When Trying To Connect On LinkedIn, Don't Do This...

Dear LinkedIn Con­nec­tion, I received your request to con­nect with me here on LinkedIn. I nor­mal­ly review each request before approv­ing the con­nec­tion. My first few years on LinkedIn, I thought it was best prac­tice to con­nect with as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble. It seemed as though the aggres­sive LinkedIn users were doing the same thing. Why not fol­low ​“best prac­tices”, eh? Per­haps that was an okay tech­nique ear­ly on. It at least made my pro­file look more impressive! How­ev­er, I have a slight­ly dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy now when I choose to accept a con­nec­tion and if I will begin to engage and reach out. I real­ize that it is not about how many con­nec­tions I have, but how like­ly I am will­ing to engage and fol­low them. Not every­one on LinkedIn is a good fit for me. For exam­ple, they may not find my updates help­ful. So, I do not accept all con­nec­tions any­more. I want to see if I know the per­son or I try to find out why the per­son wants to con­nect. Nor­mal­ly, I am still not all that picky and I still accept a lot of invi­ta­tions. [cap­tion id=“attachment_3165” align=“alignright” width=“300”] Email Example[/caption] Yet there is one thing that I use to deter­mine if I will keep a con­tact in my con­nec­tions. It is a pret­ty sim­ple rule I now fol­low. Upon accept­ing the invi­ta­tion, if the con­tact then sends me a direct mes­sage (pri­vate) with a canned email want­i­ng to reach out and get togeth­er to dis­cuss their ser­vices, I will not respond and will remove this per­son imme­di­ate­ly from my connections.  I know you are eager to build your con­nec­tions and make more sales. How­ev­er, it is very annoy­ing to receive a canned mes­sage that is try­ing real­ly hard to either make a sale or con­nect fur­ther. We just met! Give it a lit­tle time! If you real­ly want to meet with me and think we are a good fit, get to know me by fol­low­ing some of my posts. Also, allow me the time to do the same. Show me, by your LinkedIn updates, what it is you do: show me the val­ue! When I get a mes­sage 2 min­utes lat­er thank­ing me for accept­ing your invi­ta­tion and want­i­ng to get togeth­er, I lose all inter­est in con­nect­ing with you. Maybe the com­pa­ny you work for has told you this is your job to con­nect with as many peo­ple on LinkedIn as pos­si­ble and cut/​paste a sales mes­sage to each and every­one! It is a bad strat­e­gy in my opin­ion. I am sure you’ll find a few folks that will want to get togeth­er, but I hope you’ll con­sid­er a more per­son­al approach. I wish you all the best! David P.S. I’d love to give you a sec­ond chance. I already delet­ed you from my con­nec­tions. Yet per­haps you can start over again by giv­ing me a good rea­son to con­nect. Start with cre­at­ing val­ue with your LinkedIn updates.