Skip to main content

Dig your well on LinkedIn before you get thirsty

LinkedIn connections for lawyers

Come January, I’ll have been a member of LinkedIn for fifteen years. I’ve made over 13,000 connections during this time.

I don’t share this to impress you, but to impress upon you the impact of one simple habit of mine. That being to pen a personal note to the person to whom I asked to connect on LinkedIn and to the person whose request to connect I accepted.

Sure there may have been a few I misssed, but I am certain I hit 95% or more. That’s over 10,000 notes, brief as they were. 

Why did I do it? 

There sure wasn’t a LinkedIn protocol, No one was holding themselves out as experts teaching us how to use LinkedIn. Today’s new lawyers hadn’t any use for LinkeIn back then, they were in the sixth grade.

I sent the personal notes because I thought it the right thing to do. The polite think thing to do.

How could I send out my first request to connect, something I was reluctant to do, without a note attached introducing myself and telling the person why I was asking to connect.

In that case it was a fellow Notre Dame grad, who I believe was general counsel of Coke. I told him I never sent out such a request, that I was a fellow alumnus and was curious how this LinkedIn thing worked.

He responded inside of twenty minutes, thanking me for my request to connect, asking me to visit sometime when I was in the area and wished me and my family a “Happy Easter Weekend.”

I would have felt like a stooge if I just hit the “connect” button and fired off to him a request to connect. Who was I? Why was I asking to connect?

Why not just knock on my office door and say, “My name is Dick Smith, here’s my Rolodex card and nice to shake your hand?” Or just call someone and say “This machine I have on my desk prompted me to call you unananouced and without introduction ask you to look at my Rolodex card.”

I get that there are cases when you just jumped out of a meeting or off a call when you each know each other that clicking the “connect” may be okay. But even then, what’s so hard about saying good meeting, good call etc.

LinkedIn has all the tools built in for a personal note to accompany your request to connect. Accepting a request connect even prompts you to drop them a note.

Minneapolis businessman and author, Harvey Mackay penned a book in 1999 entitled ‘Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty.’ Billed as the only networking book that you’ll ever need, the book served as a reminder to me to build a network before I need it.

A network on LinkedIn means more than idle connections, such a network means people knowing, or at least maybe remembering, each other. Enough to cause engagement.

Engagement in in the form of exchanges at the time of the connection. Engagement that comes as a result of LinkedIn’s social algorithms putting relevant news and information in front of each of us – causing mutual likes, comments and shares. And face to face engagement that’s the result of such earlier engagement.

Digging your well when you need it may be too late. Dig your well now by just being polite. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

LexBlog Con Can Provide Legal Companies and Law Firms an Opportunity to Connect With Influencers

Imagine a “LexBlog Con” where leading legal brands from startups to traditional larger players to law firms are offered the opportunity to connect with legal bloggers. After all, legal bloggers are quickly supplanting reporters and traditional media as the influencers of our legal community. From a blogger attendee, today, at BlogHer19 in Brooklyn. Day 1 of @BlogHer was wonderful. So many amazing brands to connect with #blogher19 #blogherpro #blogherlife #blogherstyle #blogherhealth19 #womenslifestyle #lifestyleblogger #lifestyleblog pic.twitter.com/IIcVrg9apz — Mademoiselle Skinner (@guestlistblog) September 18, 2019 There may not be a better way for legal industry companies to connect with the biggest influencers in legal than a conference of legal bloggers, ala LexBlog Con. LexBlog Con could start as simple as BlogHer did years ago and, as we had discussed for this last year, as a larger meetup of legal bloggers for a day of blogger education and networking. But ...

Election Coverage Now Comes From Blogs

Election coverage now comes from blogs. Whether they be blogs run by the mainstream media, blogs that have the status of mainsteam media, such as FiveThirtyEight , blogs published by legal commenators, or citizen bloggers, blogs dominate election coverage. In addition, what Americans read on social media is often a report originally published on a blog. This was not the case not that long ago. Sixteen years ago, the Boston Globe’s Teresa Hanafin , reporting from. the Democratic National Convention shared the following: They don’t have space in the media pavilion, and are forced to pay exorbitant prices for lunch at the press café – unless they are willing to wait in long lines at McDonald’s in the FleetCenter or bring their own food. The crowded workspace they do have is in the rafters of the convention hall, which they would be sharing with pigeons if this were the old Boston Garden. Who are they? They are bloggers: Those who write weblogs, online journals of sorts with regu...

Baker McKenzie : Content is Our Conversation With Clients and Audience

Content for lawyers is the currency of engagement. Content is not the end goal. Leah Schloss , Baker McKenzie’s associate director for North American communications, as part of Baker’s being recognized as the leading law firm in Good2bSocial’s The Social Law Firm Index shared: We want our content to resonate with people. We don’t want to put out content that people aren’t engaging with. The content we put out there is for our clients and what they say they need from us. We think of our content as part of a conversation with our clients and audience . (Emphasis added) The end game in legal blogging is not to publish a blog post. That’s just a start. The conversation – the dialogue which ensues from “content” is what leading bloggers are after. It’s from this engagement that reputations and relationships are born. Attending a social event for networking, lawyers keen to business development are not focused on the words they speak – the content – they’re focused on the conversa...