Recently, on one of the LinkedIn Groups, Philippe Mesritz had mentioned something about Standard/BoilerPlate Invitations.
The bottom-line being that while there are many nouveau networkers who use the standard invitation text while sending an invitation to connect networks, the other issue is the “Accept” button when the receiver receives the invitation. Typically, this is what happens:
- “A” finds “B”‘s profile on LinkedIn who is a good prospect to connect with – in terms of business.
- “A” sends an Invitation to Connect to “B” but does not edit the boilerplate invitation text that LinkedIn provides.
- “B” receives the invitation and clicks on the link to “A”‘s profile to find out more about “A”.
- “B” believes the request is a good fit and wants to interact further with “A”, hence decides to connect with “A”.
- “B” clicks on the “Accept” button and “A” becomes a part of “B”‘s network – but the only problem is that “B” has to follow an extra step to get in touch with “A” – “B” has to open his/her e-mail client to write an e-mail to “A”.
What Philippe is proposing is to have an extra step within the LinkedIn system itself, which would enable the acceptor to write a personal message from withing the LinkedIn system.
My only grouse with the above suggestion is that when someone does write a personal message to me using the LinkedIn system, I don’t want to log into LinkedIn to read that message – I should then be able to follow-up that message from my personal e-mail client. Currently, that is one of the issues I have with openBC – once you start a conversation in the openBC system, you have to keep logging into openBC to check that inbox – which is an additional e-mail client to bother about.
Does LinkedIn have any bright ideas?
2 comments
As I proposed the change that was written above, I thought I should comment!
I agree that a simply ‘reply’ to the invitation should be possible. One way that it could be implemented is that the initial invitation is sent out with a CC to the Linkedin System where a ‘reply all’ is then sent to LinkedIn along with the initial person submitting the invitation. As long as the first word in the email is “Approved” or “Denied” and the rest has the custom verbage, this could work.
My largest concern with the existing process is that there is only a boiler plate version of ‘accept’. You can write a very custom invitation request, but all you get back is “you’ve been accepted”. It seems somewhat backwards to me.
— Philippe Mesritz
CEO, New Direction Marketing, Inc
Blog: Marketing and Sales
I agree Philippe, it does seem quite backward!
Even when I accept an introduction [ via OpenLink or otherwise ], all I get is a window that tells me that the person can be contacted at a particular e-mail id – I wish there was an “Invite to Connect” button to automatically invite them to my network.
Currently, I have to copy their e-mail id, and click on the “Add Connection” button and then feed in some more text.
More scope for LinkedIn to improve!
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