I recently offered a short presentation to the SBCN Members and Guests at our meeting on Wednesday evening. After making it clear I am not one of those "experts" we keep hearing about and sharing that I too felt that LinkedIn was a mystery to me when I first started using it, I felt confident the tips I shared would be helpful. The one thing that none of us were sure about, but I did offer my thoughts was this:
If we connect to someone on LinkedIn but then decide not to be connected to them it is simple enough to chose to edit, tick the box beside the persons name, and no longer be connected to that person. It is made quite clear that the person will not know they are no longer a connection and we can connect to them again at a later date if we would like to. OK that part is easy.
BUT I have a problem when someone says to me they don't know if they are no longer connected to, for example, me. If I connect to someone on LinkedIn I do it for a reason and then I can make lists of my connections and put them into certain categories. I know I can't keep in touch with all of them on a daily basis but I do keep up with their news, posts, etc.
This set me thinking maybe we are a bit like Facebook in the sense that we do collect people like trophies and want to have as many connections as possible, but once we have them what do we do with them? I know we can send out mass emails to all of our connections for whatever reason but in the real sense of connecting with people and wanting to build relationships playing the numbers game may mean ending up with lots of connections but not much else.
Obviously everyone uses LinkedIn for a different reason so having over 500 connections might be useful in many different ways to different people on LinkedIn.
I think my point here is whether it is LinkedIn, or Facebook or Twitter playing the numbers game and collecting trophies can work out well for some of us and not so well for others. Again it depends on your needs and why you are using these platforms in the first place. Once we know the why's and wherefores we can make choices based on those findings.
My tips would be when building your connections on LinkedIn to determine why you want certain connections, what happens once you have those connections and whether you do want to get to know them or turn to them when needed, which for some of us are two different things. We can have a connection who might be useful to us but we never communicate with, and at some point we need to request something of them. It all depends on the individual how they feel about moving forward with the request if they only know their connection as a name and not much else. Again this is all about individual choices and what works for each of us.
I will now be looking at my connections and how many of them I have and doing my best to ensure I keep up to date with them, to the best of my ability, because obviously I am the same as everyone else - I have a responsibility now I have these connections to know why I am using LinkedIn and what I have to offer and what I want ultimately from my connections.
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