When I first signed up to LinkedIn I only every connected with people that I knew. And had worked with. And was prepared to acknowledge as a professional contact.
LinkedIn also recommend that you only connect with people that you know.
I'm changing tact.
Now, if someone asks to connect with me. And if I view their profile and can see they are a 'real' person, with some relation to my area of expertise. Then I connect to them.
Why the change of heart?
You never know where the next work is going to come from.
As a consultant, we rely on, word of mouth and connections to get work. So the person you connect to, that you don't know now, might get in touch for some work later.
Also, when I accept their request I can send them a pro-forma 'hello' letter, with some upsell links and promote my work. With no guilt. Because they wanted to connect with me. And who knows, my free work might help them.
I have a pro-forma response in Evernote, so when I reply I just copy paste.
Warning - when you copy and paste into linkedin, make sure that you select the white space in the response box, otherwise the copy and paste process will convert all the new lines in your email into double new lines, requiring you to edit the response.
My basic response looks something like this. I refine this all the time, so this is my current iteration:
Hi,
Thanks for connecting with me on LinkedIn.
As my new connection, you might be interested to learn that:
1. I am running some free webinars that you might be interested in signing up for, I have a mailing list which you can sign up to for details <insert link here>
2. I am running a 25% discount on my <details> course so it now only requires <details> to join <insert link here>
:)
Thanks again, and if you need any consultancy or training, and you think I can help, then feel free to get in touch,
Alan
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P.S. visit my websites if you haven't been there before:
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