I often refer to LinkedIn as the most underused social media resource out there: most of us have a LinkedIn profile, but we just “set it and forget it,” rather than using the site’s more sophisticated capabilities. At the very least, LinkedIn is a great way to connect with people in your target industries, by joining Groups that they also belong to (direct client 101: you don’t find them if you only hang out with other translators). You can also use LinkedIn saved searches–even with the free account–to keep track of business prospects. You can use LinkedIn like a virtual Rolodex so that you’re not scrabbling through your desk drawer for the business card of someone you met at a conference five years ago. LinkedIn is also really useful for doing research about your potential clients: finding out who’s hiring, who changed jobs, and so on.
But first, you have to contend with the sticky issue of how to handle LinkedIn connection requests. When I first joined LinkedIn, I was pretty liberal about who I connected with, theorizing that anyone who worked in our industry was potentially a good connection. Over the years (and many hundreds of connections later), I’ve become less of an “open networker,” so I only accept connection requests from a) people I know or b) people who personalize their connection request message and explain how we know each other or why they want to connect with me. If I don’t know the person outside LinkedIn and they don’t explain why they want to connect, I hit “Ignore” and then “I don’t know John Doe,” because I see little value in these types of blind connections.
“But LinkedIn just sends the connection request automatically!,” I hear you cry…”It’s gone before I can personalize it!” Well, not if you do it the right way. Yes, if you’re just looking at LinkedIn’s list of “People You May Know,” and you click the “Connect” button, there goes the invitation with the stock message “I’d like to add you as a connection on LinkedIn.” However if you are looking at the profile of the person you want to connect with, and then you click Connect, you’ll get this popup:
Then, you can indicate how you know the person, and you can write them a personal message. Everyone has to come up with their own LinkedIn strategy: some people will connect only with people they personally know and work with, while others are open to networking with anyone who hits the Connect button. But personalizing your connection request looks more professional and will undoubtedly result in a greater success rate than mass-connecting anonymously.
Hi Corinne, very interesting to see how you handle connection requests. And it’s a very timely post for me, as I was just going through my connections yesterday, thinking that I don’t know a lot of the people who’ve sent me requests and wondering what the value of those connections would be.
I’m definitely underusing LinkedIn as well; my plan for the second half of this year is to join 2 groups and contribute to these once a week. Thank you!
Thanks Moira! I do think that LinkedIn is what you make of it (and most people don’t make much of it!); but at the same time, I don’t really see the value in having 1,000+ connections (which I think I have now) with people who you otherwise have no connection with. Let me know how your amped-up LinkedIn strategy goes!
Thank you Corinne. It’s good to know I’m not the only one with this strategy. I am sometimes rather curious to know why someone I don’t know wants to connect, but still I hit ‘Ignore’ – it could be just spam.
Thanks Sally!
If you don’t connect with people on LinkedIn, then they cannot send you a message, and if they can’t send you a message, then they cannot offer you any work. Although I don’t accept all connection requests from people I don’t know from Adam, some have led to interesting opportunities. Maybe it depends on what you want LinkedIn for. I have used it to contact colleagues about jobs because I can (mostly) see from their profile whether they do the kind of translation work I’m passing on. And I’m now beginning to receive job offers from direct clients as well, which is one of the main reasons why I’m on LinkedIn. However, I definitely need to improve my use of the site too and will probably write a post or two to try to attract potential clients’ attention.
Thanks Nikki! Always great to have different perspectives; I agree with you that if people can’t connect with you, they can’t send you work. I guess that at some point, I just “hit the wall” with the connection requests and decided that if I don’t know the person and they can’t take a few seconds to send a personalized message with their connection request, I’m not going to connect with them. But thanks for your comment!
Hello, are you aware that when you hit “I don’t know John Doe you are somehow ‘damaging’ the person who requested to connect with you? In fact after some “I don’t know” a users gets when inviting other people, his/her capacity to send new connection requests gets blocked and he/she needs to contact LinkedIn support and ask them to remove that block. Generally speaking, for best LinkedIn netiquette it’s much better to just Ignore rather than use the “I don’t know feature”. Just saying. In case someone who really wants to connect with you and actually knows/met you, but just was too quick to personalize the request, you end up creating issues to him/her by saying you don’t know him/her. If that person was considering getting in touch for a potential cooperation, that would not be a good start. Just saying.
Good point considering, Marco. But if a person really knows me, s/he is smart enough to find the link to my website within my LinkedIn profile. And from there it is easy to send me an email, without the restrictions on connection activities within LinkedIn.
I second that! I have that habit of occasionally logging in my LinkedIn profile and accepting all the request without bothering myself. Usually this is not the case with Facebook friend requests. I think we are taking it in a lighter note and this should not be the case. Thanks for this insightful post, I am not going to underrate the importance of my business profile now 🙂
I always try to customize the connection request. I sometimes even ask the person a question. However, it seems that almost everyone ignores the custom message. They will accept my request without writing a reply to what I said.
Hallo Corinne,
I use LinkedIn quite a lot. To send an invitation request, I always personalize my message, because it makes things nicer. I have accepted standardized invitations (not all) though for the same reason as Nikki: those connections may lead to interesting opportunities. They do not mean per se that the other does not bother, he or she may just be in a hurry… When a request comes, I always check a little bit who is the potential connection, the groups he/she belongs to (some groups are taboo for me), etc.
I have already clicked on “Ignore” but never on “I do not know John Doe”, because I also thought (may be, wrongly) that it could damage the other person (blocked account or something similar).