Networking Tip: Social Network Sites as Couch Locators

Here’s an advanced networking tip.

I’ve written before that, by my weird definition, a weak tie becomes a strong tie when you’re at the point where you could crash on that person’s couch.

I like to use LinkedIn as a tool to help me with this kind of thing. When I’m traveling to a city for one reason or another, I go to LinkedIn and I do a search in my personal network of people who live in that city. (You can do this in Facebook, too.) Then, for each person who I feel might want to meet up with me for dinner, or maybe even host me at their house, I send a personalized email. Obviously you need to be careful how far you go: don’t ask someone to host you if you don’t know them very well or think they might be offended. But it’s almost always safe to ask someone to lunch, especially if you’ve had a meal with them at a conference or something.