Should you invite people into your social media networks if you don’t know them personally?

Anyone can be your “friend” these days. Social media networks like LinkedIn and Facebook have fairly loose policies (read: almost non-existent) about who can connect with who and so people are inviting other people into their networks all the time who they don’t actually know.

Is this a wise practice?  Well, lets take a look at the pros and cons:

Pros

• You will be connected to waaaayyyy more people, which opens up your reach of who you can contact and communicate with.
• You will be able to browse more information for doing research.
• You will be able to keep tabs on a larger segment of the online population.
• Opportunities will become available to you because you will notice someone updating with status, or asking a question, or something that alerts you to a golden chance you would have missed otherwise.

Cons

Well…. one big con. You won’t know anyone in your online network, so your connection to them is one step above meaningless.

Some people go with a smaller, but more tight knit network. Others connect with everyone and their brother, hoping that mass builds their network.

What are your thoughts? Are you an open networker, or a closed networker? Let us know in the comments below!

-Coach Kolansky

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Tags: Coffee Tea You and Me, facebook, linkedin, networking, social networking