What do you do when someone you don’t know sends you a connection request on LinkedIn?
I’ve currently got 17 pending connection requests in LinkedIn from people I don’t know and have never met before.
I suppose the first thing to unpack is what does “don’t know” mean. I have plenty of people I’ve connected to on LinkedIn that I’ve never met in real life. I’ve got a few clients that I’ve never met in real life too. However I would say I have a relationship with them.
I think my friend Lisa Chilvers has it right when she said she never connects with someone on LinkedIn that she doesn’t know. Her concern was that what would you say if person X said “I see you’re connected with person Y, how do you know them and would you recommend them for one of my upcoming projects?”. What would you say to them? I think saying that you don’t know them wouldn’t go down very well.
All social networks are different. I follow many people I don’t know on Twitter and Google+. Most of the business pages on Facebook that I like I either know or have some experience with. All of these are one-way connections- that’s the way Twitter, Google+ and Facebook pages work. I can connect with them without them having to connect back or verify that we know each other. Facebook profiles and LinkedIn profiles are very different. It’s a two-way reciprocal connection. You are both stating the relationship to each other and in most cases, publicly .
LinkedIn is a professional network. I want to connect with people that I can trust and recommend.
So, what should I do with these 17 people on LinkedIn that I don’t know? Well, I could go through each of them and say to LinkedIn that I don’t know them. I know some people that do that, but that is a bit cruel. LinkedIn flags this up on their profile- since LinkedIn’s terms state that you should only connect with people you know. No, the people who connected with me I am sure sent that connection request genuinely. They are interested in me and I don’t want to snub them. I’ll be doing what I’ve done in the past, which is to send them a reply thanking them for the request and saying that I only connect with people that I know. I’ll ask them a bit more about themselves and say that I’d love to get to know them a bit better. I’ll also say it would be great to connect on Twitter and Google+.
What do you think of my strategy here? Is it over the top? Am I being too pedantic? I’d love to know.
Petra Fisher, what do you think about it? I respect your view on all things LinkedIn!
#TL
