Do you struggle with effectively managing pending LinkedIn connection requests?  Many of my clients do.

 

To Connect or Not to Connect?

Everyone takes a slightly different approach. In general, I advise my clients to be very selective.

Here are some examples of criteria you can apply:

  • You can see a potential business relationship with this person.
  • The two of you are part of the same professional, business, or community organization.
  • This person is a current or former co-worker, business colleague, client, or vendor.
  • You met this person at a networking function and hit it off.
  • You know them from a Facebook group or other online experience.

 I suggest accepting the invite if the person meets at least one of the criteria above or whatever criteria you use. If you’re not sure, it is useful to send them a message asking why they reached out to you. If you don’t like their answer or if they just don’t respond, you may not want to connect with them.

To send this message, click on Manage – just above Pending Invites. Or it might say Select (and the number of invites that are pending). Then click on the word Message below their name and write your note.

 If you choose not to connect, just ignore the request.

If someone is overly persistent, you can even block them. The people I tend to block are the super-salesy ones. They typically write me a note about how they can get me a lot of leads or help me generate a six-figure income.

To block someone, go to their profile and click on the More… button to the right of the blue Message button. Click on Report/Block and choose Block – and the person’s first name.

Warning: Don’t accept an invite from someone simply because have many shared connections. Unless you change your default setting, everyone who connects with you can see all your connections and some people only connect in order to “mine” your connections.

 

How About You?

What kind of criteria do you apply as you consider whether to accept or ignore an invite to connect on LinkedIn? If you use the blocking option, what kinds of people do you block?

 

About Joyce

 

Joyce Feustel helps people, especially those age 45 and up, become more effective using social media, especially Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. She provides social media tutoring and training to business owners, business development professionals, authors, speakers, coaches, business consultants, job seekers, and many others. Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com.