Perhaps like you, I get several daily requests from people who wish to connect with me through LinkedIn and I have no idea who they are or why they selected me. As a private business owner, I value developing new relationships and LinkedIn is a great tool to accomplish that.
I believe relationships and trust are key drivers of business and ultimately personal satisfaction. As a Career and Professional Development Coach I’m in a relationship oriented line of business and I have to be able to connect relationally and earn trust. I appreciate it when people want to personally connect with me, but like many others, I often like to know why. Unless I am connecting with an obvious friend, knowing “why” helps to gain my trust in their motives which enables relationships to develop and grow.
When I receive seemingly random impersonal invitations I may ignore them or I’ll send a polite message back inquiring as to why they are attempting to connect with me. It is amazing the answers I sometimes get from people. It often shows how little effort they put into reviewing my profile before they pushed “send.” I often wonder what the person wants or expects; a mutually beneficial connection or do they just want something from me?
If you are in job search mode or are in a highly personalized business, simply choosing the invitation default option that states “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” without expressing a reason “why” can be both impersonal and short-sighted. Often LinkedIn members randomly send invitations hoping that someone will discover them and provide a benefit such as become a client, customer, employer, referral, follower or advocate. It is possible, but it is not nearly as likely to yield fruit as when you seek to establish a basic relationship.
So if you’re in a job search or a profession that requires developing strong relationships, here are 8 simple tips of etiquette to help you grow a quality LinkedIn network.
- Strategically identify the the kinds of connections you desire based on your business, organization or personal objectives.
- Determine what you have in common and communicate that in your invite, such as: mutual interests, values, profession, affiliations, causes, customers, goals or needs.
- Have basic plan with goals in mind concerning reaching out and staying in contact with your network.
- Write a simple invitation to connect leveraging a connection or something you have mutually in common.
- Hello Tom, We haven’t spoken before but I’ve just read your LinkedIn profile with interest and noticed that we have some of the same professional interests and college affiliation. I was wondering if we could connect via LinkedIn and perhaps briefly chat in the near future.”
- Once your prospect accepts your invitation then follow with a thank you, including an offer to briefly speak on the phone. Many won’t take you up on that but for those that do it can really pay off for both of you.
- Perform a least one follow-up task within the first 30 days such as send them an article of interest, perhaps followed by an invitation to chat. You can help them out by choosing to “like” their blog or website. They in turn are more likely to do the same for you.
- Send periodic home page topical “updates” that relates to the majority of your contacts. This keeps you in front of them periodically through the content you are posting.
- Selectively respond to unknown individuals that are trying to connect with you to determine their intent or to initiate an interaction.
- Hello Susan, Thank you for reaching out to me via LinkedIn. I apologize but your name is not immediately familiar to me. I look forward to understanding if you have a particular question or need I should be aware of and respond to or if you were just trying to connect in general. Whichever is the case I appreciate your outreach.
Here are some simple “connect with me” invitation examples:
- “Since we are both in the same LinkedIn group, I thought it might be nice to connect.”
- “I read your blog regularly and love your advice.” (Bloggers never tire of such messages!)
- “You may recall that I met you at the ABC networking event. I was the person who also liked snowboarding.”
- “I see you also worked at XYZ Corp. and know my friend Bob Brown. I’d like to invite you to connect and perhaps we can chat in the near future.”
- “I see that you are also an alum of the University of Louisiana. Go Tigers!” Similarly, you could send messages to your particular school … “I see you were a 1995 Business School grad, too. I bet we had Econ 101 together. I‘d like to invite you to connect.” You could also invite people from your fraternity or sorority even from a different college saying something like, “I see you are a Delta Gamma from ABC University. I was one at the University of XYZ.”
- “I’ve enjoyed reading your comments on the [GROUP NAME] discussion board. I think we share a lot of the same perspectives.”
- “I know we have not yet met, but my friend Joe Doe talks so highly of you, I wanted to invite you to connect to introduce myself.”
- “I heard you speak at the such and such event and was so inspired by your message.”
- “I’ve seen you often in the 123 Co. Cafeteria, but have not yet had the opportunity to introduce myself.”
- “I’m a fellow Buckeye and notice that we have 34 mutual connections so I thought I would invite you to connect and and perhaps later chat so our knowing each other might be mutually beneficial.”
- “I just moved to Austin and noticed that you are also a University of XYZ alum living in the land of “Keep it humorous”. I’d love to buy you a cup of coffee and learn how you went about getting acclimated to Austin. How’s next Tuesday at 8 at the Starbucks on Congress Ave.?”
As you can see from the examples above, these type of invitations are so much more engaging than the standard LinkedIn default message. Employing just a few simple principles like these 8 tips can help you grow and leverage an intimate and loyal LinkedIn network and perhaps develop new friends along the way.
