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Some of my favorite people are upset. 😭 These are friends, clients, readers of my book, and attendees from my presentations........ I have been getting texts, emails, and LinkedIn messages about a change from LinkedIn. It doesn't usually happen this way. So now I need to advise them - So I think that I will advise you all too in this post. So what's the issue? LinkedIn is drastically reducing the ability to send a personalized note with an invitation to connect for free users. This change impacts free and premium users so here is my advice. ✅ For Free Users - First, Your LinkedIn profile matters more than ever before. People who receive your invite will be looking hard at your profile to decide if they should connect with you. Take a look at it and make the adjustments to attract your ideal connection. Secondly, be sure to send a friendly message to any new connection as soon as they do accept. Finally, Now is the time to consider upgrading to one of the premium services especially if you depend on LinkedIn. Figure out the differences (benefits) because LinkedIn offers a few different flavors. Sending out personal invite notes is an important way to get those valuable connections. ✅ For Premium Users - Don't just discard an invitation to connect because there is no personalized note. You will see fewer of them. This means you need to go to every profile to decide if this person is a good connection for you. Of course, you can send that person a note right? Also, you might want to enable the Open Profile feature so anyone can send you a message. Just enable this in your settings. Even with this, some users won't understand it and may not send you a note. (You might want to put some kind of notice in your About section) What do YOU think of this change to LinkedIn Messaging? And what are YOU going to do going forward? #linkedin #messaging #personalbranding
Ilise Benun what are your thoughts to this?
I have had a paid LI account for more than 15 years. It is table stakes if you are a business professional. Why wouldn't you pay to be visible and reachable in the #1 database for business?
I like every effort that LinkedIn uses to decrease spam and unwanted solicitations for business… What I tell my clients is, “how do you feel about interruption marketing - when you are interrupted via text, a phone call, junk mail or snail email that you did not ask to receive? If you don’t like receiving them then why send them? And because LinkedIn is relational and not transactional, I suggest to my clients that they build high-quality referral networks rather than bombarding Unknown people and prospects with messages that they may or may not be interested in.
Seems a limiting factor on usage and a bit of a "money grab" on LinkedIn (MS's) part. Even the premium payment level is probably far outweighed by the data they're leveraging and selling on each of us, as on all social platforms we are the product. Not saying "everything should be free" but if the only difference is "the same for more" -- doesn't leave a good "consumer taste" in the mouth. More "I guess I have to pony up…" vs. being truly enticed.
When people post, I comment on their posts a couple of day and then I send a connexion request. They accept even without personalisation of the request. When we are connected, I send them a message. Another way, I use a lot of group in my niche. When we are on the same group, we can send message to people in this group, even if we are not connected. It’s very useful. I hope it will help, Sandra. 😉
This is an interesting approach, LinkedIn has taken. It makes me wonder what problem they're trying to solve. It doesn't appear to be spam, because this is a counter productive way to do that.
Sandra Long, I think if LinkedIn is trying to stop the spamming then it would be a better scenario to make sure we add a note to connect. I get lots of connection requests without notes and don't accept most of them. I'm not sure what I'm going to do moving forward since my notes usually remind someone where/how we met or if they were a referral.
I think [In] got it backwards Sandra Long, they should have restricted or eliminated blank invites. United We All #KeepRockingLinkedIn! Kevin On a Mission to Eliminate Organizational & Personal Blanding™
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5moHonestly, this change feels petty. LinkedIn's premium options offer real value to a certain subset of users. I understand that they are trying to get more people to opt-in to one of these premium options, and that makes sense. But *how* they are doing it doesn't make any sense. Instead of penalizing free users by taking away features, add value to the premium options to appeal to those free users. LinkedIn must give me a reason to subscribe to a premium option instead of penalizing me for using the platform the way they designed it. I am a free user, but that doesn't mean I don't bring value to LinkedIn. Not only do I create content that keeps folks engaged and on their platform, but LinkedIn gets to sell access to me to their advertisers and premium users. I've been perfectly content with that exchange of value for value. But every time LinkedIn takes a feature away from folks like me, that exchange becomes less and less tenable.