If you’re using LinkedIn all the time, or even if you just have an account, you’ve probably received invitations to connect with people you have never heard of.
Many users just accept this as part of the LinkedIn life, but the longer you stay on the site and the more active you are, the more requests from strangers you will get. However, the way many people handle these invitations is completely wrong. That’s not just our opinion either – LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman agrees.
What Am I Doing Wrong?
While you might not think twice about ignoring a friend request from a total stranger on Facebook, when it comes to using LinkedIn people behave a little differently. A common misconception is that you should accept every single connection that comes your way. Many people think that because it is a social network for professionals and therefore; the more connections the better.
There are even those who won’t connect with people who have less than a certain number of connections, which only encourages this blind connecting. Often this results in a feed that’s cluttered with information you don’t care about, and hiding the connections you really do want to develop a relationship with. So, you have to wade through all of that information to make the network work for you, and this often turns people off.
Be aware, there are individuals out there who strategically request connections in order to gain access to your network, which is never a good move. Hoffman warns this ‘accept all’ approach is not just damaging, but ‘all wrong’.
So What Should I Be Using It For?
LinkedIn has been getting a bad rap recently for becoming ‘too much like Facebook’, and to some extent that’s true – thanks to this mass connection culture. For LinkedIn to truly shine, you should be making connections with people you already know in some way, or have a mutual connection with who can introduce you confidently. It’s essentially networking in the digital world.
In an interview with Keith Ferazzi, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, explained the true value of using LinkedIn:
“LinkedIn is a closed network, and for a very simple reason: For the network to have value as an introduction tool, the connections need to have meaning. It’s up to you to vet each and every request so that if someone comes to you and says, ‘Would you introduce me?’ you’re in a position to evaluate whether the connection would be of mutual benefit.”
So if you receive an invitation to connect with someone you don’t know, or who you would feel awkward introducing to your network, you can decline without feeling guilty.
Hoffman goes into detail on this and more in his book “The Start-up Of You”, which you can get your hands on for a low cost and is definitely worth a read.
