Simple etiquette for networking using LinkedIn. Why should I be in your network if I don’t know you AND you have nothing personal to say to me?
(Thanks for sharing, like-minded friend!)
My friend Alisha thinks very similarly to how I do about “networking,” and she just wrote a great post about it. Here’s an excerpt describing what networking should be and what a lot of people try to make it:
What is networking, even? To be honest, I hate the term. Networking to me is a couple of things:
- connecting people through genuinely exciting ideas
- being social and attending social gatherings
- fostering meaningful discussion
- building a community of friends, peers, and leaders who will shape your goals
- helping people help you achieve said goals
Networking is not the following, if you ask me:
- blindly handing out business cards
- steering conversations to be self-promotional
- upselling your skills or expertise
- faking your role in your industry
- talking buzzwords and schemes to make yourself look good
- stalking social media users online
- going to happy hour meetups all the time to score free food & drinks
As with anything else, there are rules to building your network and sharing it with others. The rest of the post gives some good pointers for not ruining the network you are constantly building.
This is what I do. I should probably bring it to some sort of scale someday. If you need connecting, I’m your girl.
[That statement alone is the downside of being a connector; we exhaust ourselves with completely sincere offers and then all of the requests and ideas come at once. But I’ve accepted that and love it anyway.]
Interesting blog post, though I have a few thoughts about / additions to it. Being a connector certainly is all of these things, but when there isn’t sincere interest in what you’re doing or the people you’re connecting, you can’t be an effective connector in the long term because people stop buying into it. How can you make each connection genuine? It’s also important in being a connector to remember that there are times not to connect; counter-intuitive, I know, but having the discretion to know the right timing if ever is key. Connections can be awkward if not done well, and then you’re adding a layer of complexity to someone’s life that perhaps is unnecessary. Finally, I would add that you should be strategic in not burning through or using up contacts. People don’t want to feel like they’re your token (for instance) finance buddy or comedy buddy or fundraising buddy. Make sure that you’re not tapping people unnecessarily or too frequently, because even if you’re great at managing a broad network, this may become overwhelming for them, which may affect your relationship.
However, 52 people have added me. I do not feel more looped in to their lives. Further, of those 52 people, I do not know 4, which means 7.7% of people who think I’m in one of their circles for whatever reason (spam or otherwise) are not reciprocal friends per my count. Of the remaining 48 people, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with putting them into circles, because I don’t know what I would then do with these circles, and because many fall into multiple ‘categories’, and I’d surely miss someone and problems would ensue.
Google+ is proving very stressful for me, and I haven’t even done anything. I’m not writing it off as a product, but maybe it’s too futuristic in its simplicity for me.
