Connecting Versus Following on LinkedIn

Have you gotten a few connection requests on LinkedIn from attractive ladies that don’t seem all that familiar?

No, random good-looking women aren’t suddenly finding your professional credentials fascinating. You’ve likely been spammed from a fake account. These kinds of requests are a real wet blanket on LinkedIn, which is an otherwise valuable networking tool.

These spam accounts do raise an interesting question though: Should you accept connection requests from every genuine LinkedIn account, or just those from people you have had a strong working relationship with?

Strategic vs. Open Networking Connection Strategies

There are two basic strategies to making connections on LinkedIn: Strategic Networking and Open Networking. Strategic Networking emphasizes making quality over quantity, while Open Networking emphasizes the opposite.

Strategic Networking is more for people who simply want to digitally store the connection they’ve already made elsewhere. They don’t expect much return on building an extensive network, so they don’t invest much time in building one.

Open networkers are typically salespeople or recruiters; individuals who deal in people and connections. These folk don’t need to forge deep meaningful connections. They just need to access as many people as possible in order to increase their chances of a sale or a hire.

Whatever connection strategy you choose, it’s important to be able send an effective connection request. Take advantage of the opportunity to customize each request by mentioning if know each other, the person’s background and any mutual interests.

It’s also important to be able to spot spam accounts that send you connection requests. One telltale sign is a profile image that looks suspiciously like a stock photo. Google Image search allows you to input and image and see where else it pops up on the web. If the image for Jane Doe from Company XYZ turns out to be a stock photo for ‘professional woman’ – you’ve got a spam account on your hands.

Spam accounts also often have no LinkedIn connections or no profile picture. Spam accounts also often have a company logo for their profile picture, a company name for their profile name or a profile name that looks machine-generated.

Following Not Connecting

In addition to making connections on LinkedIn, you can also follow famous people and industry leaders. While Connections are two-way relationships between who know each other, Following allows you to see what someone is sharing publicly on LinkedIn, including any content that they’ve created. However, this is not a two-way relationship.

The biggest benefit to following famous business people and thought leaders is having access to long-form posts that can be very informative. In order to follow someone, go to their LinkedIn profile and click on one of their posts. A FOLLOW button should pop up; click it.

At Career Concepts, we can help you with any part of the recruitment process, including sourcing candidates from our LinkedIn network. If you are in need of a custom staffing solution, please feel free to contact us today.