1. Opportunities to continue the conversation
“LinkedIn Messaging >> Debra sent you a new message – Congrats on the anniversary! Hope you’re doing well.”
I recently celebrated a number of years in business. LinkedIn has a tab on the top right of everyone’s homepage called “Notifications” (formerly called “Ways to stay in touch”) and a frequent suggestion is to congratulate someone on a job anniversary. I could have just ignored those generic notes and deleted them as fast as they came in, perhaps taking a moment to enjoy how many people thought of me. If I’d done that I would have missed some great opportunities to reconnect with people and develop possible new business. So – Look at those messages and reply to as many as possible. Sometimes I just said “Thanks!” Other times I noticed that someone had a new job or had still not added a photo after all my nagging and I wrote a quick note about that. Sometimes I got a message back saying they’d been reminded that they needed to set up an appointment to work with me. Sometimes I had a note about getting together. And sometimes there was an even more important note or request to follow up on (see the section below about the consolidation of messages.) Was it a lot of work? Yes, and no. After about 40 I started to slow down and reply to fewer people but I did still look at all my messages.
2. You might be missing something – LinkedIn consolidates a mixture of messages *
“LinkedIn Messaging >> Debra sent you a new message – Congrats on the anniversary! Hope you’re doing well.”
This was indeed a straightforward simple congratulations message from Debra
“LinkedIn Messaging >> Robin, Cherryll and Beth sent new messages” (when I looked at them I found the first two messages were congratulations but the third was potential business I might easily have missed)
“While everyone is away…could I have some time with you to rev my profile and presence strategy (sharing, publishing, etc.)? I want to make sure I am top of my game and think there is room for improvement.”
People complained to LinkedIn about receiving too many messages and LinkedIn responded by consolidating the messages. But they don’t group the messages in a consistent way and it’s constantly changing. It might be “This is what you’ve missed on LinkedIn” or it might be under the notifications tab with “Congratulations on your anniversary” or there might be a message from someone wanting to follow up about a meeting or business opportunity. If I’d just thought to accept all the good wishes but clear my inbox out quickly by deleting them all the good wishes on my work anniversary (or birthday) without reading, I would have missed some important messages. Another place to check if you have actionable messages mixed in with the others would be to go to your messaging tab on LI and scroll through all the latest ones there. The important thing is to give all your messages a quick look no matter how they arrive. Actual messages also but not always arrive as partial messages in your email. You’ll need to click on them to see the content of the message. And did I mention this all drives me crazy?!
LinkedIn continually changes the way its messages appear when you receive them. They may send a summary of all message senders BUT a snippet of the message is not included. You now need to go into the LinkedIn app to see the full message. Sometimes the email summary message lists all the people who’ve sent messages and sometimes it doesn’t. And one today said I had 3 new messages but only included the name of 2. LinkedIn is forcing you to use the app (either desktop or mobile.) I may not like it but it’s me that will suffer if I ignore messages.
Some recent examples (3 message notification with no messages or people listed, 2 messages with people listed, and 3 messages with only 2 senders listed):
I would love to talk with you about the benefits to you of having a great profile on LinkedIn, how to use it build your professional relationships and how I could help you with your professional goals. (And, as a bonus, I’ll include ways to keep your sanity with all the constant changes on LinkedIn!) Contact me for a complimentary consultation.