Why Are LinkedIn Discouraging Genuine Connection and What Can We Do About It?

A change on LinkedIn has left me feeling very frustrated lately.

A core part of my philosophy of building strong professional relationships, as reflected in my business strapline is that I don’t believe in connecting randomly and without conversation.

I recognise that there are ‘Open Networkers’ on LinkedIn who believe that a broad network gives them more reach and opportunity. And it’s certainly true that such an approach can secure more views on posts and articles and, from that, you never know who might see your activity and reach out to you with an opportunity. But that is a marketing approach, not a relationship building one. Throw enough mud at the wall and some of it will stick.

That is a perfectly valid approach if you are in predominantly broadcast mode, advertising your services to the widest possible audience. But there are downsides, as I discuss here.

If you want to build, nurture and leverage professional relationships, I believe that it pays to be more thoughtful about connecting on LinkedIn. And that means not accepting random requests from strangers without talking to them first.

Doesn’t that make sense anyway? I have never understood the value of receiving a connection request from someone you know nothing about and simply clicking ‘Accept’. If people want to follow your updates, LinkedIn allows them to do exactly that, by clicking ‘Follow’ on your profile. Connection implies something greater, and that needs conversation.

Connection implies that you know each other to some degree. If it didn’t, why would so many people reach out using ‘mutual connections’ as a reason to connect? That mutual connection implies an associated trust. But that’s meaningless if connections are just an exchange of clicks.

LinkedIn pays lip service to this. For example, if you click ‘Add a Note’ when asking to connect to someone, LinkedIn tells you to ‘Build a quality network by connecting only with people you know’. But why does it wait until you click ‘Add a Note’ before doing that – not offering the same advice to people who just let the site send the standard ‘I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn’ message?

And why is ‘Add a Note’ an afterthought, a bonus option, rather than the default?

This leads nicely onto the cause of my frustration.

Just as I don’t believe that you should connect without conversation, I don’t believe you should delete or ignore without conversation either. I have built some amazing professional relationships with people who have sent me template connection requests out of the blue. I reply to pretty much everyone who sends me such a request, inviting them to tell me more about why they would like to connect and only then make a decision on whether or not to connect based on their response.

At least I used to reply to every request. For some bizarre reason known only to LinkedIn, I can’t do so anymore. Unless you personalise your connection request, people only have two choices, accept or ignore. It’s no longer possible to send them a message and ask for more information, unless you pay to be a Premium member. (Please note that LinkedIn tend to drip feed changes to their platform, so you may still be able to send messages. But they have confirmed to me that they are changing this.)

This is the antithesis of good relationship building. People will either populate their networks with strangers, diluting the power of true connection, or they will ignore everyone they don’t recognise, potentially missing out on some amazing conversation. Why on earth would Linkedin remove this functionality?

Surely LinkedIn should be encouraging conversation by making personalised requests standard and making the option to reply before connecting more prominent rather than removing it.

For the moment, there are three things you can do.

1. If you want to connect with someone, please personalise your request. This is good practice anyway but essential now if you don’t want to be ignored by those who don’t want a completely open network.

2. Tell LinkedIn that they should reverse this change. They don’t make it easy for you to find out how to message them but use this link while logged into LinkedIn and you can send them a message. They have told me that if enough people ask for a move back to being able to reply to connection requests, they will reintroduce it, so can you please help me by sending them that message?

3. Share this blog and let others know about the change and what to do about it.

LinkedIn is a great platform for people who want to put relationships at the core of their business and personal development. But this change makes that much harder. Please help me encourage LinkedIn to practice what they preach and encourage genuine connection.

 

 

**** Thank you to reader Daniel Alfon who has found a workaround for the moment. This doesn’t mean that LinkedIn are off the hook – you shouldn’t need a hidden link to be able to message people who want to connect with you – but it will help in the meantime.

If you want to message people in your connections inbox, use this link and it should work.