Common, but Outdated, LinkedIn Advice?
It’s been true for years. Every single social media article that talks about how to “do LinkedIn right”, or lists all the things you are doing “wrong” with LinkedIn has an entry explaining how you should never just send a connection request, but that it should always be personalized.
I saw it again just the other day.
It reminded me of something that I discovered about the LinkedIn mobile app quite a while ago, namely that it didn’t have that ability. Once you hit the connect button on a profile as you viewed it, the default message went and you were done.
So I decided to check and see if they had changed that. Not that I could see. This also made me curious about how the website works. Lo and behold, I do not see any option to personalize the connection invitation. Again, looking at a profile of someone I am not connected with I am given two buttons, Connect and Send InMail. Since I have only a free account, inMail isn’t really an option, so I hit the connect button. Just like the app has done for a long time now, the next thing that I saw was not a chance to personalize my message, but an “Invitation Sent” notification.
So social media “experts”, the next time you decide to trot out that old advice, maybe you want to actually use the website that you’re professing to be expert about. Or prove that you really are an expert and explain exactly how a user is supposed to follow your advice? Because if there really is a way to personalize invitations and I’m just not seeing it anywhere on the site, I’ll be glad to chastise LinkedIn for making it so hard to find! (Not that they don’t deserve chastising if they removed it as well!)
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Brigid Volk liked this on Facebook.
Actually Mike, it’s right there at the bottom of the connection. You chose how you know each other and then there is a personal note option which is pre-filled in to say “I’d like to link with you at LinkedIn” or whatever their normal verbage is.
At least that is the case in firefox 😉
Andy
I used to get the option just like you describe Andy, but not any more. When I hit Connect that would pop up and ask me how I knew the person and let me change the message. Now it just sends an invitation, at least with 2nd degree connections. Maybe if they aren’t someone you already share connections with you still get that message?
That’s weird. I just entered a random name into linked in and was able to click the connect and the option to personalize the message was still there. Maybe it depends on which server/build you hit.
It’s weird that Brandi and I can visit the same url on Google Maps and get different aerial photos of the exact same location. Sometimes we get images taken about 6 weeks ago (by our reckoning) and sometimes we get ones from about 2 years ago.