Adding Connections on LinkedIn – Invites
In our previous post, Create a Company Profile on LinkedIn, we talked about how to create a company profile on LinkedIn. In this post, we start looking at how to add connections on LinkedIn.
Some rights reserved by beau-fotoAdding Connections
After you’ve created your profiles, the next thing you’ll want to do is to make connections. As we mentioned, you start with 3,000 available invitations, lifetime, so, while that’s a lot, you don’t want to be frivolous with them, either.
Before you go sending out invitations, a word of caution. We mentioned the danger of getting an IDK in a previous section. When you first join LinkedIn, you may be tempted to enthusiastically invite all kinds of people whom you don’t really know all that well. It’s not a good idea, not just because they could IDK you, but because it’s a bit rude.
Think about it. If someone you don’t recognize invites you to connect, what is your reaction? Chances are you’ll scratch your head, visit that person’s profile and try to figure out where you may have run into them before. That person just took a few seconds or minutes out of your day, because they didn’t give you the context for the invitation.
When you invite a contact while viewing their profile, LinkedIn suggests the text for the invitation, similar to the following figure.
Pretty minimal, huh? It gives the recipient absolutely no context.
Never use the default text unless you know the person really well, and they’re expecting your connection request.
Always include an explanation for why you want to connect, and a little bit about how you know the person. Not only do you avoid being rude this way, you’ll also be much less likely to get an IDK. If you think the person might reject your request, some people append something like, “If you decide not to accept my invitation, I would appreciate it if you click Ignore rather than clicking Report Spam.”
We feel that if you really need to add a disclaimer, you should think twice about directly contacting the person, and opt for getting recommended by someone in their network.
Next up: Types of Direct Connection Requests
Adding Connections on LinkedIn – Invites is the 89th in a series of excerpts from our book, Be a Person: the Social Operating Manual for Enterprises (itself part of a series for different audiences). We’re just past page 263. At this rate it’ll be a long time before we get through all 430 pages, but luckily, if you’re impatient, the book is available in paper form at bit.ly/OrderBeAPerson and you can save $5 using Coupon Code 6WXG8ABP2
Get our new book, The Infinite Pipeline: How to Master Social Media for Business-to-Business Sales Success online here. You can save $5 using Coupon Code 62YTRFCV
What Others Are Saying
“Infinite Pipeline offers practical advice for using social media to extend relationship selling online. It’s a great way to get crazy-busy prospects to pay attention.”
—Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies
“Sales is all about relationships and trust. Infinite Pipeline is the ‘how to’ guide for maximizing social networks to find and build relationships, and generate trust in our digital age.”
—Sam Richter, best-selling author, Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling (2012 Sales book of the year)
“Infinite Pipeline will be the authority on building lasting relationships through online social that result in bottom line business.”
—Lori Ruff, The LinkedIn Diva, Speaker/Author and CEO of Integrated Alliances
