LION taming - how to deal with prowling strangers on LinkedIin
While Twitter and Facebook Pages encourage strangers to become connected, LinkedIn is all about relationships. However almost daily I am and contacted by strangers who are merrily ignoring the rules set down by LinkedIn that state you should only connect with people you know.
The strength in LinkedIn is the relationships between people who connect with one another. It allows for recommendations and referrals that simply cannot happen between complete strangers. We blogged
Some of these are the so-called LIONS, or LinkedIn Open Networkers, who chase numbers rather than relationships. Others simply do not know any better. Typically though they have over 500 followers (LinkedIn used to show exactly how many connections someone had, but capped this at 500 to discourage people from chasing numbers!). They also often have very few recommendations from their connections, which is in itself telling.
We first blogged about LIONS in 2009 when we posted: LinkedIn: Beware the LIONS, they may savage your reputation after an extreme example when a stranger offered a bogus recommendation and wanted one in return!
Normally those strangers who have asked to become LinkedIn, falsely claim to be friends, or wrongly state that you have worked with them. They also use the standard greeting rather than offering some insight into why you should become connected. These users simply don't bother to reply to my friendly email explaining how I do not connect with those I do not know well. Which kinda proves my point!
Typically we send a reply such as this:
Many thanks for your invite to become LinkedIn, however I only become LinkedIn with people that I know well, and certainly well enough to be able to recommend to my other contacts. This represents the true value of your network on this platform.
Certainly LinkedIn's own rules insist that you should only connect with people you know well.
We've blogged about it here: www.morganpr.co.uk/Beware-stranger-danger-on-LinkedIn which you might find interesting
If by chance I have had some kind of brain freeze and am mistaken about how well we know one another, please do tell me!
As a public speaker on social media I am often giving talks and seminars so we might meet then, or at one of the many networking events I often attend, so who knows, perhaps we'll be LinkedIn soon after all.
So it clearly leaves the door open for further contact and does not rule out becoming LinkedIn in the future. Indeed that has led to conversations about how best to use LinkedIn and social media. Recently a prospective client tried to become LinkedIn to start the conversation with Morgan PR, so the friendly email was a great way to ensure we still chatted. Simply ignoring invites doesn't make sense, even from strangers.
Sometimes you get quite indignant replies that simply serve to confirm that you shouldn't have become LinkedIn with them! For example someone who shall remain nameless replied:
I disagree with what you say below, I think too many users on LinkedIn are not open, random and supportive (ORS) and are more closed, selective and controlling (CSC). LinkedIn itself is more CSC.
Of course, I am not suggesting you are CSC but my view is on LinkedIn to connect with anyone who requests to be connected to you.
Absolutely they are entitled to disagree, but it hardly makes me more likely to connect. Interestingly, LinkedIn shows you how you are connected with anyone who invites you to connect. When you spot a LION or number chaser and realise that others in your network have connected with them, it may even bring a question mark over their approach to using LinkedIn.
So next time you receive an invitation from a stranger, pause before you ignore and think about sending a friendly reply instead. It might just lead to something interesting, and at the very least it preserves the integrity of your network on LinkedIn.
How do you use LinkedIn? Please tell us in the comments below!