Strategies for Managing LinkedIn's Network Updates

As you grow your linkedIn network, you will notice that LinkedIn “Network Updates” tend to grow geometrically. Moreover, there are many moving parts, so how do you manage this information to your satisfaction? Here I’ll outline a few strategies for channelling the information, so you receive it and keep it to maximize your effectiveness.

Background

“Network Updates” are news from your “first-level” connections (your most trusted contacts). Examples are when they connect with someone new, change jobs, ask questions, answer questions, etc. You have several choices for how to view and interact with this information.

Considerations

First, you don’t have to treat all types of “Network Update” the same because LinkedIn lets you control each type separately. See Account Settings/Email Notifications/Receiving Emails. You can configure each category of update separately to: 1) receive an individual email, 2) receive digest email or 3) no email (“Web only”). These boil down to whether you want to keep the communication on LinkedIn (choice 3) or download and store via email (choices 1 and 2). I have used several combinations.

I find that using RSS to read updates is best, but I also download Network Updates (and all other LinkedIn communications) to email for several reasons:

1. RSS is awesome for integrating and viewing updates from multiple sources (i.e. Linkedin, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook), but it doesn’t usually store the information, so you will not have a record of the updates longer than 30 days unless you store separately or download to email. All RSS does is pull from LinkedIn, and I don’t believe LinkedIn makes more than a week of updates available.
2. I have a large network, and I communicate with some of my connections across multiple modes (email, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook) for multiple reasons, and it’s crazy to track communications unless I centralize them by downloading to email. Let’s say I’ve been working on a project with a connection, she issued an update last week that I didn’t notice at the time, and one of her new connections might have some bearing on the project; it’s nice to have her updates pop up when I search for her in my email client.
3. LinkedIn is not very searchable. It isn’t easy to find your updates and communications with a specific person on LinkedIn itself.

Strategies

• In light of the considerations above, I have selected individual email for Network Updates, so individual notices are searchable and my email client can construct a thread composed of communications from many different sources when I search a person’s name or email. In a very crude sense, I am rolling elements of my own CRM.
• I have also created a filter in my email client to keep all LinkedIn updates (not only Network Updates) in a folder so they don’t clog my inbox. BTW, LinkedIn is very considerate here; various communication types have their own email addresses, so you can easily filter them separately if you want (i.e. leave one category in your inbox and filter another). For example, Network Updates come from “commmunication@linkedin.com” while Invitations come from “invitations@linkedin.com” and Answers come from “answers@linkedin.com.” In my email client (Mac OS X “Mail”), I created a rule that packages all “linkedin.com” incoming emails within a folder. Keep in mind that I am usually viewing them for the first time via my RSS reader, so the filtered messages really function as a searchable archive.
• To get to the right answer for yourself, think about the nature of your relationship with most of your connections. Are you in fast-paced, transaction-oriented jobs? Which category of Network Update could have a bearing on your workstream? Those are the ones for which you probably want individual emails. Or, if LinkedIn is your main communication vehicle with your connections, keeping everything on LinkedIn might be easiest, although I have found that it is very slow when navigating around among several message types, and it’s not searchable.

Parting Shots

Consider your strategy outside LinkedIn as well. As you adopt other tools, you will need a holistic solution that can unify them. Happily, most things Web 2.0 offer RSS, and you can aggregate numerous RSS feeds in your reader, so looking at LinkedIn updates, Facebook, Twitter, etc. in one window is easy.

How do you handle Network Updates? I’m sure there are numerous options I haven’t considered, so please share.