You Ask, I Answer: Mass Connection Requests on LinkedIn?

In today's episode, Darlene asks, I'm getting lots of connection request sales pitches on LinkedIn. Does this spray and pray technique actually work? I'm getting them too. Uh several dozen a day. And at least they say up front it's a sales pitch so I can decline the request, which is handy, rather than being that person that uh sends you the connection request, and then the moment you hit connect, uh you get what we jokingly call a pitch slap.

Uh where you immediately get a sales pitch and you have to go and unfollow the person and report them as a spam or etc. Um does the technique work? Yes and no. Um any automation, any of these, you know, mass spray and pray tactics does work in the beginning, um in the short term, but two things tend to happen. One, if you're using your own personal account, it tends to uh incur things like you know, bans and having your account uh canceled, etc.

Uh because you're breaking the terms of service, and that's absolutely LinkedIn's uh prerogative to do. And two, even if that wasn't the case, you're only gonna sort of get the uh the lowest common denominator sorts of connections from that style of technique because there's in every market there's there's a curve of demand, right? There's the people who need something right now, there are people who uh are looking for something, there are people who have a problem that they don't know is a problem yet, and then there are people for whom the problem does not exist. Um when you're doing spray and pray anything, spray and pray email, tweets, LinkedIn connection requests, whatever, you're really only gonna scrape that very first uh bucket of people who are so desperate that they'll latch onto anything. Those tend not to be the best customers either.

Those folks are not necessarily the world's uh best planners or the folks who are in interested in a long-term professional relationship, and you absolutely can make a market out of doing service to just the most desperate. But again, that comes with a whole bucket of problems. Those are customers that tend not to pay their bills on time, among other things. As opposed to uh investing much more heavily over the long term in professional relationships, uh, so that you work your way up the demand curve. The challenge, again, for a lot of businesses is that if you are on the the end of that demand curve of just desperate people, um, anyone will do to solve their problem, which also means that any competitor will do, and the moment that that person uh who has bought your service uh finds that they are interested in say lower costs, etc., uh they will drop you like a uh a hot potato as you work your way up the demand curve into more and more relationship-based uh things where the problem is not obvious, where the problem may not be known, but you have a you have built a reputation as a trusted advisor, it's harder to dislodge you.

It's not impossible. Um, there are certainly plenty of companies that will say like, yep, we had some budget cuts and this is what we can do. But generally speaking that relationship will carry you much further. It requires a longer investment. It requires you know sometimes uh months, maybe even years, uh, to build those relationships, but once you have them, then they tend to s be something that can be sustained over the long term.

So should you go and automate things on LinkedIn? No, not really. Um again, there are there are bots, there are you know pieces of software you can buy that they can run automated. They are relatively easy for LinkedIn to detect and then ban your account because of their automated nature. And I've looked at a number of them.

I've looked at how they work. They are very naive. They do not understand how the LinkedIn algorithms work. If you read any of LinkedIn's patents and things, uh they are very good about doing pattern matching and again you get a very low quality audience if you spend your time instead on things like effective content marketing on LinkedIn. Connecting with people that uh you want to build a professional relationship with using other sources of of data to build your LinkedIn network is a real simple one is you know asking people to connect with you on LinkedIn in things like email newsletters and stuff that you do, or in your YouTube videos, or whatever the case may be.

Anything where you're gonna build in that relationship and you're going to have no expectations from that relationship for a long time. Again, measured in years. This is why a lot of sales folks still refer to things like the Golden Rolodex, uh, which is uh your book of business, your your collection of professional contacts that are meaningful contacts. They're people that will return your calls if you call them, and vice versa. And it takes years or decades to build that up.

So get started. If you don't have one, get started soon. Um invest in people for who they are, because people will change job roles all the time. And a person who uh was a uh big wig at one company may be not so much at another company, but that person, if they are somebody you are legitimately uh invested in as a human being, will tend to move around over their career and may again be in a position where they can be of uh benefit to you and vice versa. That's how to the the it's not easy, but that's the the simplest way to use LinkedIn is just invest in people that you actually want to be connected with that you would actually want to sit down for a cup of coffee with virtually uh or a beer virtually uh these days and spend some time with.

So don't don't automate things. Um if you have follow up questions about effectively using LinkedIn, drop them in the comments box below, subscribe to the YouTube channel and the newsletter. I'll talk to you soon. Take care. Want help solving your company's data analytics and digital marketing problems?

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