Recently I saw that Katharine Robinson (aka The Sourceress) had written a blog post setting out how she uses networking websites (so that no-one is offended if she doesn’t friend, connect to or follow them).
I loved the idea and thought I’d share mine (which as it happens is different from Katharine’s).
LinkedIn:
This is me on LinkedIn
I am more than happy to connect with anyone. Absolutely anyone. I know that goes against many people’s principals of only connecting to people that they’ve met in person or at least had conversations with over the ‘phone/email, etc. However, I enjoy facilitating introductions and helping others to connect, and a large network certainly helps. So feel free to just send me an invite.
Also, more than happy to forward on introductions. However, here you need to explain why you want to connect with the other person. I’m not in the business of forwarding introductions willy-nilly!
Twitter:
Like Katharine, I regard Twitter as a communication free for all. If you follow me I will check out your profile (sometimes this takes a bit longer than it should!) and will follow back if you meet some of these criteria:
– You work within the recruitment space
– You are based in the UK or you tweet about things that have some relevance to the UK market
– You work in some other industry than recruitment but talk about relevant subjects (eg, social media)
– You are someone I know!
– You live within about 10 miles of me
However, even if you meet all the above criteria but all you do is tweet links to jobs, talk about sport or other “boring” hobbies, or retweet celebs then I’m unlikely to follow you.
This is me @louisetriance
Facebook:
I love Katharine’s “thought experiment” for accepting friends on facebook….”Would I hug this person if I saw them in the street? If the answer is yes, you’ll probably get friended”. That’s pretty much my policy too. However, most of what I put on facebook is personal stuff so unless we are already friends I doubt you’d actually be interested in connecting with me!
Loving this blog, Louise and think Wayne and I will do the same in the next few weeks. We believe strongly in social networking adding substance to our brand and like your approach above. Thanks
It is clear that recruiters are going to have to be careful when it comes to contacting potential candidates via social media. Many people are not yet used to being contacted by recruiters through sites such as Facebook and Twitter. What we don’t want is for social recruitment to develop a reputation for being spammy. Recruiters need to make sure that they only contact highly relevant candidates and in a friendly, intelligent way. This is especially the case for Linked In.
What I like about this post is that you have considered how different each site is and how you have to carefully tailor your approach to invitations. I also found the twitter criteria interesting and it is useful to bear these in mind when considering following people.