person in any way, ask yourself the next question.

Do I want to get to know this person? Is this the type of person that I want to invest my time, effort and energy to get to know? Does this person have similar interests as me? Are they into the things that I am into and will they be an interesting or fun person to get to know? For me, I look to see if they pay attention to detail. If they have a really bad profile and I do not know them, I usually won’t connect with them. If they are outside the US, and they do not seem like they speak the same language as me, I will avoid connecting especially if they are not strategic to my business. That is the next question.

Can this person be strategic to my goal? Can this person help me achieve one of my main priorities for the year? That is assuming you have clear, written goals. If you do not have clear written goals, well that is another article but you should get your act together sooner than later. Studies show that people who don’t have have written goals, do not accomplish them most of the time. Where people who write their goals down are much more likely to get them done.

Once you identify that this person cannot help you with one of your goals and you do not want to know them you need to decide how you want to treat this connection request.

It's your network, you can pollute it if you want :)

The question is what if you already connected to hundreds or thousands of people? Then you might want to look into my Advanced LinkedIn Connection strategy that I created.

It will help you quickly segment your list and understand who you are connected to.

Here are some insights I got from my own 8,000+ connections.

Total Connections Gained Each Year (not growth)

• 2006 17
• 2007 36
• 2008 64
• 2009 268
• 2010 234
• 2011 554
• 2012 1,266
• 2013 1,759
• 2014 719
• 2015 485
• 2016 684
• 2017 2,249
• Grand Total 8,335

Connections by Relationship

• Co-Worker 11
• Friend 17
• Podcast 19
• Family 33
• Alumni 38
• Client 47
• Past Co-Worker 50
• Prospect 56
• Vendor 93
• Past Employee 102
• Past Client 222
• Acquaintance 738
• Networking 786
• Unrecognized 6,098

I can also break down my connections by Context and understand how I know each of the connections that I recognize.

This is a powerful way to analyze my connections. We can break down one year at a time, we can break down one type of connection at a time based on your goals we can get there pretty fast and create a proper connection strategy.

Want me to help you break down your connections?

Send me a message and let's chat about it.

Joe Apfelbaum

Ajax Union

PS: I have already reviewed over 120,000 LinkedIn connections with friends and business connections. It seems overwhelming but if you invest time into learning the strategy as little as 15 minutes a day can get you all into shape in a few days!