I want to start off by saying that I think LinkedIn is amazing. This really isn’t intended to be a hateful bash aimed at LinkedIn or its users.

Instead, I hope to help my fellow LinkedIn users avoid a negative experience. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of spam on LinkedIn.

Whilst I do agree that some are deliberately abusing the platform, I feel that the majority simply don’t understand it and aren’t sure about what messages they should or shouldn’t send. I believe many LinkedIn users don’t know what is considered spam.

What is a spam message on LinkedIn?

This is a tough question to answer, as the word spam can mean different things to each person.

In my opinion, spam is any kind of message that has no relevance or value to the reader. Any message you send to a connection must have some kind of relevance and value.

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If you don’t follow that rule, you probably won’t get a response. Worse yet, you may be flagged as a spammer, whether that be directly to LinkedIn, or through a screenshot that’s posted on the recipient’s profile.

The proper etiquette for LinkedIn is simple: Do not send your connections any unwanted sales communications or irrelevant links. It’s impolite and an abuse of an amazing platform.

The reason for this article is to hopefully shed some light on the proper use of LinkedIn to clear up some of this misunderstanding.

I think this lack of understanding stems from how unique LinkedIn is as a platform.

It gets labelled as a social media platform, but that means people instantly start comparing it to Facebook and Instagram.

I can’t tell you how often I get invited to random events in countries I’ve never been to on Facebook. Or how often an irrelevant sponsored video is metaphorically thrust into my face on Instagram.

I, like many others, have become blind to it.

If you’re on Twitter or Instagram, just think about this: How often do you get random people following you who then unfollow after a week?

The thing is, LinkedIn is so different compared to those channels. It’s all about professionals getting to know each other, referring work, and finding new business.

Yet this habit of spamming each other has crossed over.

Take a look through your LinkedIn inbox. How many spam messages do you receive each week?

The number of messages I get that break LinkedIn’s most fundamental rules of etiquette is astounding.

Messages that are obviously copied-and-pasted, or sent as sponsored InMail, will almost always slow your progress towards achieving your goals on LinkedIn.

Those goals may include:

• Connecting with like-minded professionals to extend your learning

• Finding a new job

• Finding new customers

To help you out, I want to list the six types of LinkedIn messages you should never send and explain why you should not send them.

Whilst reading this, keep your LinkedIn inbox open and make a note of how many of each of these types of messages you’ve received in the past month.

You should also consider which of these messages you’ve sent yourself. I know that I’ve personally sent message types 1, 3, 4 and 6 to people before. The other types I have received many times.

#1. A connection request with no message

Sending a connection request with no message attached often says two things:

1. You are lazy

2. You almost definitely don’t know me

I understand that it’s very easy to just send the default request, but it’s important to include a personal message every time you send a connection request. That is, unless you know them very well.

If they’re a close friend or a colleague on my team, I’ll often send a blank connection request - but only in those situations.

There are two key benefits to sending a personalised connection request.

The first is that if you took the time to do a little research on the person and wrote something to stroke their ego in the connection request, they’re more likely to answer positively to any messages you send afterwards.

So if you are connecting with somebody with the aim to make them a customer or get a job interview, you’ve already made a good first impression.

Secondly, if you give them a good reason to accept, they are more likely to actually accept the invitation. The thing is, if people hit the Ignore button, they can also send a “I don’t know this person” notification as feedback to LinkedIn. 

If a large number of people choose that option, your account can become restricted. You’ll have to submit the email address of every person you want to connect with. This makes it almost impossible to connect with people outside of your network.

Sending a personalised connection request instead of a blank one will instantly improve your accept-rate. Most people are still sending message-less invitations, meaning you will stand out if you send a personalised one.

I receive close to 100 connection requests each week, yet I sometimes don’t get a single personalised one out of that entire bunch.

#2. Requesting a recommendation from somebody you don’t know

This is probably the rarest one on the list, but I’ve genuinely received a few messages like this before!

You should never ask somebody on LinkedIn for a recommendation if you don’t know them. Simple as that.

For starters, the request will instantly ruin your credibility with the person you ask. They will start to wonder if all your recommendations and skill endorsements are fake.

Even if they do write a recommendation for you, they won’t have a story to tell. This means it will have less impact compared to somebody who has worked with you. It is also wise to remember that people aren’t stupid and can spot a fake recommendation.

Just remember that a recommendation on LinkedIn is no different to a product review on Amazon. And, according to BrightLocal, “91% of 18–34 year old consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendation.”

These recommendations on LinkedIn are essentially your ‘social proof’ and can sway somebody to either work with you, or not.

So, only request recommendations from credible people who can actually provide a story about what it was like to work with you. Below is an example from my own LinkedIn profile:

Similarly to the connection request, be sure to personalise your request for a recommendation and time it for soon after  a job has just been completed, or just before you move to a brand new position.

When the job has only just been completed, that is when your client is at their happiest—if you did a good job. That will really show in their recommendation, compared to if you ask a month-or-two later, when they’ll perhaps give a more ‘generic’ review.

Whenever you get some kind of testimonial or praise via email or Google My Business, thank the sender and ask if they would be able to write it in a LinkedIn recommendation. Easy!

When making the request, explain why you are asking them. The reason I often give is that I’ve been working on my LinkedIn profile and the next step is to get a few new recommendations. It works almost every time.

Don’t be afraid to ask them to touch on certain subjects or parts of the job you want them to write about. One of the biggest barriers people have when it comes to writing a recommendation is that they simply don’t know what to write.

Giving them a few starting points can make it seem like a less time-consuming or daunting task. Ask them to write about specific aspects of your product, service, or their experience in working with you.

#3. The “I saw you viewed my profile” personalised connection request

I’m always keen to see who’s viewed my profile on LinkedIn. There is a great sense of satisfaction to be had when one of your idols views your profile. I am such a fanboy at times!

And I get it. We like to add people who’ve viewed our profiles because them viewing it could mean they have some kind of interest in you.  However, the fact that somebody has viewed your profile is not a good enough reason to give when sending a connection request.

A person who’s viewed your profile may have many different reasons for doing so. So, instead of focusing on why they viewed your profile, give them an actual reason as to why you want to connect with them.

#4. Asking for too much, too soon

This is one of the most obvious signs that somebody wants to just spam and sell to you on LinkedIn.

I’ll get messages from people I’m connected to trying to arrange a sales call or meeting right off the bat. I don’t know them or know what they want to talk about, except they want to sell me something. Yet strangers feel like I, and the other 50–100 people they’ve asked that day, are going to agree to take time out of our days to talk about an unidentified topic for an unspecified length of time.

I did a quick count and worked out that I sometimes receive over 30 of these messages in a single week.

Let’s say each of these meetings and phone calls took just 15 minutes each. If I accepted every one of them, that would add up to seven-and-a-half hours—that’s more than a full working day for me, each week!

Time is valuable, and just asking to meet me (it’ll have to be a video call during these current times, but messages seem to rarely reflect this when I’m asked to meet “for a coffee”) so you can sell me something won’t be placed very high on my priority list. I will only give you a piece of my precious time if I think it has some kind of genuine value. So prove it to me.

When you are contacting somebody on LinkedIn, you should look at it like a relationship with a person in real life. For some reason, we seem to forget this and I feel that this disconnection when we communicate online comes from not being able to see each other.

But to make the comparison between LinkedIn and real life, if you met somebody at a networking event, would you immediately ask them to book a meeting with you? Or would you instead strike up a conversation and get to know them a bit better first?

I certainly hope you would choose the latter option! We are all keen for quick wins and fast sales, but the reality is that you need to build rapport first. Develop a relationship with your prospect before booking a sales meeting.

Once somebody accepts your connection request, your only aim at the start should be to get to know that person better.After developing that rapport, and potentially finding some common interests, you can start to look at their needs.

When you get an understanding of their business challenges, you can start to provide value and show that you’re the best solution.

It is only at this stage that you then think about asking somebody for their time. This can be a phone call, video chat, or, once lockdown restrictions ease, an in-person meeting.

There were three whole steps before asking to meet the person. And each of those steps does take some time. But that’s what you need to do in order to get the sales meeting.

#5. A product or service sales pitch

We’ve just talked about people who ask for a sales meeting right off the bat. These messages are even worse and need their own heading!

This is not even bothering to start any kind of conversation, but just trying to generate an instant sale. I seriously can’t believe anybody thinks this would actually work, but these messages are sent.

Like I said at the beginning of this article: I’ve received all of these types of messages before, many times.

Trying to sell your product or service to a new connection without so much as a “How are you?” is a great way to get reported as spam.

People do take screenshots of these messages and share them as a public post, so you’re just showcasing yourself as somebody to avoid. The person below messaged me not realising that I work in digital marketing and regularly run SEO campaigns.

Like with the previous type of message, you have to build a relationship with your new connections before asking for any kind of decision.

Sending a generic pitch screams to the recipient that you are lazy and only care about their wallet. So don’t do it.

#6. Unnecessarily ‘personal’ messages

Whilst the sales pitch message wins the award for the most annoying, overtly personal ones win the award for the strangest.

I’ve written my own fair share of emotional status updates on Facebook and Instagram, but let’s not forget that LinkedIn is a social network for professionals. It just seems really out of place.

A few years ago, after contributing an article for a digital marketing graduate programme about my journey into the industry, I received a strange message from somebody (and I wish I hadn’t deleted it) I didn’t know. She decided to air out her marriage troubles to me.

That’s fine if my story had some kind of effect on her and helped her through life challenges, but it was never explained. The part that freaked me out was when she asked to meet me. For “after-work drinks”.

Let’s not forget here that she was a married woman. But regardless, I had to delete it before my wife saw, otherwise that’d make for a strange conversation that my awkward self didn’t want to have.

I think what’s happening here is that this person is trying to form an emotional connection and show a deep understanding of what was trying to be said. But in all honesty, it’s just a little creepy.

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Messaging online is a strange form of communication, as there is so much that is left up to interpretation.

We have no body language to draw the message from, so we attempt to create emotion out of the writing style. But that isn’t a foolproof system and people may not perceive your message the way it was meant.

At the end of the day, LinkedIn is a business platform for professionals

Therefore, you should always keep it professional.

LinkedIn is a place where you can build real and significant professional relationships, and communications should be done in a way that provides value to your connections - if you want to build genuine relationships. Everything you do on there should therefore be well thought-out and help you progress towards your goals.

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This means following best practice, which involves creating genuine conversations that are personalised towards the recipient. The old saying of ‘quality over quantity’ exists for a reason, meaning automated messaging services and copy-paste techniques will bring little in the way of results compared to putting in the effort.

Whilst best practice is an entire discussion (that I intend to write about in the future) in itself, start by doing some proper research into the next person you contact. Give a better reason for adding them as a connection than “I noticed that you looked at my profile.” Instead, read the blogs on their websites and lead with a question related to the article.

If you notice something in their profile that you have in common, point it out. A free eBook or webinar doesn’t particularly tempt me to respond when I know nothing about the author or host. However, somebody pointing out that they share a passion for motocross will make me want to reply to their message. It starts a genuine conversation that is relevant and interesting to me.

What unique message will you send to the next person you contact on LinkedIn?

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