How many of you get connection requests from people you frankly do not know at all? Do you connect with them because they appear to know other people you’re connected to? How particular are your own connections with their acceptance habits?
Do you even know how these people are finding you? I have a habit of only accepting connection requests from people with whom I have actually interacted – I can’t say met because for the last two years a lot of interaction has been virtual but you can still interact prior to connecting.
About three years ago I received a connection request from someone and rather than delete I replied, sorry I don’t actually know you, but your profile looks interesting, lets have a quick call and see if it makes sense to connect. He called me and told me that he has a virtual assistant who spends the day researching people on LinkedIn for him to connect with to grow his business and he agreed that it made sense to talk. We had a brief conversation, found that we did have some things in common and met up for coffee IRL. I happily accepted the connection.
Why does knowing your connections matter? For one thing, every time someone asks me for help in finding a job or needing to find someone who does X, Y or Z, I can just tell them to look at my connections and tell me who they want to be introduced to which means I can do them a favor without it taking up a lot of my time thinking about who a good fit might be. Bonus - since I know the connection they will very likely get somewhere with the introduction. In case you’re wondering, yes, I would want to know or get to know the person asking for the favor as well.
After that encounter that resulted in a meeting, I started doing some automated testing with my profile. I have an email for my social media that is just for my social media. Most connection requests and marketing material go to that email after a business or individual has either had an assistant compile a list for them or have paid someone to do a contact scrape resulting in a list for their marketing or demand generation endeavors. I have another email that is buried but can be found if someone takes the time to read my profile. I even get marketing from people or companies I do know even some who I think of as friends to the junk email while they might send a personal email to me on the real email.
Why go to the trouble? We all have many demands on our time and this is a way to automate which emails may be more deserving of my attention. Don’t get me wrong, I do take a look every so often at the junk email but most of the time I don’t respond.
Having the buried email is like the Van Halen brown M & M contract story. The band had very extensive complicated pyrotechnic effects at their concerts and if the stage was not set up properly, they could be in grave danger. To make it easier to tell when they arrived if the very lengthy instructions had been followed, they inserted a clause which stated that there should be a bowl of M & M’s in their dressing room but there should be no brown ones. Upon arrival they looked at the bowl of M & M’s and if they saw brown they knew that they needed to be extra careful to inspect the stage set up.
I’m not comparing myself to Van Halen, but a good idea is a good idea. Talking to strangers is also a good idea - especially before you accept that connection request.
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