Don’t Invite Reid Hoffman To Connect With LinkedIn’s Mobile App

Latest LinkedIn Mobile App Release Doesn't Allow For Customized Invitations. Yet.

Reid Hoffman LinkedIn App Profile Pic

Photo Credit: Tony Faustino

 

IMPORTANT UPDATE (01/08/16): LinkedIn’s mobile app made personalized invitations available in mid-December 2016.

LinkedIn’s mobile app is much improved.  But, we can’t personalize LinkedIn Invitations in the latest release. Yet.

Didn’t my last post describe step-by-step instructions on personalizing our LinkedIn Connection Requests with LinkedIn’s Mobile App? Yes.

Those instructions are no longer valid. Here’s what I learned from a failed experiment.

Confirm With LinkedIn First If Personalized Invitations Are Available In LinkedIn’s Mobile App

Next time, I’ll read the directions first. Here’s what I would have learned from LinkedIn’s website:

LinkedIn Website Instructions Mobile App Personalizing Invitations
The Good News.  LinkedIn knows we want to be able to personalize our invitations. We need to periodically check when the update takes place.

 

When I Started Playing With LinkedIn’s Mobile App, I Saw Major Improvements!

The LinkedIn Mobile App Is Cleaner, Simpler, and Familiar. It’s feels like the desktop app. LinkedIn is smart to improve its mobile experience. It acknowledged earlier this year how mobile engagement and mobile app usage are crucial to future growth.

LinkedIn mobile app use was 4.5 times less than a mobile gold standard like Facebook. The new mobile app design takes cues from Facebook’s simple mobile design.

 

Don’t Try This On Your LinkedIn Mobile App. Yet.

Here’s What Happened When I Pulled Up Reid Hoffman’s Profile On My iPhone. But, we’ll have to use Jeff Weiner’s LinkedIn Profile for this demonstration. I’ll explain why later:

Jeff Weiner LinkedIn Mobile App Profile

 

Desktop App Familiarity — Nice. This look great! The five tappable sections at the bottom of Jeff’s profile bring the desktop experience to our phones. Perfect.

 

What Happens When You Tap “The More” Button In LinkedIn’s Mobile App

Jeff Weiner LinkedIn Mobile App Profile

 

My Excitement Got The Best Of Me. When I saw the “More Button,” I’m thinking “Awesome Baby!” Everything mirrors the play-by-play I described in my previous post for customizing LinkedIn Invitations with LinkedIn’s Mobile App.

Tapping The More Button Pulls Up The “Connect” Command. It looks like this on an iPhone:

Jeff Weiner LinkedIn Mobile App Request To Connect

 

When I Used Reid Hoffman’s Profile, That Screen Is Where I Should Have Stopped My LinkedIn Mobile App Experiment 

Tapping “Connect” From The Current Version of LinkedIn’s Mobile App Sends Out The LinkedIn Boilerplate / Generic Invitation. My unintended and non-personalized, LinkedIn Invitation to Reid Hoffman zoomed away. When I pull up Reid’s LinkedIn Profile on my LinkedIn Mobile App, it now shows my connection request as “Pending.”

Reid Hoffman LinkedIn App Profile PENDING

 

Mea Culpa. Unless you know Reid Hoffman personally, he prefers LinkedIn contact through a second degree connection (stated in his LinkedIn Summary):

Getting a reference through someone I know is the best way to get attention from me as an investor.

 

I Sent Reid Hoffman An InMail Apologizing For My Mistake. Here’s what my LinkedIn InMail looked like before I sent it off. With the flood of requests he receives, he probably didn’t see it. But, apologizing still seemed like the right thing to do.

LinkedIn InMail Apology Note Reid Hoffman

 

Let’s Wait Till The Next Version Of LinkedIn’s Mobile App To Personalize Our LinkedIn Invitations.  

Be Patient. That’s what I’ll do better next time. For now, LinkedIn’s desktop app is the best way to personalize our Connection Requests.

As soon as I confirm through LinkedIn how we can personalize our LinkedIn Invitations with LinkedIn’s Mobile App, I’ll publish a new post detailing the required steps.

 

Your Turn

Please let me know if you agree or disagree with my thoughts in the comments. I would love to hear from you. I’m here to read, listen, and learn from YOUR PERSPECTIVE.   Comments are open. So let’er rip!

 

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President and Founder

As President and Founder of Faustino Marketing Strategies, I advise how a buyer's problem guides a client's content marketing and SEO decisions.

I am based in the Kansas City area (Overland Park, Kansas).

I share my ideas on the reinvention of content marketing and SEO in my personal blog: Social Media ReInvention. (www.socialmediareinvention.com).