I am a BIG fan of LinkedIn. I joined on February 27th 2004, so I am close to 11 years on the platform. I was also privileged to have been asked to keynote at their London Sales event in 2014 where I was the 2nd highest rated speaker of the day.
I’m also a power LinkedIn user and have been using their amazing Sales Navigator product for a few months now (more in a future blog post).
One thing that bugs me though about the platform is that on their mobile app, you can’t personalise a connection invitation.
Here is what the mobile app looks like (note also the VPN symbol – these days I ALWAYS connect to WiFi via a VPN – read why in this post.
Once you push the “invite person” button, the invitation is sent – without the ability to personalise it.
In contrast, here is what the desktop version looks like
Here I have the ability to personalise an invitation, and put some context behind the request – where we met, and why we should connect.
I am much more likely to accept an invitation that has been personalised in this way.
I am glad I am not alone. This morning a discussion started on Twitter on this very subject.
UPDATE: According to a few of the comments on my LinkedIn post on this subject, the function is available (but hidden) on the iPhone and Android apps, but is not available in the iPad app, so I changed the title of the post from “mobile app” to “iPad app”.
I’ve mentioned this requirement to the LinkedIn London team a few times, and at the Sales Connect event in London last October, I was able to bend the ear of Mike Derezin who is head of sales solutions, so hopefully, the request will make it into the app soon.
UPDATE 2: All LinkedIn mobile apps now contain the functionality I requested.
To access them, on a particular profile, click the more (or 3 dots on a mobile) option
Then select “Personalise Invite”
I know that for some users, they don’t want to add a note, so my suggestion would be in the app settings to have a flag to say “add message/don’t add message” so that when I hit the “invite person” button I would always be prompted to add a personal message.
It is a simple thing, but for me, it can mean the difference between accepting a connection request and ignoring it.