Announcements vs. endorsements in Social Networking

One of my LinkedIn contacts recently sent me a message about a free presentation he was offering to help people save money on insurance. I’ve met this fellow a couple of times and from our conversations, he seems to be quite knowledgeable about the subject of insurance. Seeing an opportunity to earn some Social Capital by helping him and possibly others in my network, I proceeded to send a Tweet inviting people to check out his presentation.

Subsequently I received another email from a different contact asking me how well I knew the person who was doing the presentation. I replied stating the above and also directing him to another member of my network who knew this person better and could give him a better idea about the presenter.

A few days later I received another email from the same person and he was rather upset because he felt that even though the content of the presentation was valuable, the way it was presented was disparaging of independent insurance brokers.

This got me thinking: how much responsibility should I bear for what happened here? And what should I do about it?

The way I see it, there is a big difference between recommending and informing. A recommendation is much more powerful than an announcement. And because it is more powerful, it carries with it more responsibility.

In this case, I was willing to make an announcement but I certainly wasn’t willing to make a recommendation. The reason I wasn’t willing to recommend was because I had no experience with the product and I also don’t yet know the person well enough to put my reputation behind him.

One thing I learned from this is that people may treat announcements as endorsements and I better make the difference clear. It also reinforced my perspective that there are always risks when you are connecting people. And that these risks come with the territory. If I want to position myself as a connector, then I have to deal with these situations.

I welcome your thoughts and opinions on this.

Tagged as: LinkedIn, Social Capital