In my earlier post, The INs of LinkedIn, I explained what a LinkedIn Invitation is and showed you how to send them. However, those were just the mechanics of it. This post will discuss some of the etiquette questions regarding sending and receiving invitations, such as who it is okay/not okay to invite and what do you do if you don't want to accept someone else's request.

Before I go into specifics, I want to start by saying that my underlying principle behind all of these points is the following (and it applies to any other social network system as well, such as Facebook or Twitter).

Everyone has the right to determine who she wants/doesn't want to connect with for any reason whatsoever.

So please keep the above in mind, especially when it comes to the first point below.

Don't be offended if someone doesn't accept your invitation.

Everyone has different criteria for who they want in their network. For example, I think having someone in your network is pretty much a tacit endorsement of him, so I only want to have people in mine that I would feel comfortable saying something positive about if someone else asked me about them. So I do have personal friends in my network, even if I haven't worked with them professionally. And if I don't accept someone, it doesn't necessarily mean that I don't like him or think anything negative about him. I just might not feel I know enough about him to include him.

On the other hand, you will see some people whose profile indicates that they are a LION, which stands for LinkedIn Open Network. They usually have thousands of people in their networks and are open to adding pretty much anybody, because they find value in having a more extensive network, even if they don't know everybody personally.

Other people will fall at different points on this spectrum between restricting and opening their networks. So even if you think you had a great relationship with someone you used to work with, if he doesn't accept your invitation, don't take it personally (and whatever you do, do NOT write to him to ask him why he's not accepting it). Just move on to the next one.

Now, one reason someone might not accept an invitation is because she doesn't really remember who you are (some of us have better memories than others!). That leads me to my next point.

When you send someone an invitation, personalize the message.

Unless you know for sure the person is going to know who you are and will automatically accept your request, write something a little more personal in the message box. If you think there's any possibility he might not remember who you are, jog his memory. For example, I recently added someone to my network that I had interviewed for a job with a while back. I just discovered her profile and I knew we had some common interests, so I wrote to her and mentioned the interview and why I thought she might want to join my network. And she did.

Even if you're not worried about whether the recipient will remember you or not, I just think the default "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn" message is a bit terse. If this is someone you think enough of to have in your network, surely you can take a moment to say something a little more personal. At the very least, I usually change the message to say, "I was wondering if you would be interested in joining my network," which changes the tone from what I want, to what the other person would like to do.

Now, I have one more point I'd like to make about sending invitations.

It is NOT appropriate to send an invitation to someone who reports to you.

This happened to a friend of mine. Her boss's boss invited her to join his network. And while she adored her boss, she thought his boss was a doofus, so she asked me what she should do. I told her to just ignore the request, which she did, but she was put in an awkward position, because this was a person who had influence over her professionally. If he decided to hold it against her that she didn't accept the invitation, that could have been a very bad situation.

So unless you're actually buddies with someone who works for you (or for someone else who works for you), don't send him an invitation. The opposite does not hold true; it's fine to send an invitation to your boss or someone else up the chain of command, as long as you always keep that first point in mind: Don't be offended if she doesn't accept!

So what do you do if, like my friend, you get an invitation from someone you don't want in your network? It's actually pretty simple.

If you don't want to accept someone's invitation, don't.

Of course, this might seem a little easier said than done but, remember, you ALSO have the right to choose who you want to connect with—for whatever reasons you like.

One thing you need to know, though, is if you receive an invitation and just ignore it, you will get a couple of reminders from LinkedIn that you have invitations waiting in your Inbox. These are not prompted by the person who invited you—they're built-in functionality because LinkedIn assumes if you haven't taken any action at all, then you may have forgotten about it.

If you don't want to accept an invitation and you don't want the reminders, you should Archive the request. Although they say it gives you a chance to go back later and reconsider whether you want to add the person or not, my suspicion is that most people do it simply as a way to ignore the request.

Note: When you Archive an invitation, the person who sent it is NOT informed that you've done this, so you don't have to worry that you're suddenly going to get a message from the person demanding an explanation for your rejection.

You have two other options in this situation as well. You can send a message back to the person either to explain why you're not adding her (for example, if you only accept people you've worked directly with before, you can let the person know to avoid potentially offending her) or to ask a question (for example, if you need your memory jogged a little about the person).

The other option is to select "I don't know this person," but I wouldn't recommend using this unless you think the person is actually abusing the system or harassing you in some way. If you do, that person will be reported to LinkedIn and may have restrictions placed on his or her account.

If you're worried about receiving too many unwanted invitations, you also have an option to restrict who can send you one. Click the Account & Settings link at the top right then, under Email Notifications, select Invitation Filtering. You can choose to receive all invitations, only those from people who you've imported from other contact lists (like Yahoo Mail or Outlook), or from those people plus anyone who invites you by using your e-mail address (theoretically proving you do have some kind of existing relationship).

Note: If you want to remove an existing connection, you can do that by clicking the Contacts link in the left-hand nav bar and then the Remove link at the top right of the next screen. That will bring up a list of all your contacts and you can check off any you want to remove. The person will not be notified that you've done this; you'll simply disappear from his list of contacts.

So what do you think? Do you agree or disagree with any of my rules? Or do you have any additional tips you'd like to share? If so, please add a comment or send them to me at Tips@TechForLuddites.com and I'll update this post with your thoughts.

Posted in How To, LinkedIn, My Two Cents, Social Media