Etiquette re LinkedIn?? Dos & Don'ts??

B

Betsy Og

Registered User
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Just got connected to this as a group I doing a bit of work with use it to organise meetings etc.

So I'm a newbie on it and dont want to make a gombeen of myself with loads of newbie mistakes. I saw elsewhere that "hard sell" doesnt go down too well, that wasnt my aim but it set me thinking, any other "rules":


  1. Is it naff to search out as many contact as you can find in the first week and basically ignore the yoke thereafter ?!
  2. How well do you need to know someone before you look to link with them?, you heard of/know of them, or they should have heard of/know of you.
  3. Can you reveal less to those you are not linked with?
  4. Should you accept all invitations good bad or indifferent (what harm can they do??)?, is it considered an insult not to accept (same question applies to facebook)? I'm recent enough on facebook and got a friend request from someone who knows people I know, but I cant ever recall meeting her, I accepted more or less in case she thought I was too aloof.
  5. I did the hotmail contacts search but found myself leaving out buddies as we're all old colleagues and still good friends but now, strictly speaking, competitors & I dont want them watching/copying anything I'm trying to develop. Does that make sense in the context of LinkedIn or am I just being an eejit/mean etc etc??
 
1. No, you'll get regular emails of updates concerning your 'contacts' which tends to trigger a trip back onto the site.
2. Personally I'd say you must know them and they must know you, I would never connect with someone 'random' or request connection to someone i'd heard of who wouldn't know me.
3. Not as far as I can see, only in terms of public and private profile and links.
4. Depending on what personal information you place on your public/private profile I would be prudent about the connections you accept, public profile info is accessible by anyone, private (including your own connections) by contacts only.
5. I won't worry about this - linkedin is a business tool empowering access to current and former acquaintances plus groups of like minded or educationally and professionally related individuals, useful for asking/answering questions and in part job or employee hunting and snooping a bit on what people are up to.
 
How does this site get your information. My name keeps popping up on it for different job titles with different companies over the years. I've never subscribed?
 
You need to join the website and you enter the information. Maybe there's more than one 'Niallers' in the world and it's their information you're seeing?!
 
LinkedIn is the exact same as any social network (facebook etc). It just focuses more on a professional user base. So all in all the same rules apply that do on the others.

1. Always be mindful of the terms and conditions of the service. Thye can change and this becomes especially relevant if uploading anything to the service to share with contacts

2. Always be aware that anything you post on the service will stay there forever. There is no privacy on social networking sites. You sign up and use it so you acknowlidge this be default with no comeback.

3. As regards LinkedIn specifically, as it is for professional use, in orderto get the best from it, you need to keep it relevant to yourself. This means:

* only recommending people if they really deserve it.
* only linking to people that will enhance your presence on the site.

In other words, let the service benefit you, not the otherway around. If you let it all you will get is a mailbox full of junk emails and very little benefit overall.

Understand the service, use only what is relevant to you and your professional life on it and it can become a very powerful business tool.
 
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