by Caroline Leach | Mar 5, 2017 | Social Media
When your LinkedIn app fills up with connection invitations, what’s your strategy for deciding yes or no?
If you set a general framework for which you’ll accept, it will save time and result in a better network.
LinkedIn’s Catherine Fisher recommends in Business Insider connecting only with people you know and trust.
If you want an even higher bar, try Alexandra Samuel‘s “favor test.” She recommends only connecting with people whom you’d be willing to ask a favor of or do a favor for. Check out more in Harvard Business Review.
If someone takes the time to personalize an invitation to me with a well-articulated reason for wanting to connect, however, I will generally accept it.
But what about the ones with no personal note? The majority of these come from people I don’t know. Short of simply deleting all of them, sight unseen (which is certainly an efficient option), here’s my strategy:
ACCEPT
- People who are fellow colleagues at my current or former employers (opinions expressed in this blog are my own)
- People from my alma maters – students, alums, professors or staff members
- People who belong to the same professional, community or civic groups that I do
- People I attended a conference with, such as MAKERS or TED
- People who add to the diversity of my network on various dimensions, including industry, geography, career stage, functional area and so on
Personal branding expert William Arruda recommends diversity in a LinkedIn network, which links to a great perspective on its value.
- People with an interesting background that catches my eye. It’s hard to articulate this one, but I know it when I see it.
CONSIDER
- People who have common connections. This comes with a big caveat. An underlying rationale for the connections has to be evident.
Recently I declined invitations from people who had a high number of shared connections, but for which I couldn’t discern a compelling reason why. Often it was because they didn’t work in the same industry or even one that could be considered in some way related.
DECLINE
- People with no clear connection to any areas of my work
- Lack of clarity about what the person or their company does
- A suspicious-looking profile, such as no last name listed or little information included in the profile
- Anything appearing the slightest bit sales related. If I’m looking for a new vendor partner, I’ll go to my trusted network first for recommendations, not to random connections in LinkedIn.
This is my decision matrix, and it may give you some ideas for creating your own. This lets you quickly go through incoming invitations.
It frees up time to proactively create and cultivate your network by sending personalized invitations to a focused group of people.
What’s your strategy?
by Caroline Leach | Mar 4, 2017 | Careers, Social Media
“In growing your network, you want it to be both diverse and concentrated,” personal branding expert William Arruda wrote recently in Forbes about how to cultivate a powerful LinkedIn network.
First, begin with why you’re on LinkedIn. What do you want to accomplish? How can growing your network help you do that?
Second, ask yourself this question: Who did you meet this week, who will you be meeting soon and who do you want to meet?
Third, take a few minutes every week to add to your LinkedIn network. Always send a personalized invitation, explaining how you know each other and why you’d like to connect.
As you build your network, make sure your profile presents you in the best light. Here are great profile tips from LinkedIn career expert Catherine Fisher and Landit CEO Lisa Skeete Tatum. They spoke this winter at the MAKERS Conference for women’s leadership.
Who did you meet this week? Did you start working with any new colleagues? How about vendors? Invite them to join your network.
What professional, civic and charitable organizations are you involved with? Invite key people from those groups to be part of your network.
Look at your email contact list, your Facebook friend list, your Twitter followers and so on. Identify the ones you want to invite to your LinkedIn network. The “grow your network” feature on LinkedIn will see who you already know based on your email address book.
At the airport recently, I ran into someone I met a few years ago at an event at my son’s school. We struck up a conversation and caught up on what was going on at our respective employers (opinions expressed in this blog are my own). To keep the connection going, I followed up with a LinkedIn invitation.
One of my professional associations, a roundtable for senior communicators, also had its quarterly meeting this week. At the end of each day, I sent personalized invitations to people I’d met. An even better strategy – one colleague sent invitations in real time during our roundtable discussion of timely issues.
Who will you be meeting soon? What’s on your calendar for the coming week or month? Will you be meeting new people? Send them an invitation in advance of the event.
When you meet in person, you’ll already be acquainted with each other’s LinkedIn profiles and you may find a great conversation starter. For example, maybe you know interesting people in common or your new connection is working on a project you want to learn more about.
Who would you like to meet? Are you working in a new area and want to learn from the luminaries in the field? Are there companies of interest you want to know more about? Are there second-level contacts you’d like to add to your network?
This is where the personalized invitation is especially important. Explain in a compelling and brief way why you’d like to connect.
Take advantage of the “people you may know” algorithm in LinkedIn. Is there anyone you’ve missed connecting with? Invite them to your network.
Lucas Buck recommends looking at alumni groups and people who have similar college degrees. He’s an area sales manager at Farmers Insurance who uses LinkedIn highly successfully to achieve his business objectives.
He spoke last fall at a networking group affiliated with my son’s school. What did I do the same day as the event? I sent personalized LinkedIn invitations to the people I met at the event, along with Lucas.
Here’s a sidenote about conference speakers. Introduce yourself and chat with the speaker briefly before they speak, if they aren’t too busy with final presentation preparation. Fewer people line up to talk with them before their presentation, as opposed to the larger group that tends to gather after the talk.
Back to LinkedIn, what strategies do you use to grow your network?
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