OK, you want to connect on LinkedIn & that’s awesome. Be honest about how we know each other.

I don’t know when it happened but LinkedIn started to incorporate a “people you may know” feature. It’s been great to see old faces and I’ve made a lot of reconnections with folks.

My network is quite extensive and can be tied primarily to high school, college, my assortment of jobs (more than I care to admit), and SMPS. I also go to an extensive number of networking events, conferences and preproposal meetings which gives me more opportunities to meet people. I do have folks in my network that fall into work, school, etc. but they fall into one of the following categories: 1) we’ve met, 2) we should meet (since we have mutual connections), 3) we could potentially meet (because we have similar interests) or 4) we might be a referral source to each other (we can’t do business together but we know folks that might be interested).

Let’s shoot straight, it’s tough to keep track of folks at times and quite frankly, I don’t know how I remember certain people along with particulars such as where we met & what we discussed. It’s easy to connect with folks on LinkedIn but it’s helpful to the person that you’re connecting to if a “reminder” is included on how the two of you know each other. Options include: colleague (you worked at the same company), classmate (self-explanatory), we’ve done business together (self-explanatory), friend (self-explanatory but requires you to include an email address), group (you both share a membership on a LinkedIn group), and other (none of the above but requires you to include an email address). There is also an opportunity to include a personalized note in the invitation to connect; if it’s been a while since you’ve been in touch, you only met a few times or there’s a chance that the person receiving the invitation could say “WTF is this,” it might be a good idea to include a brief note in order to minimize the risk that person clicking the “I don’t know this person” button.” Getting the IDK a few times will put you in “hot water” with LinkedIn and you will have a tough time sending out invites.

Personally, I’m an “open networker” and will connect with folks if it seems to make sense. Other folks aren’t as liberal; one person I know requests an actual conversation before agreeing to connect and another is insistent an “actually” knowing the connection. My attitude is that I will connect with somebody until I have a reason to no longer be connected; I have “unlinked” from a few folks for committing certain offenses against me but I don’t go into details.

Lately, I have been getting connection requests from folks claiming to be a “friend.” I’m not offended but I have to have check the person’s profile to see how we know each other.

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