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Unless you’re intent on just gathering as many connections on LinkedIn as quickly as possible, and really don’t care about building relationships with your online contacts, there’s a possibility you could be sending out the wrong message without meaning to.
The reason I know this is because I’ve made this mistake too, especially when I’m in a hurry, but there really is no excuse….
Using the default messages is such a turn off!
The LinkedIn personal invitation to connect is a case in point – look at it! I don’t know about you, but after seeing these words so many times, it comes as a welcome surprise when someone takes the trouble to personalise their message.
And how often do you send a message to thank them for connecting with you? I try hard to do this and say an individual Hello, but admit to not always succeeding.
It doesn’t have to be hard work to personalise your own message. Simply compose and save in Notepad, so you can copy & paste when needed (you might want to write a few variations and then use as appropriate). OK I’ll admit this method is still a bit lazy (recently I was frowned on over at my other blog when I mentioned that I use GMail’s ‘canned responses’, but it has to be better than the default – or not responding at all – wouldn’t you say?
LinkedIn Groups
If you have a group of your own, you’ll know that the new member welcome message can be personalised too. The default wording is very vanilla and also means you miss a promotion opportunity! Without going overboard, provide a link back to a page on your website (not the home page please – and definitely not a sales page) – or perhaps link to a free download (as we do). That really does say “Welcome to the Group”.
How do you welcome new connections online?
About Louise
Louise Barnes-Johnston has been working in social media marketing since 2007 after realising that it was a powerful marketing tool which would enable her clients to raise the profile of their businesses on the internet, even when working to a limited budget. Her specialism is in researching social media practices; trying out the most effective online tools and then sharing the best of them with her clients.
Good advice Louise.
You do need to personalise but it’s not always practical, or even sensible, to repeatedly type the same thing. I use a product called Type Pilot to help with lots of my regularly used phrases but you can, and should, inject some personalisation where appropriate.
Hi Adrian, thanks for commenting here!
You’re right that it isn’t practical to keep on typing the same thing and, like my Gmail ‘canned responses’, Type Pilot seems a good solution (thanks for the tip!). I’m not suggesting spending hours writing original messages, just doing away with the dreaded defaults!
I’ve been having a discussion on Twitter this week about LinkedIn which is related to your post. Specifically that people are trying to connect saying they’re a ‘friend’ even though you’ve never heard of them, and not personalising the email at all. This makes people wary of connecting and are likely to ‘ignore’ the invite – particularly if they don’t mention if they’ve previously met or perhaps heard about them via other channels. Or they’re just spamming and trying to gain as many connections as possible.
You can read some of the discussion here:
http://twitter.com/#!/sammcarthur/status/75587361668468736
http://twitter.com/#!/sammcarthur/status/75589338448150528
http://twitter.com/#!/josordoni/status/75933761434423296
Hi Sam – fancy seeing you here!
I’ve also experienced so-called friends asking to connect on LinkedIn, when in reality I’ve never even heard of them. In my opinion, this is spammy and lazy (especially using the default message). I ignore such invitations too
Something I’ve adopted is having a ‘policy’ of who I will and won’t connect with. For example, I don’t connect with anyone who doesn’t have a photo of themselves on their personal profile. Once you decide on your own policy, deciding who to connect with and who to ignore becomes much easier!