Something people need to be cautious about is linking their LinkedIn account with their other social media accounts. Sure, some messages you'll want to share with both worlds, but I've had to quite following a couple people who set up their accounts so every darn tweet they sent came up on my LinkedIn feed. Immediate grounds for not unfollowing.

I handle LinkedIn requests the same way Laura does. If I don't know the person, or know other people they're already connected to, or they aren't at least in the same line of work there's no reason for me to connect with them.

You can tell who isn't a good match a lot of times, but like you, I don't always know. For those, I look at their profiles and see what they're posting on LI Groups.

About following people back on LinkedIn–I get a small, but steady stream of people who want to follow me for reasons I can't quite figure out since they use the standard LinkedIn connection request.

They don't seem to be potential clients and they aren't connected to my other contacts.

My strategy could be all wrong here, but I usually don't follow these folks back.

I wish people would understand that it's helpful to explain their reason for connecting. Just a simple sentence would do.

What do you think?

The image creeped me out too, Cathy. 🙂 That does sound desperate. It's a sales team looking under ever rock for business, and it's not a great sales tactic at all.

I'll share a tactic that has happened to me a couple of times lately that I find very creepy. I download a white paper/report that requires your name, email & phone number. Although I often back out when it asks for phone #s, if I really want the report (usually for research), I'll go ahead.

I no sooner download the report when my phone rings and it's the company responsible for the report saying they noticed I downloaded it. Besides ultra creepy, it smacks of pure desperation.