I’m an advocate of accepting 99.9% of connection requests in social media. This is how we meet new people, get introduced to their products and services, and how they get introduced to ours. Unfortunately, some people take advantage of this and view it as a license to send unsolicited email to their contacts. While I think it’s reasonable to send an occasional email with a relevant announcement to certain followers, here are some examples of emails from LinkedIn connections that waste time:

• Invitations to attend a networking event in Houston, Orlando or Saskatchewan, when I live in Sacramento.
• Announcements about a new post on your blog or new video on YouTube. This kind of information should be reserved for your status update field.
• Frequent updates about new products and services.

The bottom line: if your goal is to get noticed by your contacts, you probably shouldn’t have that happen for the wrong reasons. Being recognized for being a spammer won’t help your reputation and will lead to your removal by connections.

How to Remove a LinkedIn Connection

If you’re getting too many emails from a connection on LinkedIn, here’s how to remove them from your network. Note that once you remove someone, they are not notified. However, they also cannot be added again later so be sure about your decision before you pull the trigger.

1. From your LinkedIn profile in the top navigation menu, click on Contacts, then Connections.

2. In the upper right corner you’ll see a link to Remove Connections, click on this link.

3. A list of your contacts will display and each will have a check box. Use the sort feature to locate the person you want to remove, then click on the checkbox next to the person’s name and click the Remove Connections button on the right.

4. Mission complete!