I’ve been meaning to write this post for quite a while but as I have been away from blogging for a while it got pushed to the back burner. I’m now attempting to post at least once a week… let’s see how that goes.

I have always been slightly confused about what LinkedIn was actually for, is it a supplier catalogue, a supplier hunting ground, a place that isn’t Facebook to post rubbish about how brilliant you or your life is.

Or is it a place where likeminded people share their experience, wisdom and skills with others who want to use or learn from you ( by use I mean employ).

I hope it’s closer to the latter…

The one main thing I don’t like about it, and it has nothing to do with the platform but the people using it, is the way random people want to connect.

I believe that the reason for a connection is so that there is a mutual advantage of connecting, and i emphasis the word mutual. And when i say mutual I dont mean from a sales point of view (i know I should not start a sentence with the word ‘and’). All too often (it feels like every day) I get a connection request from a complete stranger with no introduction or narrative – they get immediately ignored – Although if I’ve read them I could not have ignored them. The next one I get is a sales person introducing their organisation and how wonderful my life would be if we ‘connected’ and bought their product or ‘I see that you are Head of …….’.  Whilst that may be a useful sales technique for some people it does not work for me, where is the mutual benefit…

So, if you want to connect, create a connection put some effort in to find out about me and the organisation I work for and where we can both win.