Linked Intelligence

Here’s the question — is it ethical to add your LinkedIn connections to your newsletter list, or at the very least, a list of people you routinely contact? Where are the boundaries?

On the one hand, adding people to a “mailing list” without their express consent is spamming. On the other hand, LinkedIn is supposed to be a networking site. Isn’t one of the basic requirements of networking to communicate with the people in your network? Otherwise, aren’t they just a database entry? How are you supposed to keep in touch with even a few hundred people, much less a few thousand (and no, not only open linkers have that many connections).

It’s not a simple problem. Let’s explore it in more detail…

Continue reading Communicating with Your Connections – Spam or Networking?

It has become a fairly common practice, primarily among “open linkers”, it seems, to put all kinds of stuff in the name field of their LinkedIn profiles, including:

• E-mail addresses (intended to bypass LinkedIn’s requirement of knowing it in order to connect)
• LION (intended to indicate the person is a Linked In Open Networker and generally receptive to invitations from people they don’t know) [be sure to read my comment below about the compromise solution reached between the LIONs group and LinkedIn]
• Connection counts (intended to impress people, I suppose — the implication being that having more connections somehow makes one more worthwhile to connect to)
• Various punctuation marks (intended, presumably, to affect sort order, or perhaps make the name stand out more in search results — the sort order is a non-issue, since LinkedIn doesn’t display search results alphabetically)

Continue reading Nothing But Your Name

I’m a big fan of LinkedIn Answers. I’ve used it a couple of times recently to get answers to questions that would have taken me hours of research on my own. One of the most popular categories is the Using LinkedIn category.

As one might imagine, you’ll find a pretty large number of “How do I…?” (that are either in the official FAQ or have already been answered many times before — remember, you can search for previous questions/answers) and “LinkedIn restricted my account…again!” messages, but there are also some real gems where people provide some very detailed answers regarding LinkedIn usage strategies.

Continue reading LinkedIn Answers About Using LinkedIn

One of my LinkedIn connections, Andy Birol of Birol Growth Consulting, recently wrote me for some advice about using LinkedIn. Andy has been using LinkedIn for a while and has about 100 connections, but feels like he hasn’t really explored its full potential. He finally uploaded his entire a larger part of his contact database and wants to send the invitations. Here’s his message:

Scott, I just imported my database of 3,700 contacts into LinkedIn and wanted to ask you how this message sounds before I pull the trigger on blowing out my network.

“I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. If I can be of assistance to you or you feel I can be of help to you or your network, I would look forward to the opportunity to do so.”

I read the sources and they are not really helpful on how to construct the message.. Any thoughts? Also, if I am about to relaunch my website next week, should I wait to send this message out till then? Thanks,

Thanks,

Andy

Continue reading Sending Batch LinkedIn Invitations – What to Do Once You’ve Uploaded Your Contacts