OK I am not about to address the issue of the Hootsuite pop-up appearing every time you click to visit the home page, which frankly, other thank disconnecting and moving to another service, I don’t know how to do. If you know the answer, please tweet or message me below.

No this time its about accepting an invitation to connect.

We all know the importance of responding to a new connection and actually building a relationship with the person. After all they could well be a new prospect responding to our LinkedIn profile and wanting to talk to us about our services.

Well guess what? You must now follow a very exact path to doing this or end up in LinkedIn Loop of Doom. Yep I said it.

[bctt tweet=”#LinkedIn’s ‘pending’ loop of doom. Learn the right pathway for sending a message to a new connection where you don’t need InMail credits. http://bit.ly/2lF17Vj” username=”theprofileco”]

Here is what happens:

1. I click to accept a new connection
2. I have the option to message them
3. The inbox opens and I have a message at the bottom of the window saying ‘You don’t have enough InMail credits available”*

Don’t be fooled. You don’t have to have InMail credits to reply back.

No! You must now wait for the new connection to release from ‘Pending’. Yep a new connection is no longer instant. It has to go into ‘Pending’. I haven’t worked out how long it takes to get past this stage but it was over 30 minutes of refreshing the page today. Today I was particularly careful to note down the person’s name who had connected to me, because without doing so I would have forgotten and never had the chance to actual speak to him. He would have just become part of my ‘collection’ of connections. I like the way that sounds.

So here is the summary. If you accept someone’s invite to connect and then try to send them a message it will cost you one of your 15 InMails per month, which at a membership price of £49.99 is £3.33 (about $5) – really?? OK just for the record you don’t have to buy premium to eventually talk to the person. You just have to wait or find another way out of the Loop of Doom. Personally I tried all sorts like refreshing the page and trying to send them a message via my inbox. Eventually they wrote to me.

So how do you avoid this? 

1. Go to ‘My Network’. Do NOT click ‘Accept’ from the list that appears (or else enter the Loop of Doom)
2. Instead click on ‘Manage All’ in the top right corner of the ‘Received Invitations’ box
3. In this screen you will see ‘Message’ in blue at the bottom of the invitation, click here to message BEFORE accepting. 
4. After sending your message accept the invitation

From the graphic provided you will see two variations of this. 

In the first screen you will notice that I have the ability to ‘Reply’ to Donna before accepting her invitation. This does not appear for Jim’s invite. This is because he did not personalise his message before sending, where as Donna did. However in the second screen, after clicking ‘Manage All’ you will now see that you can message him back.  

It’s a really good idea to come up with a template response message so you can quickly say something to this person before they disappear into you Collection of Connections. 

In this instance, I chose not to reply to their messages but accepted to see what happened. The following pop up appeared.

This pop up does not have a hyperlink/button attached to it, so what does this mean? You can’t do anything. You’ll have to quickly write their name down or commit it to memory if you’re ever going to communicate with them again. If your memory is anything like mine, it’ll be gone forever. I seem to always forget the name or number I just saw on the screen. Too much fluoride in my toothpaste I think.

The good news is, by doing it this way, you will avoid the Loop of Doom (so it appears right now!)

So heed my warning if you don’t want to upgrade your LinkedIn profile and waste £3.33 on a message with an unqualified prospect.

And just a word about that, I have no problem with LinkedIn charging for its incredibly powerful platform, what I do have a problem with is the pricing structure, the lack of value for money and the lack of understanding how solo-entrepreneurs and small businesses create return on investment from it. 

[bctt tweet=”#LinkedIn your pricing structure shuts out solo-entrepreneurs and serviced based businesses. Please ask @theprofileco why. We’d love to see a change.” username=”theprofileco”]