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To Accept or Not to Accept, that is the Question

We hear this question all the time: “How do I manage the people wanting to connect with me on Linked In?”

We’ve come up with a few tips to help you as you navigate this part of Web 2.0:

1. Thoughtfully select those people you know and trust because these are the people you will seek advice from and request a recommendation from regarding your or other’s quality of work. Because of this, the quality of your contacts is always more important than the quantity of contacts. If you know little about the connection, you weaken the integrity of the recommendation and your network.

2. Be careful how you use the “I don’t know” feature when rejecting an invitation to connect. This could simply be a person who doesn’t know how to use invitations properly. By selecting “I don’t know,” that person is blocked from sending you another invitation in the future, but if they get that rejection from too many people they could also be restricted from sending invitations to others. If you use the “Archive” feature, you can consider their invitation at a later date if you’d like, and you won’t have reminders that you have that open invitation in your Inbox as an action item.

3. Protect yourself from unwanted invitations by turning on the “Invitation Filtering” feature. This lets you use your uploaded address book on LinkedIn as a “white list,” restricting invitations to people in your address book. You can also require that only people who know your e-mail address be allowed to connect with you. Click on “Settings” at the top of the home page and then “Invitation Settings” under “E-mail Notifications” to select the options your prefer.

Putting some careful thought into how you connect with others through Linked In will make this a more powerful tool for you to build and expand your network.

We want to know what you think. Share with everyone some ways you manage your LinkedIn contacts. Or let us know some other issues you struggle with as you work with LinkedIn.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 3:02 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “To Accept or Not to Accept, that is the Question”

  1. Barbara Bix says:
    March 1, 2010 at 4:25 pm

    Hi,

    Nice post! As you note, there are several perspectives. The important thing is to choose social media policies that align with your personal or corporate business objectives. As for my thoughts on the matter, there in a post entitled “I’ll LinkIn To That” at http://www.bbmarketingplus.com/blog/2009/06/11/ill-link-in-to-that/

  2. Glenn Gutmacher says:
    March 1, 2010 at 5:53 pm

    Some other LinkedIn tips:

    1) Export your LinkedIn contacts periodically (under Connections) and then import into your email program so you can send messages periodically to all your connections without the limits of LinkedIn.

    2) Connect to some of the super-connectors of your industry (using LinkedIn’s Advanced People Search) where you select one industry checkbox and in the Sort by menu at the bottom, select Connections. This will put the most-connected people in your field at the top of the search results.

    Learn more at http://aces.arbita.net

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