I use a lot of social media and networking sites, including LinkedIn. One of the features of all of these sites is the ability to “invite” someone to join your network, your contact list, your group whatever. Each site also has some default text that gets sent to the person. In the case of LinkedIn, this reads, “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”
If you really want to be effective in using these tools, though, take a few extra minutes to add a personalized note to every invitation, friend request, etc, you send. In my case, I offer Career Opportunities listeners the chance to join my network, BUT they need to tell me this in their invitation. I like to have some small, tangible connection to people in my social networking groups and this is one way I can tell that our paths have crossed, somewhere, sometime.
Do yourself, and your potential contacts, a favor and give them something more to go on then the default invite. If you do, I can guarantee you that many more people will accept your invitations in the future.
** Click the link above to join my LinkedIn network, but remember to tell me that you are a listener or reader of Career Opportunities.
