I tried a little experiment in my newsletter today. At the top of the email, I wrote:
I’ve found LinkedIn to be a useful channel for meeting new folks and discovering interesting newsletter content, and I’d love if you connected with me there. But if you do, will you also attach a note to your connection request? I accept pretty much every request as long as they add a note…
I got about 20 requests on LinkedIn today. Of them, seven had a note attached.
I find that to be amazing. I don’t personally know most of the people making these requests — I hadn’t met one in person, to my knowledge, and in many cases, I hadn’t even received a previous email from them! Why would I connect with someone who I don’t even casually know?
I think part of this is how LinkedIn is set up. It’s really easy to send a connection request without adding a note. (In fact, I did that this evening — I clicked the button to connect but it didn’t pop up with the ability to send a message.) I’m also a little bummed — if I knew that these folks were definitely readers, I’d happily connect with them.
I know some people on LinkedIn hate all the notes because they feel obligated to reply to each one. (I usually reply with a “thanks, and thanks for reading!” Takes two seconds to do so.) But the little bit extra goes a long way — at least in my book.
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That’s the basic LinkedIn request form: “How do you know this person?” The screenshot is from Barry Schwartz and is re-used here thanks to a Creative Commons license.