Coming up in November this year will be my 10th year of being on LinkedIn.
Despite some people having a love-hate relationship with LinkedIn, my own experience and impression of this tool has been positive as is that it has helped me immensely to build my network, seek out new job opportunities and directly contact people in new fields. (And yes, there has been a bit of stalking to see what people are doing and where they are at). It has also been instrumental in creating communities (my Rotary local business networks) as well as participating in communities around learning and business. It’s quite a versatile tool with lots of functionality open in the free version so there’s no need to fork out money to get the premium version unless you’re a recruiter or into sales or business development. For the majority of us, the free version meets our needs.
Every week, on average, I receive 8 to 10 invitations to connect and many of them (if not all of them) are the generic one line invitations. About 20% of these requests are from people who have no profile photos. I’ve also read some really weird profiles that simply don’t make sense or big note themselves – they are immediately deleted. Another 10% of these are from vendors who are looking to connect for partnership opportunities or selling me their products or services. Again, in all of these vendor requests, if I have not been the one to instigate the connection or seek out more information about their product or service, usually I accept the invitation to connect but I do not proceed with any requests further unless I have a specific need to learn more about their service. I understand that once I click the accept button that I would get an email from them seeking some time with me for them to demonstrate their product. In all these cases, I will be polite with them advising that there is no interest for the time being. If they persist with the emails, I advise them to stop or they will be blocked.
Some years ago, receiving generic requests irritated me because I felt it impolite that strangers simply expect me to automatically accept their invitation without personalising the message or at least letting me know why they wanted to connect with me. However, over time, I noticed that I accidentally clicked ‘Connect’ under the People You May Know section of LinkedIn and it AUTOMATICALLY sent them an invitation request WITHOUT first asking me to personalise the message! Yeichs!
Naturally, my heart skipped a beat because now, I was one of these people who sent generic automatic requests and there was someone else thinking, “who is she?”. The tables were turned. So now, keep away from that function and instead send people personal invitations to connect.
However, ever since writing this blog, I know that many people read it and they may not have connected with me personally. Rather than automatically delete the request, I prefer to send them an email to ask for more information. Surprisingly, I’ve had some wonderful conversations with people who explained how they found me, what they think of my blog or that they had seen me speak at a conference. It just goes to show that even though some people send generic requests, when asked, they do respond – and in all of the cases, they apologised for sending the generic request!
Every week, I set aside some time for responding to LinkedIn requests. I have created a Word document where I have a generic response template and I cut and paste that into every request.
I figure that it’s only polite and fair to respond to people and in so doing, build good will and you never know who you may meet. I’m also erring on the side of the assumption that many people simply aren’t aware of the ‘etiquette’ at play for social networking so if there’s any way that I can show, demonstrate or role model the right behaviour, then this may rub off on them for future connections.
Here are my templates – feel free to cut and paste to use for your own purposes!
3 LinkedIn Email Responses
To that Stranger With The Generic Invite & No Photo
Hello XYZ (always type in their name to make it more personal)
Thanks so much for the invitation to connect. I don’t believe we’ve met in person or on social media such as Twitter (my apologies if this is incorrect). Could you please tell me a little bit more about yourself and what you’re looking to achieve through our connection on LinkedIn as I usually don’t accept invitations from people whom I haven’t connected with previously or who don’t have profile photos. (hint, hint, I’m letting them know that having a photo may be a good thing…)
Regards
To that Stranger You Need To Connect With & You’re In the Same LinkedIn Group
Hello XYZ (always type in their name to make it more personal)
We are both members of XYZ LinkedIn Group and I liked what you had to share about ABC (always link to the group and the discussion). This is an area of interest for me and I would love to connect with you on LinkedIn to share ideas, information or just get to know each other’s work. I look forward to learning more about you.
Regards
To that Stranger Directly After You’ve Accepted The LinkedIn Invitation
Hello XYZ (always type in their name to make it more personal)
Thanks so much for inviting me to connect with you here on LinkedIn as we continue to expand our networks. I notice in your profile that we share some common interests in XYZ (I always check their profile to see links in areas that I’m interested in) . My interests lie in activating business performance through social learning. If you’d like to know more, I write on my blog at www.activatelearning.com.au. Alternatively, feel free to connect with me on Twitter @ActivateLearn. If there’s anything I can do to support you, please feel free to contact me.
Regards
My Other Post About LinkedIn
I have written another post about LinkedIn if you’d like to read more. It’s called Using LinkedIn to Merge Your Contacts.
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Hate LinkedIn? Who could it be (turning my head to see if someone behind me raises his hand)?
You have a nice profile on LinkedIn, how did you write it? Years after years or when you started your business?
Wow Helen, you are impressively forgiving of those without a profile pic. I just delete their request without a second thought. As I do with those whose first communication to me following connection is to try to sell me something – or “partner” with my business.
On the flip side, I am more accepting of those who want to connect with me via a generic request (if they have a photo and a bio). I used to be quite vigilant in accepting requests only from people whom I had met. Over time, however, LinkedIn seems to have lost that raison d’etre.
Thanks for the comment Ryan, as always it’s greatly appreciated. One of the glitches I noticed about LinkedIn (or it could be my computer – but then again, it’s easier to blame LI and not my own new brand spanking iMac – okay, I’m kidding, you know that…) is that some profiles have no photo in the Photo Wall but then, when you actually click in them to read them, there’s a photo – what the? This got me thinking that I could have been deleting profiles that really had photos on the assumption that LI failed to load the full details and I was seeing some “ghost” or summarised version of the profile. Now I physically click in every profile and make my decision on whether to accept or not through this method.
I have been having the same questions about LinkedIn use but it comes down to the fact that there are simply too many of the people whom I can serve and help as a consultant on it. So from the perspective of an external consultant in business who works with corporate and medium size business, associations and not for profits, my market is here. It’s also interesting to see many small businesses are also using this. It’s simply where business people hang out the most. They may not be talking to each other; there may not be robust conversations; many people writing; or selling to each other (many are doing this but I’d be interested to see stats around who are the best social sellers) but it’s still has a need.
I liken LinkedIn (in my perspective and my own context) as a virtual office cafeteria that you’ve just walked into. It’s packed to the rafters but everyone is sitting at their tables, eating their lunch and picking at their food alone. They don’t talk to anyone at their table but they still look over to see what they’re eating, what they’re wearing or what they’re reading but not engaging because they’re too scared. Meanwhile they hear a ruckus and turn over to that table in the back where there’s laughter and roll their eyes. It’s the same people, day in, day out always talking, laughing, sharing what they learned. Occasionally they may pull out a chair beside them and invite strangers to sit near them as a gesture of goodwill but that turns sour when the stranger starts flogging their products and services the moment they sit down.
Anyway, my mind just went on a tangent there…
Another interesting point for me is that my leads for work come in from this order:
(1) Twitter
(2) Conferences
(3) My blog
(4) Word of Mouth (through Facebook friends – funny how WOM = Facebook – so now I’ve started accepting friendship requests from people I’ve connected with on Twitter)
(5) LinkedIn
as of today, I actually got work through my About Me profile!? It just goes to show that people are using social media in all sorts of different ways to find me.
I think this last comment clarifies a lot the initial post.
One of the reasons I dislike LinkedIn is because the UI is not up to my expectations. They have no excuse since they are not a startup or lacking funds. As a software developer constantly trying to do the best it’s not inspiring.
Most connections I receive are, like Ryan, commercial solicitations. They are very well written to attract your attention under the cover of benign requests to connect. There is the whole psychology behind social selling at work here and I tend to be circumspect with a fully redacted request. First source of request for connection are people pushing their résumés. Picture or not, I just ignore them. The only connections I accept are those coming from people I know on Twitter and I let them know I’m not using LinkedIn, DM is the way to contact me.
I think LinkedIn is great for commercial if your target corresponds to a few criterias. In your case Australia and L&D. I’m glad you confirm that Twitter could be better. I’m going to stick to Twitter and G+ only.
That’s a fair point and I know that LinkedIn isn’t for everyone. For example, I know some teachers who don’t use it simply because their colleagues, fellow educators, are not on it nor their preferred way of communicating. For me, it has one small place – but not as big as my blog or Twitter. Over the year, it’s interesting to note that I’ve been using Google+ less. Maybe I should revisit??