How to send a connection request on LinkedIn | Connect Like a Pro!
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Everything starts with a connection request and it is so important that you optimize this process.
You need to be as efficient as possible, as you are trying to connect to people who you believe are important for your cause, and your time is limited, and you can request connections only a limited number each Day,
Week, or Month.
There are many factors why someone would accept, decline, or just ignore your connection request:
Your profile Picture
Your title
Your note/message
Your Linkedin Profile as a whole
Your people search criteria and how they match to you
Don’t forget that people who don’t know you will decide to accept your connection request on a subconscious level, very superficial, they just don’t know you yet.
So, you have only one chance to make a first impression.
When someone receives a connection request, they get two options: Accept or Decline.
If someone declines your connection request, they can also click ”I don’t know this person”.
This extra click is very harmful for your Linkedin account’s reputation.
When someone clicks this, they are more or less reporting that your request has disturbed them - this will harm your account in the eyes of the LinkedIn algorithm.
When sending a connection request, you need to decide whether you will add a short note with the request, or no note at all.
There are pros and cons to both options.
Some have success with a less-is-more approach, but keep in mind that your profile needs to be very impressive for people to accept requests from you with no note at all.
If you do decide to send notes with your requests, keep in mind that they need to be less than 300 characters long.
This means that they have to be striking, to the point and have the power to convert without long paragraphs.
When sending notes to accompany your connection requests, you could use any of these starting points:
Honestly your goal. You could write that you see them as a potential customer, partner or associate
You could compliment them after finding them and analyzing their profile
You could write that you’re interested in their opinion and experience
You could mention your mutual connections
You could reference that you share an interest or are in the same industry or niche
You could mention that LinkedIn suggested the connection or
You could ask them for recommendations
So decide what your angle will be, and take it from there.
I know that it can still be quite difficult to figure out what to say, so I’m sharing a few connection request note templates you can use - download the document below for free.
Insert the relevant information and rework them to suit your tone if you need to!
But remember, your work doesn’t stop there. You need to constantly be improving your notes.
Don’t just take a template, become comfortable and use it forever without thinking about it again.
Here are what you should be doing:
Testing your notes:
You could do what we call the “Splitting test”.
This is where you send different types of request notes and every time someone accepts your message you take note of which of the messages converted best, like an internal competition, and then choose the best converting wording for the future requests.
Modeling notes from others:
Modeling others, good marketing is Visible Marketing, here I would also recommend to experiment, if you will add “Lion - Linkedin Open Networker” and configure your account you will start getting connection requests yourself, just analyze how they are sending the connection requests, what did they write, how many connections do they have, what did they write in their title, what does their profile picture look like, did they even bother to send a note with the connection request.
You then take what you learn from them and optimize it for yourself.
Don’t just copy paste:
You can modify the text a bit so it will not always look the same. You don’t want Linkedin to think you are a SPAMMER and that you are just Copy Pasting all your messages.
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