Every now and then someone sends me an invite to hook up with them on LinkedIn. I generally accept the invites, but have never done much with the service, aside from getting back in touch with a few old Ziff colleagues. Yesterday Amy discovered the site. We didn’t find ourselves automatically in one another’s networks, so I sent her invite. This morning I hear her reading her email out loud, in a voice dripping with sarcasm:
“You are a person I trust. I’d like to invite you to join my network on LinkedIn. I’m using it to discover inside connections I didn’t know I had.” And then, “Gosh honey, you’re SO romantic.”
Marriage tip: When sending a LinkedIn invitation to your life partner, edit the default text before sending.
Music: Pete Brown & His Battered Ornaments :: Station Song
Well. Who knows your partner better then you ?
Send her flowers – then invite her….
But seriously – LinkedIn is a VERY useful tool for innovative people; people who seek to improve and change. To do that – you need to communicate with the right people. You have to learn how to use it.
To get to those people, you need to extend your network reach. You have to extend your network. To extend your network – you have to get to know people. It requires an effort.
When you invite people to join your network, it is a business and personal proposal. You have to personalize your request and you have to make clear the benefit of connecting with you.
Otherwise why bother? Why join the LinkedIn if you are not going to use it ? and if you are going to use it – why not invest in it. If you are investing – why not personalize your request, that makes it much more appealing to accept.
Business is not a “Romantic” adventure… unless it is in the movies.
Hello everyone – I totally agree with personalizing your requests to Link with one another. For me, this is a brand-new experience and I am still “forging ahead” and trying to learn as I go but would definitely appreciate any constructive feedback from anyone and everyone.
I had to chuckle at the fact that life partners posted only the default text in the message – thanks for the chuckle!
As I said, please help me learn. I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone and I have to admit, sometimes on the MLPF discussions, I am TOTALLY LOST and skim the messages because they don’t make sense to me! Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend.
I keep getting LinkedIn invitations from one particular guy I know – must’ve had about 30 from him so far, I think because he sent to several of my email addresses and because LinkedIn sends a number of automatic reminders. I haven’t replied to any of them because I’ve been bitten in the past by similar services which are just front ends for harvesters.
I agree that invitations should be personalized, but for a different reason. For those who are not yet in LinkedIn or are new to LinkedIn and don’t understand how it works, they might not know that your invitation is truly from you and not automatically generated spam. I always try to include some personal information that the invitee and I know in common so that they know for sure that the message is actually from me.
If you’re just getting started using LinkedIn, I’ve written some LinkedIn Tips which you might find useful. The tip above regarding customizing invitations is not listed on this page; I’ll try to add it in some time.