As you know, I blog every business day on LinkedIn tidbits in some form or another that come up in my everyday life, with the aim of benefiting my readers.
I get “attaboy” comments on a blog piece, happily printed in the blog. Once in a while I get a comment that I prefer not to print in the blog.
One such seemingly snarky comment came today (the adjective came to my mind and oddly, the writer of the commentary used that term too) . The snark left his phone number and the context of through whom we were e-introduced.
I called the common connection we share to get a bit of the background on this person: how and when and why we were supposed to connect 6 months ago (long-lost in my memory).
I made the daringly ominous phone call to the snark to see if, then how and where, we should meet before we connect on LinkedIn.
I explained my policy of meeting and getting to know all to-be-connections before making the LinkedIn invitation. If I can’t meet you, I explained, we speak in-depth or email as such so I can determine if it is meant to be. The ex-snark (he was softening his stance as we spoke) agreed that was a good policy.
As we spoke (his LinkedIn profile open on my screen for speaking points to keep the conversation vibrant), I noticed how many great connections we share, including my ace video guy, and only 47 others, so a meeting has been scheduled for a “get to know you and then let’s connect on LinkedIn” session.
More later as this develops as I think it’s going to be very worthwhile for both of us.
Marc, you made lemonade as some say. It reflect your disposition of course; not sure all would “explore” things as you did. I look forward to a report on how it goes. I apply a slightly less stringent policy but I agree on interaction prior to ‘linking”.