As some of you know, I’ve been fairly active on LinkedIn. It’s a great resource for meeting new people, learning about your filed, and building strong connections.
However, I’ve started to notice a trend. Many people will invite me to connect with them. For the record, I connect with everyone who asks, whether I know them or not.
Once they invite me to connect, I usually respond with something along the lines of “Thank you for connecting with me. If you need help with anything please let me know.”
I’m not sure if this is a bad response, or what, but the majority of people never respond. It seems to me that many people are simply looking to increase the amount of connections that they have. Is it vanity? I’m not sure. But what I do know is that they are missing out on a great opportunity to meet people who they can help and can help them.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Greg,
* Maybe they suspect that you want to sell them something.
* Probably only 3% are usually ready to talk about what they might need from you right now or think that you could deliver.
* It’s really nice to have 1,001 connections, isn’t it.
Maybe your want to try the opposite approach.
Find out what they do and ask for specific advice in their field
once connected.
What do you think?
If you try it, let me know how it goes.
Yours
John
Hi Greg,
I have thought about this also and asked around and some of the responses seem to be that people use LinkedIn for sales, networking and making connections for future needs. I have seen sales reps contact people on LinkedIn to get to people they need for a sales opportunity or a business lead. I am not sure if it works or not since it doesn’t seem like these are authentic connections. I have been contacted on LinkedIn by recruiters/head hunters and it feels like spam.
Regarding the lack of response to your reply email to the connections I think it looks like a ‘canned’ response and people don’t realize it is a genuine request. I would consider customizing the response to each connection and I think you might get a better response. I still don’t think you will get a high level of responses but it is worth a try and you could make some interesting connections.
Just some thoughts, but definitely an interesting question.
Kes
Kes,
Thanks for the reply. I’ll try customizing it a little more to see what happens and report back.