I’m sure I’m a little late to this party, however I thought I’d share something I found out last month when discussing connection etiquette with another like-minded networker.
You can personalise an invite from the LinkedIn app…
If you know about this already, please stop reading and try to refrain from the “god you’re an idiot” or “I’ve known about this for ages” comments you’re dying to post.
This is merely a public service announcement as I spend a lot of my time away from my PC and am loathe to send blank connection requests from my phone to future clients, candidates or industry peers that can come across as both rude and annoying, however I know that if I don’t do it on the run then I’ll forget (age thing I think).
Here’s how, on the profile of the person you’d like to connect with, you will see 3 circles at the top right of the screen. Tap this and the 3rd option on the list says ‘Personalize invite’.
You’re now good to go.
The reason I thought I’d let you all know this is I’ve been getting a lot of requests recently from people based in Ghana and wondered why they would want to connect with me so I’ve been looking at their profiles and spending time trying to work it out.
Now if they’d had personalised their invite, even to the extent of, “after looking at your profile I think I have something to sell you that might benefit you” at least I can make a call based on their request.
There are of course some who still like to accept requests with the standard message who then post about how annoying it is to receive ‘pitches’ immediately but that’s a different subject.
Think how effective you could be by using personalised invites as the recipient is also making it clear they are prepared to accept your call/message to discuss this opportunity as LinkedIn is after all a professional site with a clear mission statement;
“Our mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful”
So let’s all be more productive and successful by being upfront about why we’re connecting to give people an opportunity to say no and if they say yes then it’s a win win.
