Connection etiquette is one of the key ‘need to know’ areas identified by my Linkedin trainees and clients.

In truth, it’s one of the most misunderstood aspects of using LinkedIn. And it’s clear from speaking to people in business and in training workshops , that so many people have built up first -degrees connections poorly by:

Connecting to as many people as possible so that they have a big network
Not having their own guidelines or standards
Not considering their actual social and business connections in real life enough

The less strategic people are with connection building, the more problems they’ll create, including :

Resulting in seeing a lot of irrelevant content,
Making it more difficult to be focused on interacting with your primary audiences. 

LinkedIn is also testing out your content with your primary connections first. If you have a majority of connections who you don’t know or have any professional links with, then it lessens the chance of them interacting with your content. 

When working with clients to improve their understanding and approach to connection building, I encouraged them to think laterally about their audiences. One of the areas I look at is the value gained identifying and connecting with social contacts, friends and relations in business. It’s kind of strange why so many people focus on connecting with complete strangers and can ignore people they grew up with , worked together , and were at the college with etc  

Other priorities for connections might be clients and indeed prospects who’ve enquired about services for instance (and this reminds us of the importance of having a good and updated Customer Relationship Management system). 

And especially people withing our industry who you want to develop a deeper professional relationship with….

And another big question that comes up in Training Needs Assessments is ‘What about sending a connection note’?

Yes, I do recommend sending an appropriate connection note in many cases. And especially if there’ is a social link – for instance , if  you’ve just met them at a networking event. Or if you’ve engaged with them on a post. Then it’s a good idea to include a note and mention the context!

But use your judgment. There’s certainly more evidence that connecting to people who you don’t know and using an obvious or lazy connection note will lessen the likelihood of them accepting your request.

I’d genuinely like to hear from you on your own guidelines connecting with others and also accepting connection requests?