LinkedIn Invitations – Why hitting I Don’t Know This Person is a bad idea

By Andrea Stenberg on 04/10/2010 – 4:24 pm PDT -- Life Stages

. Even if you don’t know someone (or have forgotten), you never know how they’re going to be of value to you. By refusing to connect, this woman missed out on a chance to bid and perhaps get work.

This story also illustrates why you need to understand the rules of the road before getting in your virtual car and driving through the world of online networking. If you get it wrong, you can inadvertently shoot yourself in the foot. (My apologies for the mixed metaphor).

It makes me wonder, why this woman going to networking meetings and on LinkedIn if she doesn’t want to connect with new people and doesn’t remember people she meets. Hey, I’m a baby boomer and I can tell you my memory ain’t what it was. But when I get an invitation, I’d certainly check my business card collection to see if we’d met. If all else fails, I would reply to the request asking how we knew each other before hitting IDK.

Being an optimist, I prefer to think this woman didn’t understand the consequences of hitting IDK. However she clearly lost out in this case.

My advice:

Never hit the IDK button on any LinkedIn invitation you get. If you truly don’t want a connection, archive it. Use the IDK as a last resort for dealing with stalkers, spammers and all-round dirty players.

However, I also urge you to think twice about even hitting the archive link. You never know when accepting an invitation will be the first step towards a lucrative new customer.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Do you have a story about accepting or declining invitations on LinkedIn, or another social media site? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

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  • http://www.razchorev.com Raz Chorev

    Andrea, I agree you should never click IDK, as you never know…Right?

    As a high-profile person on Linkedin, I get a dozens of invitations, from people I meet, but also from people I never met, or had nothing to do with, prior to being invited. When the latter happens, this is my practice:
    1. I check their profile. complete? appealing? Where are they from – Local or from elsewhere?
    2. The invitation – personal or generic? Have they nominated me as a “friend”? Why?
    3. What are the chances of doing business? – As a Linkedin trainer, there’s always a good chance
    4. What can they offer me? What can I offer them?

    Then, if I can see a compelling reason straight away, I accept the invitation, and send them a “thank you for inviting me” note.
    If I can’t see a compelling reason, I’ll hit Reply, and ask them to clarify where have they heard of me from, and WIIFM (why I should accept their invitation).
    If their profile is incomplete, I’d normally send a link to a presentation I’ve prepared to help people complete their Linkedin profile easily.
    If they pick up the glove, I’ll be happy to connect.
    If they don’t – I archive them.

    I believe there is “credibility by association”, in Linkedin as well as IRL. Therefore I don’t accept people to my network automatically, only people I would be happy to be associated with.

    Raz

  • http://www.mjimenez.es/ Manuel

    Hey Raz, very insightful comment.
    I totally agree with you, there’s no harm in doing some research before accepting invitations, be it Linkedin or any other SNetwork.

    In fact it’s that research what builds up the connection.

    Plus it’s quite easy to identify those who only want an as populated as possible network “trolls”.

    I myself have some kind of lists going on in my social networking sites where I organize contacts by proximity.

    Thanks for your view Andrea.

  • http://www.linkedin.com/in/janerubinsky Jane Rubinsky

    There’s another option you haven’t mentioned: just ignore the invitation.

    But don’t necessarily take being ignored as a rejection; sometimes folks just prefer to sit down and go though their invitations and accept all at once. I’ve had a few people accept my LinkedIn invitations two or three months later!

    I’ve only had one person IDK me, and I was scratching my head over that one … we were in the same class at college!

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