Inclusive vs Selective: With whom should I connect on LinkedIn?

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A recent Dan Schawbel post inspired me to revisit one of the themes that seems to resonate to some audiences trying to crack this Internet social networking nut:

With whom should I connect?

It’s one of the questions veterans of traditional business networking feel strange about having to ask. Internet social networking for business is an online networking party without the constraints of time and space. That is to say, traditional networking puts us face to face with people who can be physically present at the appointed time of the event. Internet social networks allow us to converse digitally with people anywhere in the world. These conversations can pause and continue repeatedly over days, weeks, even years. In the former scenario, we are usually able to discern within seconds as to whether our conversation partner’s business card is going in the scanner or the circular file. The Internet clouds this judgment.

There are many forms of this question and each has a “right” answer, but none are the same for everyone. Those who connect liberally are what I call, “Inclusivists.” Those who connect with only a select few are, “Selectivist.” (Most of us fall somewhere in between.) For an example, let’s see how our Inclusivist, Ivan, and our Selectivist, Stan, respond to:

I got a connection request on LinkedIn from someone I don’t know. Should I accept it?

LinkedIn clearly states that connecting with people you don’t know violates its terms of service. That said, lots of people connect with others they don’t know and with whom they will never press flesh. One of these is a friend, a bona fide LinkedIn expert–guy makes his living off of speaking, training and writing about LinkedIn–who has had his account suspended seven times (last I checked). Your account gets suspended when a number of people respond to your connection request with, “I don’t know this person.”

“Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one who [cares] about the rules?”

With apologies to Walter Sobchak, who doesn’t roll on Shabbos, for cleaning up his language, the easy answer doesn’t readily apply. I spent most of my career in cable and satellite TV under real life captains of industry who, if they didn’t like the game, played by a set of rules they found more conducive to their goals. My friend, the aforementioned LinkedIn expert and inspiration for Ivan will tell you, “the game is won on the edges.”

It’s not that Ivan doesn’t care about LinkedIn’s rules, he just believes himself to be ahead of the game. Ivan probably but not necessarily classifies himself as a LinkedIn Open Networker, or LION, meaning he openly accepts invitations from just about anybody including your neighbor’s dead cat. Ivan’s philosophy is based on the tenet that, “You’re not connecting to the person, you’re connecting to the network.” You’d be surprised at how many people are accepting recommendations from Fluffy, may she rest in peace.

The reason this stance works for Ivan is because he has worked hard to establish himself as a community leader on the network. He has founded and administers groups, participates actively in multiple discussion threads, written and earned lots of recommendations and connected others. When he reaches out to his LinkedIn community, he can be assured of a healthy response.

“The Dude abides.”

Stan has done some but nowhere near as much of that stuff. He belongs to groups but doesn’t administer any, and while he’ll check in with a new status update once in a while, he doesn’t regularly visit discussion forums. Stan doesn’t want to get on anyone’s bad side, including LinkedIn’s, and thinks that having his account suspended sounds like a pain in the neck. Stan argues that the more connections he makes to people he doesn’t know, the more diluted his connections become to people he actually does.

So let’s say Stan suddenly adopts an Inclusive stance, accepts a bunch of blind invitations. Then he puts out on his status report that he needs something. Know what Stan hears? Crickets. And dead cats.

“That rug really tied the room together.”

This is where Schawbel comes in. Schawbel’s Twitter-related article applies to any social network. More connections = more incoming data. There’s only so much we can process. The comments Schawbel receives are correct, that dedicated, sophisticated users can filter their discussions. (Anybody care to point out the risks and shortcomings related to that marketing strategy?) There comes a point for the median user where quantity of connections becomes a liability.

So: If you want to be Ivan, you better go full boat and damn the torpedoes. If you’re Stan, you better identify, cultivate and reward your niche.