Linkedin – and My Reluctance to Respond

I realized this morning that a great deal of my reluctance to joined LinkedIn members is the imperative subject line that appears in my Inbox:

“Join my network on LinkedIn” it demands, and I usually see just the subject line in my spam filter before I see it again in my mail processor.

So by the time I click on the mail item to open the message, I’ve been TOLD three times “Join!”, and am feeling a tad annoyed at a machine telling me what to do.

Of course if I don’t know the person at all, it’s easy enough (but still costs me time) to tell LinkedIn “I don’t know this user” and hope that they will be led aboard the next rocket to Mars.

If I know the user well, it’s no problem accepting the invitation; we have most likely discussed hooking up on LinkedIn, or perhaps we are already meeting monthly at some event.

The in-betweens are the at-risk.

If I know OF you but haven’t yet got to know you, I’m more likely to think carefully before joining your network.

And that imperative subject line suggesting to me that I’m being forced against my will tips me towards ignoring the email invitation altogether.

Since LinkedIn knows who is sending the invitation, and why, it would make more sense for them to load the first sentence of the message as the subject line.

Instead of

“Join my network on LinkedIn”

I’d see

“Fergus Drennan has indicated you are a colleague at Wild Man of Food …”

and be more inclined to join.