I delivered a LinkedIn® presentation where I revealed 7 common mistakes made on the social platform. One of the questions someone asked was “Do you accept LinkedIn invites from people you don’t know or who you have never met?” It was the perfect lead in to one of the common mistakes I talk about – ignoring invitations.
When I receive a LinkedIn invitation from someone I don’t know, the first thing I do is see if they wrote a personalized message to me (sending a generic invite is another of the 7 common mistakes made). If they haven’t, then I “reply, but don’t accept” and I ask how they found me (i.e., were they referred or searching LinkedIn?).
However, LinkedIn is now “messing with our heads” and changing the landscape. When you go to your “Pending Invitations” you can scroll over the little bubble in the right hand corner of the invite to see what that person wrote in their message (see below).
Most often I find people have simply used LinkedIn’s generic invite with no attempt to personalize it. That’s when I like to use “reply, but don’t accept” – to reach out, engage, start a conversation.
For a brief moment last week, LinkedIn removed the “little bubble” and you couldn’t “reply, but don’t accept.” Several folks in one of the LinkedIn groups I’m in started posting “LinkedIn, what are you doing?” After all, this platform is about engaging in conversations and building relationships. If someone reaches out to you and you can’t see what’s in their connection request, you don’t want to blindly accept if you don’t know them – you want to find out more about them and why they’re reaching out to you.
So, LinkedIn why keep messing with a good thing?
This used to be really easy to do. Then, you changed it and made it hard for people to even find this function. We adjusted and now, you go and change it up again. WHY?
Please let us see what people are posting when they send out their connection request and make it easy for us not only to see it, but to reply to it before we accept it. Today, I see there’s another change and we’re one step closer to having that function returned. As you can see below, there’s now a little arrow in the upper right hand corner of the box and it’s my understanding that this arrow only appears if someone has indeed sent you a generic request. If they’ve taken the time to personalize their request, you’ll still see the little bubble and can view their message.
When you’re wondering whether or not to accept a request from someone you don’t know, go visit their profile first. Look into who they are, who do they know that you know. Would they be a good prospect, affiliate, referral resource, etc.? If so, reach out with the “reply” option (i.e., the arrow in the image above) before you accept or ignore and engage with them. Then, see if they respond and once a conversation begins you can decide if accepting their request is what you’d like to do.
I continue to encourage engagement because social networking is about building and nurturing those relationships and a first great place to start is as soon as you send out an invitation to connect.
What do you think? Have you received generic invites and wondered 1) why is this person reaching out? or 2) how can I respond and learn more before I accept or ignore? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below because I’d love to hear from you. Thanks a million.
