Today I reached a Linkedin milestone – I became one of the 500+
members . I added my 500th – Allan Barr of the BIG Partnership ( I
promised to give him a name check!) -and now all that shows on my
profile for number of contacts is 500+ .
When I set out with Linkedin 3 years ago I was deeply suspicious of
anyone with the 500+ tag. It felt a bit like they were collecting
contacts. I could not imagine every being at that number. To be honest
the number of contacts I was making kind of crept up on me.I have always
networked widely – in real life as well as online – and it just became
habit to connect on Linkedin when I met someone new.
I think of it now as being similar to my Christmas Card list.
Everybody has one of them – right? On the list are family members and
close friends that you see throughout the year. Then there are people
who mattered a lot at one time – old neighbours, colleagues,
team-mates, classmates. There will be a sprinkling of folk that you met
in the previous year.
Linkedin is sort of like that for me.
- There are people in my contacts I have known for a very long time.
We may not be in touch often but if we needed each other it would be
easy to connect. - Some contacts are people I work with regularly
- Some are people I have worked with occasionally
- Some I worked with as a colleague
- Some were clients in a previous life!
- Some I have worked with as a service provider – and vice versa
- Some are people with whom I hope to be able to collaborate on something with
- Some are there because they are really interesting people
- Some are people who have attended my social media workshops ( a
service that grew out of using Linkedin – I could never have imagined I
would end up offering that . More info here…)
I only accept invitations to connect with people I know and have
met /spoken to . After all that’s what Linkedin wants members to do
isn’t it?
Occasionally I will connect with someone who invites me but who I
don’t know because they have taken the time to personalise the invation
to tell me why we should get to know each other.
I get really really hacked off with the invitations that say I am a
“friend” when I clearly am no such thing and where the inviter has used
the default Linkedin message!
As time has passed I realised what was possible by establishing – and
crucially maintaining – my network and the maintaining part was my
biggest challenge. I view social networking as an important part of my
day to day business. I have won contacts through Linkedin connections –
so it is seriously worth the effort. I did panic when got to over 200
contacts because I could not think of how I could stay in touch with so
many people but then I found Tags – and sorted them into categories so
that when opportunities came up I could check out the relevant group.
And then I found the notes function – and I keep a record of the
interactions I have .
Of course there are people in my network that I know far better than others. And some I will get to know much better over time.
So now that I have 500+ contacts I am taking a less cynical view of
this whole social networking lark. But I still truly believe that it is
NEVER about the numbers and ALWAYS about the quality of the
relationships!