With over 15 million users only in India, Linkedin, for sure, is the most popular professional social networking site in the world. Almost every person who is into a job or business has a profile there. You can seek a job, promote your brand, enhance B2B or B2C activities, join groups that interest you and even discuss professional topics.
There could be two ways of benefiting from it:
One is that you only add people you know very well or have personally met. This for sure is a safe bet but then chances of you expanding the network, promoting yourself professionally, hunting for job become very limited plus you don't want to talk to same people with whom you have already spend 10-12 hours in office or meet very often. You would like to explore new people and opportunities. Brainstorming with unknown people could be very interesting and refreshing as well.
Second is that you accept or sent invites to professionals whom you do not know well but feel that the person could be a great prospect in future or may be at present. You get more exposure plus since business/job conditions are very dynamic now-a-days, you always have new people in your network to provide you with fresh opportunities and updates.
Now let's talk about what I would really like to say J- The flip Side.
Find it strange when, out of the blue, an unknown person sends a request for recommendation and you have no clue what to write. Get a life people! J
Find it strange when professionals who have a kick ass profile, send you casual chats like ' Hey wass up' ,' Nice pic' , 'Are you single', ' Let's catch up sometime',' Tell more about you' on your personal chat ids and expecting you to reply humbly like an answering machine. Such people would break all box office records of Salman Khan movies, on dating sites, I guess :). And they would not even bother to check their watch before sending it. They will send it at a time convinient to them even if it is at 1 am, 2 am and so on when you are busy sleeping after a long day! Yes, we do have smart phones and we do forget to switch it off at times, before hitting the bed. Such professionals forget that there is an inbox facility on Linkedin too and they can drop in an official mail and see if things can be taken forward professionally during office hours. It's like you randomly stumble upon a contact in yellow pages("randomly" most often is a girl with picture, #PunIntended) and call on the personal no. to check what's going on. :)
Happy Networking! (The font colors are inspired by the new T20 Jersey for Team India.
JJJ
