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Monday 7 July 2014

What's your LinkedIn Connection strategy ?

It's a lovely sunny Monday morning, I love my job and have an exciting week ahead.  I have my coffee and my diary tells me its time for tending to my social media .... for me that's fun not ever a chore...

All in all i'm in a good place for early on a Monday morning, you just know some some rotter is going to come along and ruin it all for me ... so did they ?  No, that would be to cliche' for me.

But I did get inspired to create this blog.  I was in LinkedIn mode, 11 invitations to connect came in over the weekend, which was nice.  But then, not one had included an introduction of any sort, and not one had visited my profile before sending the invite.  <sigh>

But I am a player, in the networking / LinkedIn sense !!  I understand were all on LinkedIn to network, so I persist and check out all the profiles and where there was some synergy, interest or value I quietly accepted.  Which is in keeping with my 'current' connection strategy, in the early days I was extremely promiscuous, in the networking / LinkedIn sense (stop making up your own punch lines!!) and I would connect with anyone and everyone.  I was keen to grow my network, fair enough.

But strategies need to be reviewed and 18 months ago I decided my network was vast enough so I became selective over who I connect with and always check out profiles of invites I receive.  Also, I always visit someone's profile to decide if I wish to invite them to connect with me.  And always, ALWAYS send a custom invitation - if they are worthy of connecting with they are worthy of my time and attention and ... its professional and ooh getting radical... its polite!

One of the reasons for the change in strategy from 'connecting to anything with a pulse' to being selective was to help LinkedIn understand more about ... 'me' so LinkedIn can profile me better.  Which will help them more accurately filter 'Pulse' news, blogs (now linkedIn is a publishing platform), suggest companies to follow, groups to join and suggest people I may wish to connect with.  LinkedIn have invested millions in search and selection software that 'profiles' you so they can connect you with other LinkedIn members, groups, posts, news and now blogs.  I will be blogging on the whole 'Big Data' scene shortly.  Remembering LinkedIn started as a recruitment platform, so they have been good at vacancy / candidate matching for some time, and no doubt are continuing to apply this software to match vacancies with candidates ($'s)

And its working.  I get presented with excellent, relevant content, and some well aimed introductions to other members too.

So what's your Connection Strategy, is it working for you, and when was the last time you reviewed it?