The Importance of Personalising LinkedIn Connection Requests

What is the point of a connection on LinkedIn if it isn’t likely to be followed by a conversation?

We’re all familiar with that tiresome feeling that makes you groan when you come back to work after being away to find you have mountains of emails to catch up on. I have recently returned from holiday to find a long list of requests to Connect on LinkedIn. While I am grateful for every single invitation to Connect, I have taken the time and effort to review each request in detail only to find 90% of them have not got a personalised invitation attached to them, which is a shame.

What Do I Mean By ‘Personalised?’

I’d like to stress that I DO NOT encourage the personalisation of Connection invitations by attaching a sales pitch promoting your business or services to your potential new client or contact. I also absolutely DO NOT advocate the use of apps to send automated, formulaic messages with Connection requests.

Relationships aren’t built on automation, they are built on one-to-one engagement…

I’m simply advising that each LinkedIn Connection request should be accompanied by a polite suggestion to suggest that you and the new contact might get to know each other a little better, so you might find opportunities to help each other.

How I Dealt with My Long List of LinkedIn Connection Requests

To each request I accepted, I have sent a personal message asking if they’d like a chat to say hello. No sales pitch, just a genuine attempt to build a meaningful relationship.

I figure if a Connection is going to be worth something, then it deserves a few minutes invested in it.

Strangely, I know only a limited percentage of people will reply.

But let me tell you this. I don’t need more Connections here on LinkedIn, but I am happy to have relationships with people who wish to mutually benefit from experiencing and sharing this world together.

Am I the odd one out? Am I expecting too much of a simple Connection on LinkedIn?

When I shared my experience on LinkedIn and posed the question to my network it sparked quite a debate and discussion, with some people believing some LinkedIn users are merely ‘Connection Collectors’, others strongly endorsing and appreciating personalised messages with their Connection requests and some believing it isn’t always necessary to send a message with a Connection request as our profiles, if written correctly, should represent what we do well enough.

Why don’t you join the debate over on LinkedIn by clicking here?