 Hi, this is George. Welcome back to the LinkedIn course. So today what we're going to do is I'm going to show you how I accept my LinkedIn connections so that Hopefully you'll be able to do it more efficiently, more effectively. So here we are on the mind map, and I want to show you where the notes are for this task. It's under strategic actions, more frequent, and then it's under respond to your invitations and messages regularly. And I have made it more convenient for you because, and I says, oh, one to two times a week is fine. So You know, I've actually left my, because I've been waiting to do this little module video, I've left my LinkedIn limitations I'm responding to for many weeks now. So you'll see that I have more than I typically do. But anyway, one, I'd say if you're, if you're, if you're honest, if you don't want to spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, just once a week is fine to do this action. So to find your invitations, you can go ahead and click right here, and it'll bring you right there. Now, let me show you what Let's see here. I'm just going to open a new tab here and go to LinkedIn.com. Typically, what LinkedIn wants you to do is to kind of hover over this. And then if you click see all, okay, if you click see, and you can, of course, you know, say yes, directly by checking these. I'm not checking. I'm not clicking this yet. But you can say yes directly by accepting the invite here. That's an easy way of doing it. But I don't really like doing that way. And I'll show you why. Also, if you click see all, what happens is you're brought to the screen, which I really don't like because actually that's kind of, well, I actually didn't notice this part before. If you move your mouse over the little thing, it shows you what their, their invitation message says, you know, and it's usually pretty generic, which is why I don't, I think most invitations on LinkedIn are not done very well. So pending invitations and these, this means that we have 13 connections in common. You can hover over this to see who the connections are. And then you can directly say yes direct to them right here. But then this is kind of like one click, one click, one click at a time. What I prefer to do is I've given you a link here. I found a link that makes, makes much easier. So I'm going to click on this link right now. And that again, this mind map is available to you as part of the discourse. So just go to this mind map and you'll be able to find the link right there or you can type it in directly to your browser. Okay. So here, the link I clicked on right here brings me directly to here. And this is much easier. And I'll tell you why it's much easier because I'm able to click this checkbox right at the top here. And if I click on that, it's, it selects, it selects, I think 10 of them, right, right in one page and I can click accept. But I want to accept all 10. Now, what is the principle in terms of whether you should accept, should you be more liberal in accepting your connections? My, I have actually gone both ways in my LinkedIn usage over the past 10 years or however many I've been using them for a long time. I used to think that to be more conservative about accepting connections because that's the way LinkedIn tends to, and what's interesting is that LinkedIn itself has moved, LinkedIn, the service itself has moved its philosophy about connections to more conservative, meaning only accept connections from people you, whose work you can endorse. They used to, to really emphasize that point. But now they're much more open. I mean, now you're able to, you know, as I show you, you can easily accept connections just like that. And so I, it's also mirrored my philosophy over time. I used to be more conservative about it. Now I'm much more open. I'll tell you why. The more first degree connections you have, and by the way, what's a first degree connection? A first degree connection is someone who asks to be connected with you. So this person, the Marie is asking to connect with me, right? Should I accept or ignore? If I accept, then she becomes a first degree connection. Otherwise, right now she is a secondary connection because she and I share a bunch of first degree connections. You know, these people are my first degree connections, and these people also have the Marie as first degree. Therefore, she and I are second degree right now. If I accept a connection, she and I are first degree. Same thing. If I had gone to her profile and asked her to be a connection, and she accepted, then we'd be first degree. The more first degree connections you have on LinkedIn, the more you show up when people search on LinkedIn for someone like you, when they search your skills, when they search what kinds of accomplishments you've done, any keywords they use in the LinkedIn people search. If you have more first degree connections, you come up higher in the search ranking. So basically, I thought about this, and I really believe that on the whole, it's better to have more first degree connections than fewer, even with people you don't know. As long as they seem interesting enough, maybe you share some kind of interest with them, or maybe they're a prospective client, maybe they're a prospective referral source, or maybe they're just a kindred spirit. Those are good categories to say yes to. So here is how I actually do it. I come to this link, and then I kind of take a quick look at what their name is. D. Marie is not supposed to put speaker and success mentor here. If LinkedIn finds out that she's putting more than her name, you're only supposed to put your name in that field. If LinkedIn finds out she's putting more than her name, sometimes they do audits of members, she'll get punished for that. I was warned because I used to do the same thing that she's doing. Her professional headline is Field Organizer, Office Management at California Clean Money Campaign. Now, it's interesting because I don't think she's, I don't think she's updated. I mean, if she wants to be a speaker and success mentor, her professional headline should really say that rather than her current job. So anyway, but I happen to be interested in clean money. I think campaign finance reform is really, really important for a democracy to be working. So she and I, I would say that she and I are probably kindred spirits in there, and I have clients who are speakers and success mentors. So she's a prospective client. So I would say yes to her. So here's what I would, I don't want to spend much more time doing this. Basically, I look down and I kind of do a quick glance to see if they are a prospective client, prospective referral source, or kindred spirit. We share some kind of interest or peer basically. Yeah, this is a peer. I like that this is not just some, some mercenary online marketer, but this isn't, he has intuition here. So I like that he has more spiritual bent to this market, which I like. Physical therapist. So this is, this is starting to be like, well, I don't, I don't really have any clients who are physical therapists. So I don't know whether, you know, she, I should accept her connection. What I probably would do is I look at the shared connections by clicking on shared connections. And it shows me that, you know, she's, and none of these I'm really close to. So I might go and look at her profile a little bit to see if maybe she's trying to build another type of business that I could support physical therapist. So I don't really see anything that really connects with me. So I probably would actually, no, never mind. I would say back to my principle of accepting more people than, than ignoring this is fine. I actually realized I'm really looking for spam profiles with people who are absolutely not in no way that they could be ever potential client potential referral source or kindred spirit. Physical therapies mean she's interested in health. I'm interested in health. So that's, that's great. East Coast Rescue. Okay, that's starting to get random. By rescue, I miss, if it's a pet rescue rate, if it's a people rescue, that's really not in my realm. Near Coastal Seaman Rescue. Okay, so that's really random. And I would, I would probably click ignore if she's a nice person, but just not, not, you know, anyway. So when you ignore someone, by the way, you can, you can click on I don't know this person or this is spam. Now let me tell you why you probably shouldn't do that unless it's really a spam. If I click I don't know Karen McCarthy, it actually punishes her in the LinkedIn system. She won't be able to send as many invitations in the future. They have some kind of scoring that is hidden. But if enough people click I don't know Karen McCarthy, she won't be able to send any more invitations. So I don't want to do that. I want to punish her. This is even greater punishment. Fewer people need to click this for, for the profile to be reviewed and possibly discontinued. So I'm not going to click either one ignore is not a, it's not a punishment. So that's good. Okay. So this is a, a peer of mine. So we probably, and Nate says I've been following. Okay. So I like what Nate's doing here. Look at this. I've been following you for a bit. Love the message you share. You're doing great work. Just want to let you know it touched me being a positive influence. Hard work. Thanks for committing yourself to it. Nate, great job, man. This is a really look at how positive and heartfelt this message is, right? Absolutely. I'm going to accept this connections. By the way, what I'm going, what I'm doing now is I'm going through the ones that are basically letting these be for now because I'm going to accept them all in one fell swoop. After I first ignore the ones that absolutely are not, not connected to me. I actually know this person. She's great. So I'm obviously going to connect yes to her. Homopathic wait, yes, because that's a potential client. Outreach Lee is on a Kaiser. You know, yeah. Probably not, you know, probably not. So not a potential client. I actually, as a call, as a friend of a friend, so I'm going to say yes to that person. Senior director at United Financial Services kind, you know, kind of senior managing director. So that's kind of random. It's not really, again, probably not a prospective client, prospective referral source. It might not be, but anyway, I'm just showing you what I would naturally do. Laboratory manager. Again, that's pretty random for me. And plus, look at this. This could be a real person, but this looks kind of like a stock photo for some reason. And we don't share any connections. So that automatically, if they, if they and I don't share any connections, there's a warning sign there because this could be a spam profile. I'm not saying it is. If I had more time on this video, well, maybe I will. Let me actually go and try to stiff out whether this might be a spam profile. So I can show you 145 connections. So enough connections where it's probably not a spam profile. But see, industrial laboratory environment, probably not a potential client, not a potential referral source. I don't see anything that shows that we have similar interests. So probably not a stamp spam profile because, you know, there's a, well, I don't know who knows, right? But it's really not related to me. So I am going to click ignore. It doesn't punish, but it just says ignore. I actually, this is a audience member, very nice person. So I'm definitely going to accept an old college friend, even though probably not a potential client, not a potential referral source. It doesn't know a college friend, so I will be accepting. This looks like a potential client or referral source. So yes, I'm going to accept. So I'm just going to go ahead and up here at the very top, I'm going to click on all these four. And when I do this, it only checks the people that are currently visible on this page. I have 11 more pages to go through. And the reason, again, I usually have less, because I usually do this on a weekly basis, but I'm waiting weeks to have time to do this video. So that's why I kind of kept these to show you. But anyway, this only accepts all these people. And once I've checked this box up here, and I've already ignored the ones that are not a great fit or not even a basic fit, now I'm going to click accept for these people. And what happens is you'll see what happens is LinkedIn will take a little time. Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes it's pretty quick. Okay, this time it was pretty good. Ten mutations were accepted. As you can see, now a connection, now a connection. Stacey, now a connection. I remember I ignored this person. I did not punish them. So I did not click either of these. Nate is connection, Teresa, Teresa, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. And now LinkedIn shows me 10 more. Currency codes, top 5%. All right, this is really kind of strange. I don't mean what that means. The image is also kind of strange. So I'm probably going to ignore on this one. And by the way, this is hopefully helpful for you to see how someone like me, a power user on LinkedIn, quickly evaluates profiles by not even looking at them, but just looking at the image, the name, and the professional headline and the shared connections. I actually know this person, so obviously you can accept her. I don't know why this showed up twice. Maybe she has two... Oh, by the way, it doesn't mean she has two different LinkedIn profiles. It could mean that, but usually when this kind of thing happens where it's the exact same image, exact same shared connections, exact same professional headline, it means that LinkedIn is having a little tiny bug. So don't worry about it. I'm just going to accept it's probably the same person, same profile. This LinkedIn is a quick hiccup for now. Look at this. Okay. Definitely no, no. All capital letters is basically shouting in online etiquette. So this basically tells me, well, actually in Asia, people are sometimes use all capital letters to get people's attention more. I just, I don't really like that personally. So, and yeah, I just, this is chair mentor coach in power sales. So, you know, maybe, but I don't like the spirit of this, sort of, I want your attention more than anyone else's. I just, this doesn't seem like playing fair to me, honestly. So I'm probably going to ignore it. Okay. Creating stronger filers. I like that, you know, just, I connect with values. And so I like that helping clients. Okay. So influence or authors of financial client or referral source, technology lead. Okay. Now, okay. This is a good example of someone who maybe not a spammer, but someone who may be using LinkedIn to try to get business for their technology. A lot of virtual assistants and sort of online technology contractors go on LinkedIn and we'll try to add you to, because if you could remember, now one of the downsides of having more first degree connections is that every first degree connection you have has your email address that you have made available on LinkedIn to your first degree connections. Okay. This is by default, whatever main email address you've made available. I'll show you where I'm seeing the email address. When I click on my picture up here, okay, it brings me, actually, no. I hover over my picture. I click on privacy and settings and I sign in. And this is my primary email that I select. I have many email addresses linked to this profile, but this is my primary email. That's available to my first degree connections and so is yours. So that's the one drawback is that you could get people spanning you at your email address if you accept people that might spam. So this person, again, no invitation connection and probably a sort of outsourced technology lead gen. person, so I'm probably going to ignore this audience member. I recognize this person. I recognize her energy medicine potential client or this. I actually have worked with him before. So I'm going to accept his connection. Director has sustained life to work. I don't know what that means. So I would probably look at this profile and make a decision. So anyway, I hope this has given you enough examples there. I don't know why this is still there, but I hope this helps. And remember until the next video, the most important thing you can do instead of just watching these videos is implement, apply. So as you implement and apply, if you have any questions, comment underneath this video. If you're watching this on YouTube or if you're watching this in Udemy, you can add a discussion directly on the module. And I look forward to seeing what your questions and comments are. I'm not always able to answer them quickly, but do comment and answer questions, ask questions. Others may be able to answer you or I will always be occasion to go in there and answer questions. So I hope this is helpful and until the next video, be well.