One of my goals for this quarter is to make better use of LinkedIn; I feel like it’s an underutilized tool for freelancers, and I want to explore its usefulness for my own purposes and for some students who’ve asked me about it. But here’s a fundamental question about your LinkedIn presence: how do you decide whose connection requests to accept or ignore?
Back in the day (let’s say before 2014 or so), my rule for LinkedIn connection requests was fairly rigid and fairly straightforward: if I don’t know you, and you don’t write a personal message saying how you know me, I don’t accept your request. My feeling was that there was little value in being connected to complete strangers on LinkedIn. Then, things changed in a few ways. Most problematically, LinkedIn now makes it harder to send a personal message (in place of the standard “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn”), even if you want to. For example if you simply click on a connection that LinkedIn suggests, your connection request is automatically sent; you have to first click through to the person’s profile if you want to send a personal message along with your request.
As a result, I’ve relaxed my strategy over the years. I now accept most requests from people who already have a number of shared connections with me, and who work in the T&I industry in some capacity. On the positive side, I actually enjoy the status updates feature of the LinkedIn home page (where you can see what your connections have recently posted), and the updates are a lot more interesting when you have a lot of connections. The downside is that I’ve now amassed over 1,500 LinkedIn connections, many (or even most) of them to people who I know nothing about, except that they seem to be translators or interpreters and sent me a connection request. This gets problematic when I get an introduction request from someone else (“Can you refer me to this person?”), or a request for information about one of my connections (“What’s this person like to work with?”).
So, I feel like I’m in a bit of LinkedIn limbo: I don’t see the appeal of the LION (LinkedIn open networker) strategy, but I also feel that the days of restricting one’s LinkedIn network only to people with whom one has a personal connection are probably over. Any other thoughts on the pluses and minuses of this?
I like LinkedIn and use it in my sales. I live in Mexico so one of the things I do for my prospective clients who accept my contact request is a warm message – a concept you introduced me to – by revising their LinkedIn extracts if they are written in English. These people are usually Mexican, i.e. non-native English speakers/users, so there is almost always something important to correct. The response has been ok, surprisingly not great but I’ve only been doing this a lot for 3 months or so. I would expect to start seeing better results after a year. And I haven’t seen anyone use my corrections yet, though I don’t always check. Maybe people are offended that I am correcting their English…IDK. I would appreciate a free service like that if someone offered it to me!
Very interesting, thanks Patrick!
This is a really interesting concept, Patrick. It’s so kind of you to provide that free service, but I think I can also understand a person’s hesitance to accept it. It would fit in with the observation that many people are resistant to hearing unsolicited advice. I wonder if perhaps you’d receive a more positive (or any!) response if you were to set the person up to be more naturally open to the revision. This reflects the idea of “connect before you correct” (something I heard recently) which just suggests that people will be more open to hearing our criticisms (however innocent and generous they may be) when they already feel in some way connected to us.
In this instance I might do this by saying something along the lines of “At risk of being *that* guy, I wanted to share a quick note with you about your LinkedIn extract which, by the way, *insert compliment here*.” Maybe that doesn’t sound professional enough, but it could be revised (your forte :)) to elevate the register while still encouraging the recipient to accept your revision.
Of course, it is very possible that people just aren’t staying on top of their LinkedIn correspondence and will use your revisions when they get around to seeing them whether or not you’ve followed my unsolicited advice here…;) Haha. Thanks for sharing the strategy!
Thanks, Jillian! I really like that suggestion about how to “connect before you correct”!
Well, when I originally signed up to LinkedIn the rules were, quite simply, that you should only link to people you know, because how else can you recommend them to other people? I still largely apply that rule, although I’ll bend it if there seem to be good enough reasons, which usually means they’re a potential client who might want to work with me, or they’re a T/I I have a fair amount in common with, or I’ve given them my business card, which now includes my LinkedIn URL. I know other translators who apply the rule even more strictly, to the extent that they won’t link to other translators if they haven’t actually worked with them, for instance.
I do think, though, that it’s very unfortunate that the current English wording of the standard LI message is “Hi [name], I’d like to join your LinkedIn network.” I’m sure that in a lot of people’s minds that brings out a feeling of “Yes, I’m sure you’d like to join this network that I’ve put months and months of work into creating!” It does come over as a bit parasitic. Why they didn’t stick with the “I’d like to connect with you on LinkedIn” or whatever it was that this message replaced, I don’t know.
Thanks, Alison!
I’ve had the exact same experiences as you, Corinne. I’d add that it seems most people don’t seem to use LinkedIn very actively, so even if I am able to connect to someone via a warm message, our connection seems to die there. I suppose that means I need to come up with a good follow-up strategy. I like your goal of trying to exploit LinkedIn to its fullest and would be very interested to hear about your experiences over the next quarter (no presh!).
Thanks, Andie! I’ll report back đ
Perhaps, IÂŽm just dense, but I donÂŽt understand what there is to gain by connecting with someone, I barely know, or whom my experience with has not been exactly pleasant. It seems like people like this are “name using” to help themselves.
As to Linkedin itself, every time IÂŽve tried to get info about someone, Linkedin has wanted to charge me so much a month for the info.
For such reasons, IÂŽm not too impressed with LinkedinÂŽs usefulness.
Thanks, Frank! In LinkedIn’s defense, I do find it useful, and several clients have either found me there, or have used LinkedIn to ask other people about me before we worked together. I also think that you can get tons of information on LinkedIn with the free account; but I do agree that the “connections with people you barely know” are often not useful.
I learned that there is a limit (unknown to me) to how many people YOU can invite, but not to how many invitations you accept. So, I have been accepting almost all invitations, but saving my precious allowance to invite people I am interested in.
An additional rule: I won’t accept an invitation from someone who only has 1 connection, or who doesn’t have a name-last name combination.
Thanks, Christian! Good tip! I agree: even if someone says they’re a translator or interpreter, I don’t accept the ones that look blatantly spammy (as you said, only a few connections, or name seems not to match).
And am I the only one in this thread with a face? đ
Like Frank, I didn’t really see the usefullness of Linkedin so I created a profile like everyone else but I didn’t really use it. Well I was surprised when two clients contacted me through Linkedin and one of them has been a very good direct client.
I don’t accept connection with people I don’t know or without a real message that makes sense. I don’t understand the idea of connecting with people that I don’t know. I really can’t see the point. But I am curious to hear otherwise and try to understand it.
Thanks, Christelle! I agree, I find LinkedIn useful and have found several clients there. I also agree about the connection strategy: I’m still working on it!
Hello Corinne,
thank you for your thoughts. I have been acting same way as you regarding LinkedIn strategy for accepting new contacts đ now I do accept almost all of them and do not treat it as perconal as f.i. Facebook.
Thanks, Michael!
Hi Corinne, I am not very active on LinkedIn but I like it. For me, this place is more useful than a so-called “portal for translators”. Why? Because more potential valuable clients can be found there.
I also was restrictive at the beginning, but now, without being a LION, I have understood that there is no use being there only to connect to people I already know… It is useful to be part of groups where I may be the only translator (for example local groups, friends of a special activity or country).
Thanks Chani! I agree; I do see value in LinkedIn. I belong to several groups for my specializations, and I’m usually the only translator there, which has its advantages. As you mentioned, online translation portals will always have the issue that they bring together tons of people who provide the same services; so the competition quickly boils down to factors that clients can understand (usually price and speed). LinkedIn can help you avoid that!
I just started using LinkedIn, but it seems like a good alternative to cold calling! I’m a little shy about marketing myself to family and friends, so I would actually prefer to network with strangers! Maybe there are tricks to utilizing it more effectively that I just don’t know yet, but I think you don’t have to aggressively manage your network if you’re already getting the jobs you want, but you do need to be more tenacious about linking with people when you’re starting out.
I think LinkedIn is a great marketing tool, and a must for freelancers. However, I donât accept invitations from people I donât know, who donât write a personal message and donât even look at my profile. Iâm not interested in the number game. Having said that, if a stranger approaches me and explains why theyâd like to connect with me, Iâll definitely consider it. I have gained many contacts (potential clients) by searching for people working in my specialism fields, studying their profile and writing a personal note to them. A good half accepted my invitations, and some have since become actual clients. âQuality rather than quantityâ is my rule. I have also removed a few early connections, e.g. people I met once at networking events but with no potential.
Thanks, Karine!
The way I see it, LinkedIn is most beneficial as a tool for people to find me and my services. Sure, I also connect with people I know personally on LinkedIn, but if I want to communicate with those people, I usually do it over email or Facebook unless they are only distant acquaintances who haven’t made it into my private network yet. While I always try to personalize my contact requests, I do accept generic requests if the person who sent it is well connected and sounds like he or she might have a legitimate interest in me or my business. Of course, there is always the danger of someone wanting to get access to my info to create a fake resume to use for translation scams, so this is a judgment call.
Overall, though, it is beneficial to have lots of connections on LinkedIn, as it ultimately exposes you to more people who may be looking for your services. I have been found by several clients on LinkedIn, and I bet that would not have happened if I only had 100 or so close personal connections on there.
Here is a brief article with some good reasons in favor of a LION strategy: http://lewishowes.com/featured-articles/6-reasons-to-connect-with-everyone-on-linkedin/
Awesome, thanks Marion! I do also think that people frequently use LinkedIn as a cross-referencing tool. For example when I look at my profile views, I often see that people who sent me an “out of nowhere” inquiry via my website have then gone and looked at my LinkedIn profile. So I think you’re right about taking the angle that it’s also a tool for people to find you.
Great post, I agree that Linkedin is a great marketing tool for freelance translator and I just started using it. Thank you!
It seems to me that LinkedIn can be very useful not only because potential clients can find us, but also because we can, as Karine said above, search for people from our specialism fields and contact them politely. Sometimes these can be even CEOs of big and important companies. Just click on “Advanced search”.
I have been contacted a couple of times by potential clients, but I must admit I am a bit suspicious when a contact comes from LinkedIn, maybe because I don’t have a BlueBoard here to check them. Also, once I was contacted by a client who had a very negative BlueBoard record on Proz. Maybe they were hoping I wouldn’t do additional research, I don’t know.
Thanks, Daniela! Interesting!