Does your LinkedIn Invitation annoy people?
Read on to find out. I am sure YOU would never send a standard LinkedIn Invite. One you didn’t customise, but I have! Yes, sure have. Let me tell you how it happened…
My personal biggest LinkedIn Invitation Boo-Boos
Yes, I have send silly LinkedIn Invitations more than once. This article is to stop you from repeating my mistakes. I’ve used the ‘people you may know’ feature, the app on my phone and iPad and the feature where LinkedIn uses your email address-book to find new connections.
Is the simple solution to never use any of these features? Nope. There is a time and a place. So let me tell you how to really annoy people with your LinkedIn Invitation and give you my two cents to do it differently.
LinkedIn Invitation to ‘people you may know’
On the top right of your profile, LinkedIn suggests ‘people you may know’. Previously clicking ‘connect’ would send the invite without the option to add a personal note. This seems to have been fixed, but don’t hold your breath. I still hear people complain. So if LinkedIn suggests someone you do want to connect with, go to their profile and send the invite from there.
LinkedIn Invitation using the LinkedIn App on phone or tablet
Why does it annoy people to receive a LinkedIn Invitation you send from your phone or tablet using the LinkedIn App? Well try it! NOT. The app doesn’t allow you to customise your message. How do you feel if you got a standard invite? Especially from someone you just had a really interesting conversation with?
LinkedIn Invitation to people who are not LinkedIn Members
Sounds a bit obvious doesn’t it? But inviting people to connect when they aren’t even on LinkedIn is not as crazy as it sounds. Did you ever allow LinkedIn to check your address book? I have, more than once! I will even use the feature again. It is just HOW you use the feature.
LinkedIn saves me a lot of time checking which of my email connections are LinkedIn members. This is why I allow LinkedIn to check from time to time. I jot down the names of the people I want to connect. I then look them up and personally invite them. So what did I do wrong in the past? Well I was demonstrating this feature. Got to step 1 and immediately deselected the box “select all”.
I jotted down the names of the people I wanted to invite manually, clicked skip or whatever it says down the bottom and arrived at step 2:
And then I forgot to deselect the select all box! CAPITAL MISTAKE. Not only did I send out LinkedIn Invitations to people (about 300 of ’em) who aren’t even LinkedIn members. I did so without any personal note and … get this … if they did not accept, LinkedIn send them a reminder. TWICE! If that is not a surefire way to annoy people with your LinkedIn invitation I don’t know what is!