I don’t know about you, but I am always happy to connect with like-minded professionals around the world on LinkedIn.  Whenever I deliver a lecture or a keynote, I encourage delegates to connect with me and with each other.

Linkedin is a brilliant way of keeping in touch with your myriad of business contacts; being able to find them again after some time; be informed of their career moves; congratulate them on their successes and promotions; reconnect to past colleagues and to discover future opportunities for yourself and your network.

It’s also a great way to deliver value to those who may be interested in the same topics – and to keep up with the thought leadership others are sharing.

It is not, and should not be used as a poorly disguised advertising platform.  I’m finding a growing trend of people connecting and then sending a long message with an invitation to have a look at the services they offer.  It’s all rather ridiculous.  I know the services offered as I check out their profile before accepting the connection.  Personally, when this happens I don’t bother responding.  I block and report them if it’s particularly spammy.  And the worst offenders… those who attempt to use it as a dating platform.  Not cool.

Get smart about how you use social and digital media.  People are not stupid, we recognise what’s going on.  We have way too much info coming at us constantly and an inbox full of poorly disguised spam is extremely annoying to say the least.

Successful people and businesses work on the basis of building relationships and engaging with others; having those real conversations and above all delivering value with integrity.