One more question from my presentation at the AFP conference in LA last week.
Should my Linked In contacts be open or closed?
Since the purpose of sites like Linked In are for business and social networking, keeping your contacts private is not conducive to getting people enthused about joining your network. My recommendation is a public profile and open contacts.
That said, I believe it is important to protect network integrity. Canned invitations from open networkers who are simply trying to add to their already huge numbers of contacts isn’t really networking, it’s rolodexing. Consider your target audience and then be discriminating in accepting and issuing personally–written invitations.
Hi Cindy,
I’ve heard a variety of approaches but I have decided to approach LinkedIn as if it were a direct reflection of my personal network. I treat it as a valued collection of people who can comment on my work, and vice versa. I would say that I have personally met 90-95% of those I’ve connected with on LinkedIn. That is my “policy” and it seems to have served me well so far.
Jeffrey
Cindy, I fall somewhere in the middle between only those I know and accepting invitations from those I do not. I’ve discovered that if we share something in common – – it’s a good investment. Example: those who are members of a group to which I belong or someone in the group is connected to them. I’ve had the opportunity to be on 2 radio shows as a result of someone contacting me thru LinkedIn. It is a fascinating (and controllable) world-wide rolodex opportunity.