2011.06.14

Extending relationships and building networks

If you follow me on Twitter you might have seen me gripe about “canned” connection requests. I find this to be particularly concerning when professionals send a connection request through LinkedIn… nothing like the generic “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” several times a day to make you realize people missed the point of relationship building. They’ve fallen victim to the clickonnection. (There’s a parody idea for The Onion about real-life-digital-dating situations in this somewhere.)

In a similar vein, someone suggested yesterday during a session at the IABC conference that Facebook “Like” buttons should be replaced by “Trust” buttons. That would almost certainly reduce the number of people joining a fan page to a qualified group and would likely impact the pitch and value of discussion. A quality over quantity paradigm shift (to use to lingo I’ve overheard over the last few days).

So, I thought I’d share a great example of a bar-setting LinkedIn invite I received.

Thank you, Jane! I also enjoyed the chat. This invitation further confirms our conversation and LinkedIn connection is valuable, not just convenient.

Yes. I accept.

And… I’m looking forward to reading your book.

  • Avra Gibbs Lamey

    I completely agree. A personalized invitation is much more likely to get a response from me. Having said that, I am guilty of sending generic requests because I am more likely to use LI from my iPhone, and there is no option to customize the invite ( that I have found, anyway).

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