“LinkDaddy” Marc Freedman owns the software company RazorPop in addition to several other small businesses in the technology and digital media sectors. He also runs the Dallas-based networking group Dallas Blue. In four years, Freedman has built up a LinkedIn database of 20,000 people worldwide. In this Q&A, the entrepreneur/consultant/uber-networker discusses LinkedIn’s capabilities as a business tool and beyond.
First, please describe how LinkedIn is different from the online networking of yore.
LinkedIn is a service that encompasses a feature set involved with bringing your offline network into the online world and increasing your online network through social networking tools.
LinkedIn is actually a very limited tool. At the end of the day, all it’s good for is being a huge database to connect on a direct personal basis with other people. Conceptually, it’s simple. (The LinkedIn developers) like to think of themselves as Web 2.0, but they are very far from Web 2.0. This is not a place to manage groups or manage contacts. Really, it’s just a place to find other people. The real key is how you integrate that with your business. It depends on what you need to do for your business or other aspects of your life.
Click here to learn the basic uses for LinkedIn.
Doesn’t maintaining a large network (on or off LinkedIn) ever become counterproductive–like a second (unpaid) job?
Networking is an institution and activity that has its own logic and philosophy. It’s not tit for tat, I do something for you and you do for me. It is the proverbial “pay it forward” mentality. I’ve been doing this for a number of years, and it’s taken three or four years for my network to come back and pay off in a substantial way. It’s really like any investment. If you understand and have a long-term perspective, time and inclination, it can pay off.
The only expectation you can have of online networking is that it’s an opportunity. If a request or announcement meets your criteria, you will forward it. You start a conversation with the expectation that you will reciprocate if and when you can.
Here’s an example: I have a programmer–a former employee and good friend who now lives in Buenos Aires. We were chatting, and he says, “I have a problem.” His dog–a 150-pound Rottweiler–was very sick, losing his hair, and was possibly going to die. He needed a zinc formulation that you can’t get in Buenos Aires, but can buy on Amazon for $10. So I bought it and shipped it, but it never got there. It turns out because of drug trafficking laws, the import of any product like that is banned.
Now my friend was in a real bind, and he said, “Mark, you know people; what can you do?” Because of my network, I had 100 connections who either lived or had lived in Argentina. I sent out an SOS, and within two days I received 20 responses–everything from “My brother’s a chemist” to “I know someone who works at Argentinean consulate and can help you.” It happened because of this large online network.
On your LinkedIn recommendations, I read one from a man who had gone from only having a few connections to having 1,000. How?
Mylink500.com is what he used. It’s a directory of top LinkedIn networkers, as well as open networkers. If you go to the site, they say they’re open to invitations from other members. Download a list, and invite everybody on the list. There are about 1,200 people in the database; it’s pretty easy to add 1,000 connections that way.
In that case, though, wouldn’t the connections be superficial? How could they be useful if they didn’t even know him a day ago?
I don’t think it’s limited to that. If I were to segregate the (networking) universe in three classes, there would be:
- People with large, weak networks. A lot of them are recruiters. They have lots of people on file, but they don’t use or support their network in a material way.
- Large networkers who are active in supporting their networks. If you have 500-plus contacts in your network, you can’t have a strong connection with each of them. But you can actively manage your network–spend a few hours each week processing requests and helping people if you can. It becomes incumbent upon you to develop a strategy and process about acquiring and building your network.
- Strong networkers. Far and away, this comprises the majority of LinkedIn users. These are people with 50 to 300 contacts, each one of which is a strong connection.
The fundamental relationship on LinkedIn is to forward referrals and accept updates from one another, and that’s it. The rest is going to be based on the quality of relationship. If people don’t know each other, there’s neither an expectation nor a likelihood that they’re going to help each other out in any way.
What’s step 2 for this man if he wants to strengthen his existing network?
If he’s a job seeker, there are two potential ways. The first is to use the existing network to send out an update which might well be, “I’m looking for a new job.” I think that’s what he did. Clearly if he can continue to expand his network, one would think the size of his network would be proportional to new job leads.
The second would be where the value is: the ability to target your network. Target hiring managers, executives and decision-makers in your field. Find these people, get referred and secure informational interviews, starting on LinkedIn.
He also said that out of those 1,000 connections, he got one solid job offer. In my business, that’s a pretty low return rate. How could he raise the percentage?
But that’s marketing. That’s like saying I’ve been alive for X amount of years, and I’ve only gotten so many job leads per year of life. It’s not directly measurable. To say one job lead out of 1,000 contacts is bad, I disagree. One job lead in two days is better than he had been getting, which was nothing.
You mentioned on the LinkedIn message boards that you felt that some people you didn’t know were taking advantage of the system to request recommendations from you. Could you talk about that?
The salient issue is not what I as forwarder should do. Anyone who receives a message can and should in good conscience do what he or she wants. The problem is from the sender’s perspective. Because of poor design on LinkedIn, they don’t make it clear that a recommendation from a former colleague/supervisor is very different from a personal recommendation. A job recommendation means you actually worked with this person and can recommend his or her work.
Many people who are inexperienced and don’t understand nuances don’t think it through and treat the work referral as a standard introduction referral because that’s how LinkedIn handles it. From the forwarder’s perspective, you want to help somebody, but you can’t give him or her the recommendation because you didn’t work with him or her. It makes that person look bad, and you look bad because of poor design on LinkedIn’s part, so anyone requesting would really want to be cognizant of that.
According to some LinkedIn users, there are different levels of LinkedIn, which correspond with different kinds of networking. So an open networker such as yourself might use the tool much differently than “closed networkers” who have always made a practice of safeguarding their contacts.
I’m not familiar with your industry, but I am with recruiters. There are clearly a small number of recruiters that subscribe to that theory:”I’m not going to share lists; I’m not even going to forward requests.” My philosophy is, it’s a huge world out there, and we’re all big boys and girls. I think having a closed network like that is ultimately counterproductive.
One of the things about LinkedIn that’s a huge detractor but I think is ultimately a positive in this discussion is that there’s no qualitative aspect to connections. All someone outside may know is that you and I are connected. They have no idea what the nature of the relationship is. We might have gone to school together, we might be neighbors or we might have an intimate business relationship. From the perspective of shared media lists, the value is not always in having the name. The value comes from the relationship.
And the flip side is, if these people are already on LinkedIn, they’re going to find them anyway. Whether they find them through you becomes irrelevant. They can contact them with or without your help.
There’s a lot of talk about “paying it forward,” but it seems most normal, entry-level networkers have no idea what that means. It’s almost like they’re going around looking for a handout. Doesn’t that glut up the system?
If you put yourself out there in any way, you open yourself up to people on the fringe. Post your e-mail address and you’ll get legitimate inquiries, and you’ll also get spam. You’ll get unsolicited invitations and people who make assumptions. If you’re building a large network, there will be a lot of inexperienced networkers–people with different expectations who don’t share the same values as you. This doesn’t just apply to LinkedIn.
How would you respond to the naysayers?
There are a lot of people who feel that LinkedIn is a waste of time. They don’t see any value. I first would say there are absolutely industries and professions where LinkedIn is going to have less value. It’s not going to be accessible to you at a business level if your business is selling residential energy in Texas or if you’re working for Amway or if you’re selling prepaid insurance.
But there is a lot of value besides making business prospects.
The thing is, it’s damn complicated. If you don’t come at it with appropriate expectations, it’s not going to be worth your time and effort. It’s going to be a bad experience. It provides no support, the customer service is horrible, and it’s difficult to get into. So that attitude is perfectly understandable.
One of the hazards of networking on a place like this is if someone says they don’t know you, you get penalized–even if they try to change the response later. How do you allay that? Is it worth the risk?
In my opinion, this is atrocious design on LinkedIn’s part. A year ago they had a “no” button that carried no consequences. Today, people don’t have a way to say no. They receive an invitation, and they can accept it, archive it or say “I don’t know.” With the current system, archiving is the same thing as saying “No.” But to most people, archiving means “I don’t want to think about it.” Most people click “I don’t know this person” because that’s the option closest to what they want to do. Most people who click on it would not do so if they knew the repercussions.
Do you keep your entire address book open to your connections?
I don’t. I did have at one point, but if you have 500-plus connections, browsing leads to a bad experience. The default account setting allows people to browse your connections, and in general I recommend use it because it’s good networking and is valuable to the browser. The problem is, if you have too many pages–and I have several hundred–it leads to bad networking. LinkedIn displays 90 connections per page, and there’s no way to search them. So you can’t target through browsing.
Also, the expectations are different. You can’t make the overarching assumption of a strong mutual connection if someone has a large network. Although you’re in my network, Lena, someone shouldn’t assume that the best way to reach Lena is to go through Marc. To find you, they should go through the best/strongest connections– someone who can give them the best referral. And to find my best/strongest connections, they would need to ask directly, not browse.
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One Response to “MyLinkDaddy–Q&A with Marc Freedman”
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December 27th, 2007 at 9:58 am
I’ve been on LinkedIn and only recently started to get more into it. I haven’t done any real job searching or recruiting on there, but I’ve found it a great tool for finding past colleagues and as a journalist, finding sources for articles. It’s also been a great way to increase the good info out there about me.
I agree that there are definitely parts of the system that need redesigning, though. Aside from the things you discussed in your interview, LinkedIn tries to block things from you — like people’s names in a search — if you don’t have a paid subscription, but then if you go out to Google and search for the pages/people you’re looking for, you can find links to their pages and full info on the site.
I can’t wait to hear more about how you’ve been using the site and if it has helped you get new projects.