This is a brilliant guest post from my friend David. It’s the email he wish he’d sent to a to a generic LinkedIn connection request. Hope this guy learns his lesson.
Dear Guy-who-sent-me-a-generic=LinkedIn-request,
You sent me an invitation to connect on LinkedIn, even though you don’t really know me. Of course, I know you, or at least know who you are. With about 7,000 Twitter followers, blog, Facebook profile and fan page, YouTube channel and Flickr account, you’re kind of a big deal in the Chicago social media scene. People I interact with regularly know you or have heard of you. You come up in conversations. I’ve run into you at networking events and even tried to introduce myself. You were too busy being social with friends instead to talk to me (instead of actually, you know, networking).
Your LinkedIn invitation consisted of the generic text provided by the network: “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” How lazy and impersonal. Why don’t you send me an auto DM on Twitter while you’re at it? I thought everyone who knows anything about LinkedIn knows this is the ultimate faux pas. Perhaps I’m wrong though. You list “Social Media” among your specialties.
The invitation also says you’ve indicated I am “a Friend.” I recognize “Friend” is a relatively loose term when it comes to social media. People who have never met in person are Facebook friends. If you have no other connection and want to get around having to look up an email address, “Friend” is the viable only option on LinkedIn. But aside from knowing the same people, we aren’t really that chummy. Perhaps you’re using the term “Friend” just a bit too loosely in this case.
Your LinkedIn invite would have been more effective if you had said something like this:
Hi David,
We seem to operate in similar circles. Why don’t we connect? Perhaps we’ll meet in person sometime soon.
Regards,
________
That probably would have resulted an acceptance of your invitation. For the time being, though, my response is, “You can do better.”
David Salkover works in the Meeting and Events industry. He’s passionate about tradeshows and conventions, and is never without a good book to read. Far from being a social media guru/ninja/expert, he’s more of a social media nerd. David tweets about whatever happens to be on his mind at twitter.com/dbsalk.
