Are you an Open or Closed Networker?

Well, I'm now three months into my social networking experiment with LinkedIn and it's time to share some findings...

When I started my LinkedIn experiment, I was clearly a "closed" networker - only letting my most trusted contacts who were already on LinkedIn be new connections. My network grew rapidly, and looking at my early March post, I was very excited about my 90,000 or so new contacts. I was adding contacts at the rate of two or three per week and it sure seemed like a lot of work.

Let's put that in perspective. Three months just about to the day and my network is now 250+ direct connections and over 7 million contacts. I am an "open" network believer - MyLink500, TopLinked, LION (I have joined all three of these open networking organizations that makes it easy to find people and be found).

A closed networker would say, "Why are you wasting your time on all those meaningless connections? You don't know those people. They won't refer any business to you! Don't spend any more energy on that open networking rubbish, ok? Focus on meeting new people and getting to know/nurture the productive people in your old network."

Don't worry my closed networker friend! I am building and nurturing the inner circle of my network. But at the same time, I have gotten access to over a third of the members of LinkedIn. When I have needed to find someone who has a service I need, it has been very easy to tap my broad LinkedIn network and draw them right in. I can't imagine trying to find these people without LinkedIn. I can't imagine the time I would have spent developing an equivalently qualified contact when I needed it - that would have been a show stopper.

So how much time have I spent? Well, I did send out just over 100 invitations to well connected open networkers - that was just a couple of hours of time, but boy did it return dividends! Now that I've got a decent number of connections and am listed as an open networker, I am getting at least one inbound invitation to connect each day. Approving those connection requests and scanning the new connection's resume takes just seconds. So my time investment has been minimal, and is getting even less and less.

Besides finding great contacts when I needed them, what other benefits have I gained? Well, the largest would have to be corporate intelligence. While I only have connections to about 1/3 of the LinkedIn membership (between 60-70% seems to be the upper limit for an open networker, no matter how many connections), I usually get by name access to about 60% of the resumes in LinkedIn for any particular target company. Wow! And that gives me not only resumes, but employee history at that company. You also get to learn a lot about what's going on and who the company insiders are by looking at references, etc. You can see some of the more trusted external relationships with customers, partners, peers, etc. It's really too much information at times, but you certainly don't feel like you're going in cold on first contact with that company.

Now, is having all that information out there a liability for a company? I don't think so. It's good to know that a company has a great employee "X" who provides great "Y" service to all their customers, for example. No smart salesperson is going to waste their own time or the target company's time talking about providing "Y" service -- unless they see that employee "X" just moved to a new employer and the target company is going to need someone who can provide some "Y" ASAP. Such an open network makes things more efficient for everyone. Let's be serious - no one would be so stupid as to put the "secret sauce" out on LinkedIn, but the social knowledge that's out there helps everyone do a better job.

Ok, so far we've got two benefits: easy access to great contacts and deep corporate intelligence. A third benefit from a wide open network is exposure. I'm not sure if I've hit critical mass just yet, but I certainly am getting a lot more notice. My profile is getting viewed an awful lot and I am turning up in search results on LinkedIn more and more.

Summary: Open networking has been a blessing, and it took very little effort to prime the pump so that growth is self-sustaining. Benefits have far, far outweighed the time commitment. I definitely have a more productive inner circle of my network (my "closed" network connections), but I am rapid growing the outer circle and easily pulling some of those people in. So what's next: I'll keep experimenting and see where I am in another month or so. Who wants to bet on 8, 10 or 12 million connections by then?

About the Author: Bill Franklin is founder and partner of V2E Group Inc, a management consulting firm helping it's clients with Vision, Strategy, Management and Execution through Finance, Operations and Technology Services. Everyone is glad to find a helpful partner along the way - who doesn't want another "Star" on their team? V2E Group is a helpful partner - talk to us about adding another "Star" to your team.

Bill's LinkedIn Public Profile is: http://www.linkedin.com/in/wnfranklin (feel free to add him to your network).