What Am I Going to Do About LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is the business card of social media. It's that professional component that presents a side of you not seen on the Facebooks, Myspaces and Twitters of the SM world. It's the buttoned up, creased pants and polished shoes of professionals on any level of job seeking (including those who 'aren't').


My pet project gets lots of attention from the media. I get lots of b-roll footage exposure as well as my one appearance on national news. It's cool, I'm having fun and I'm building a name for myself above and beyond any of my collective paying gigs. So of course, I'm keeping my volunteering adventures current on LinkedIn. So as a result, folks known and unknown are coming out of the woodwork. It's a challenge for me to decide just what I'm going to do with the random "Link" requests from folks I don't actually know. I keep my contacts limited to to known people who I know personally and respect professionally. I do have two people who I have not met personally, but know they are well-known professionals that enhance my network.
To keep my credibility, I keep the people I don't really know to a minimum. I tend to avoid "collectors" and "LIONS" since they can turn predatory on thier contacts (more about this - another post for another day). Definition: LIONs on LinkedIn are people with 500+ contacts. LIONs don't care if they actually know the person, they just want to create a large network.

So I'm bogged down - do I don't I 'Link' with them? I'm also bogged down by this post. Maybe I'll revisit it and come back to edit it in the future. People always seem to get stuck in the details so I'm going to throw this one up on the Blog - I've been writing it on and off for 4 days. It's time to set it out there and let it just be. Now I can move on and keep this blog going.