Recently I posted LinkedIn (part 1) about my efforts to better understand and use it as a networking platform. It ended up generating a lot of good comments, always nice to see, and I'll be addressing some of those here and/or in part 3 coming up in a week or so.
My goal was to grow my measured network from 60 to 250 by the end of the year. It seemed like the best place to start was my Outlook contact list, so I installed an ActiveX control (living large) from LinkedIn that would pull out all the contacts and give me the option to send them an invitation. I had about 200 contacts, and some of those were old (need to clean up sometime, a good reminder to set) and others just didn't seem to be a good fit, so I sent out perhaps 100-125 invitations. If you didn't opt to go through and manually check/uncheck this one step would take perhaps 10 minutes tops.
Almost immediately a good portion of the invitations were accepted, so I moved to step 2 - doing a quick run through of connections listed for my connections looking for people that I "knew" but hadn't added to my list yet. This turned out to be a great technique and within an hour I identified close to 50 more contacts that I wanted to invite. Just to clear, I wasn't mining those other contact lists for people I wanted to meet, this was just to help me find people I already knew. It definitely pointed out that I wasn't doing a very good job getting my contacts into Outlook.
Step 3 was to start thinking about all the groups I participate in, and my groups it could be a former employer, a well known group such as SQL MVP's, or more informal groups such as former students, members of the local SQL user group, user group leaders in Florida etc. If you make that list and just mentally run down who you can think of from each group you'll probably find more contacts - again, not new ones, these are people you know. This also led me to pay more attention to the LinkedIn groups. I had already joined the SSC group so I could see how it was doing, and also the PASS group. They were good places to look for contacts, and I wanted to experiment, so I started a new LinkedIn group for members of my local SQL group and sent out an email to the mailing list. We're up to about 50 members so far, and here again I found a few people that I knew but had not yet added to my list.
I gained some more from my blog readers, and a few more from the blog entry being featured in the SSC newsletter. Most of these were new contacts, but a few were people that I "knew" and had not listed yet. I started at about 60 contacts, as of Mar 29 I'm up to 195 contacts with 55 invitations still open. So I've made good progress towards my goal, reconnected with quite a few people, and learned a few things along the way.
Coming up soon I'll be looking at strategies particular to LinkedIn, but also going back to my evolving philosophy on networking. At the end I want to have a sustainable strategy that works for me, but I also hope to be able to write down some options for networking that work for those of us in technology who want to have a network, but don't want to spend a ton of time 'networking for the sake of networking'.
Already on LinkedIn? A valid way to "know me" is to be a regular reader of my blog. If you're interested, join my network!
Maybe I'm too rigid about this type of thing, but I think that's kind of abusing the networking system. I only accept people I really know. Otherwise, the "network" is basically meaningless.
I am unsure about the benefits from this form of networking. As stated above there is a case for accepting only people you really know. On the other hand it may become a way of keeping in contact with people that you are introduced to. I am a bit loose and do accept invites freely if I think we have a common interest.
Mainly I am using it to reach out and say hello to people I have lost track of (mainly through not doing this earlier). I also do it so that future employers can find me and get an idea of who I am and hopefully work out if I am a good or bad fit for them.
Mark.
Mtillman, Mark - hopefully you're referring to inviting the blog readers as the part that bothers you, as the rest of the people I "know" to a greater degree. The challenge of networks is that one definition doesn't always apply. The people you'd reach out to about looking for a job is perhaps smaller than that which you would message to about a vacancy at your company, and the network you would contact for advice about an ethical problem at work is a whole lot smaller.
I'm not sure - yet - but I think it comes down to expectations on both sides. For those that join my network on LI (which is one of many ways to track your network), I imagine they are expecting to loosely keep up with what I'm doing via the LI site or weekly digest, and I'd think they'd consider it "fair" if I contacted them if I were moving to their city or perhaps doing a seminar there, or was just going to be there and trying to connect for lunch. On my side, it's pretty much a mirror - I'll be looking forward to the occasional update of their profile to see what they are doing, and if they wish to contact me, they can - and then with any networking contact I'll decide if its somethign I can help with or not.
A useful practice that I follow is to invite anyone that hands me a business card to join my network on Linked In and Plaxo. This serves two purposes - keeps my addressbook online and helps grow my network. It takes longer, but over time, it builds up.
Four years ago, I dismissed LinkedIN as a useful networking tool simply because everyone I knew who was on it was essentially BSing the ratings and just trading stellar remarks about each other.
I mean, who the hell is going to actually say anything negative when retaliation is so easy? It was just a big BS lovefest back then (with poor security I might add) Maybe things are better now, but the whole thing was sketchier than the eBay comment system back then.
I'd be interested to hear from people that have benefited from LinkedIn. I've made many contacts using it and I've been able to catch up with people I'd lost track of, but it hasn't beared any fruit other than I've had some nice lunches. You never know when networking will benefit you, but has this type of networking worked for anyone?
NotElite - I think maybe it depends on how you look at LI how much things like recommendations matter. For me - so far - it's a way to gather my contacts/network into one bucket in the easiest way, and it gives me a low intensity way to message my network ('I'm reading/doing x'). I'm working on more, but I suspect the more comes from basic networking more than it does magical LI features.
Carlos, similar to my reply to NotElite, I don't know yet if/when I'll be able to directly attribute some major success to LI vs my own attempts at networking. I'll have a post next week that talks about some recent activity within my network that might be interesting. For most of us the only big thing we'll ever look for from our network is a job for ourselves or co-worker/family - those opportunities don't come along that often, so we have to add some other "things" we might get from our network to see the value - or just take it as faith!
Andy,
In your networking scheme, how or do you classify people? Do you just throw everyone into Colleague? Do you try to separate blog readers from PASS contacts from Lecture hand shakes?
I don't see any way of changing these categories after you have assigned them either. Are they even useful?
Dan, so far I'm not classifying people. I've had a few discussions with Steve about it, but so far I haven't moved forward. In some ways I like the idea and see it might be necessary if you have a network of a 1000, but I can also see it potentially just adding time to something that might not return very much. It would be interesting to know who I connected with due to the blog, but I guess the question for me is when would I want to segment my network? First scenario would be sharing some personal news with close friends, or perhaps letting blog readers know of a URL change. Maybe.
Also not sure if it doesn't make sense to use Outlook (or email tool of your choice) to ultimately manage the contacts and do the fancier bucketing there.
Wish I had a better answer! For now, my focus is on figuring out how to network, then I'll move to trying to use it.
Pvoutov,
I need to revisit Plaxo, but totally agree - business card equals LI invite in most cases!
Andy
As some of you may have read already, Andy Warren‘s series on LinkedIn ( part 1 , 2, 3 ) and networking
