Check Out Pending Connections on LinkedIn and Facebook

LinkedIn Connections

Finding classmates, colleagues and friends is just the beginning. To leverage the real power of LinkedIn -- gaining access to your connections' connections -- you have to invite these people to join your network.

On LinkedIn, the people who are part of your network are called your "connections."
A connection on LinkedIn is different than a "friend" on MySpace or Facebook. Connections imply that you know the person well or that they're a trusted business contact. LinkedIn warns against adding complete strangers to your network, or accepting an invitation from someone you don't have a trusted relationship with. We'll talk more about this later.

To turn a contact into a connection you need to invite that person to join your network and they need to accept. Likewise, for another person to add you to their network they need to invite you and you need to accept. Regardless of who invites who, when an invitation is accepted, both parties are automatically added to each other's list of connections.

There are several ways to send an invitation through LinkedIn. If you found the contact during a colleague or classmate search, or he or she is already one of your e-mail contacts, then the process is simple. You click a check box next to the name or names of the people you want to invite and press a button that says "send invitations." LinkedIn will send a generic invitation unless you specify that you want to add a personal note.

LinkedIn and Facebook are excellent business networking tools. Both sites offer useful ways of connecting with people you know, who you can ask to become part of your network.

Both sites offer useful ways of connecting with people you know, who you can ask to become part of your network. It’s easy to forget who you’ve requested to become a connection, especially since some requests might be pending for a long time. Luckily, Facebook has just added a way of seeing who you’ve invited to connect, while LinkedIn has had a similar function for some time.

Facebook: Friend Request Pending

From the Friends menu, go to All Friends. People who haven’t responded to your friend request will be listed as “Friend Request Pending”. If you like, you can create a “Pending” group so that pending friends are easy to find. Just remember to move them to another group once they respond.

LinkedIn: Sent Invitations

From the main menu, go to Contacts. Above your list of Connections, you’ll see a link to “[X number of] outstanding sent invitations” which will take you to the “Sent: Invitations” page. (You can also get there using this link.) Click on the word “Status” to sort the invitations by status. Scroll through the list and look for messages marked “Sent”. Once a person connects with you, their status will change to “Accepted”.

Once you’ve reviewed the lists of pending connections, you can follow up and see why they haven’t responded. I find such conversations to be great icebreakers regarding the usefulness of social networks.



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