Right now, in my LinkedIn inbox, I have 10 invitations to connect that I will not be accepting. Half of them are from Social Media experts/managers, and the rest are from coaches, business strategists, and marketing professionals. This is the reply that I’m going to send to them:
You’re doing it wrong. You sent me an invitation to connect, ostensibly because you think either that I’m going to buy something from you or recommend you to people that I know (because let’s be realistic, you don’t connect with people on LinkedIn that you want to hang out with – that’s what Facebook and Twitter are for.) But it seems that you failed to consider that your invitation is the first bit of advertising that I’m going to see from you and it’s akin to a blank card with your name on it.
Have you ever seen what the default connection request looks like in an email inbox? It says ” wants to connect with you.” That’s about it. And when you don’t include a personal message, I have no idea why you want to connect with me. It’s like dating – give me your best opening line and you might have a chance, but walk up to me and just tell me you’re name, and you’re dead in the water.
I’ve called it drive-by social networking. Erika Napolitano issued a bitch-slap for it. It’s called SOCIAL networking for a reason – be social! Tell me who your are, what you do, and why I should invite your messages into my mailbox that’s already overly full. Make me want to get to know you, make me want to connect.
So, if you want to try again, and tell me why you’re the that I should know, please do so. But if you can’t take 30 seconds to write me a note that tells me why I should connect with you, I won’t.
Cheers!
I’m going to send this to them today and we’ll see what, if any, responses I get. It should be interesting.