When I meet people and tell them I’ve written three best-selling books about LinkedIn, they excitedly tell me “I’m on LinkedIn too and I have hundreds of people asking me to connect. What do I do with all of those invitations?”
Well it depends…
What’s your purpose for being on LinkedIn?
When I wrote Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business First Edition, I had a whopping 642 connections.
LinkedIn was powerful but nowhere near as powerful as it is today. I logged in occasionally, answered a few questions in LinkedIn Answers (remember that?), answered a few questions in LinkedIn Groups when they had real conversations, then I went away for a week or two.
Barely using LinkedIn, I was able to get new clients by helping people with no expectations.
I had this crazy goal that I wanted to max out my connections at 30,000 because other LinkedIn experts were maxing out.
I started accepting every invitation, even if there was no chance we could ever do business together.
My network was a mess and I was being bombarded with promotional messages all day long.
Now I’m very focused and only accept invitations from people who are potential clients or referral partners.
Grow your network carefully! Bigger is not always better.
