Mr. Who-Knows would like to connect with you on LinkedIn.
Ms. Never-Seen-Before added you as a friend on Facebook.
Do these email messages look familiar? Lately, I’ve been receiving some invitations from both LinkedIn and Facebook where not only do I have no clue who the person is, but I also get a twinge of displeasure at the experience.
Since the design and construction community is (hopefully) becoming more versed with these social networks as business tools, it’s important for all of us to do it the ‘right’ way, rather than plowing forward with unbridled enthusiasm. You may have noticed, for example, that both LinkedIn and Facebook offer the option for the programs to go through your email account in order to find others whom you may already know on the system. This is a great system, and I even blogged about it months ago {Scarlett Letter #20: It’s Simple! Expanding your LinkedIn network).
One can usually tell pretty easily if the receiver wants to receive invitations from anyone and everyone. How? Well, if the person has 500+ LinkedIn contacts, or over 600 Facebook friends, then it’s probably a good sign that they welcome invitations from anyone whether they know them or not.
But to be on the safe side, and to respect the business intentions of both mediums, it’s wiser to add an explanation to your invitation. For example, I personally have around 415 LinkedIn contacts; 400+ Facebook friends (which I’ve chosen to almost exclusively use for personal, rather than business, connections); and perhaps 550 Twitter followers. To social media gurus, my numbers are low (especially Twitter, which would be considered pathetically low!) To those newer to social media, perhaps my numbers seem high. Even so, that does not mean that I want to receive invitations willy nilly ‘just because’. I take these mediums seriously for different reasons. With LinkedIn, I most certainly do not have to know the person directly to add them to my business network, however, I want to know why it is that they think it would make good sense for us to connect, and/or what motivated them to connect with me. A mutual contact? Work experience? My consulting expertise? One of the groups I belong to? What is the logic behind connecting? I’m not looking to grow my numbers on LinkedIn. Rather, I’m looking to continue to build a network where: I can add value to others, they can add value for me, and hopefully the people in my network can add value to one another.
As for Facebook…again, I’m not looking to haphazardly grow my number of “friends”. I want to connect with people whom I know already, or whom want to know me because of one reason or another. I just received a friend request where someone liked a comment I made on a post of a mutual friend. OK, no problem. At least she told me why she wants to connect, and I added her to my ‘semi-friends’ group. I also received a friend request from someone who said we had so many friends in common, and we went to so many of the same events, that it would be a shame not to connect both online and in person. Again, that sounds good to me as a semi-friend category!
But as for all those random invitations from people on both sites that do not bother to share what it is that piqued their interest about you (and/or, perhaps their underlying agenda of wanting to sell something or wanting to ask a favor)—-no thanks. While I usually respond with a ‘I see you added me in your network’ or ‘I see you added me as a friend; can you refresh my memory as to how we know one another?’ , you are still already starting off on the wrong foot in terms of developing a connection with me.
Circling back around, I share these opinions because I want the well-meaning architects, engineers, and construction professionals to go about the social media thing the right way. Dare I even say, the ‘classy’ way? If you do decide to let the systems go through your address book and find contacts, then make note of who those were sent to (consider just doing 20 at a time to keep it manageable), and send those people separate, quick messages explaining your intentions. Or, invite people one by one, and add a one sentence explanation that way.
The bottom line is that you need to add some warmth to this medium. Sending a quick custom note will ensure you’re not just in it for another (less desirable) agenda.
A Twitter sidenote: With Twitter, I am very pleased when I see that people are following me, and I visit each person’s profile that follows me to decide if I will follow back. There are some tricksters on Twitter that think it’s fun to add a bunch of people with the hope of instant follows, and I am not playing that game. In addition, Twitter is a medium where I do not personally feel that you need to send a special note to new followers, although I DO know some social media gurus that do it.