Accepting Invitations and Marketing Your Stuff
September 1st, 2008 | by Jason Alba |I get a lot of invitations. Right now I’m accepting a bunch from my two weeks out of town. When I’m NOT lazy I try and take a few seconds and let people know who I am, what I do, how I do it, etc.
How? Simple. Instead of doing a bulk invitaton accept, I go in and accept each invitation one-by-one. Below the invitation you have the three buttons:
And to the right of that you have a Reply link:
Now, if ALL my invitations came to my JibberJobber e-mail, I would simply reply there. Unfortanately, there is some bug in LinkedIn so that I can’t REPLY from my gmail account… so anyone who sends me an invitation to my Gmail address needs to get a REPLY from within LinkedIn, not from Gmail (darnit!).
Anyway, I click on the Reply link, and then say something SHORT (like, “Happy to connect with you on LinkedIn.”).
And then, here’s the key, I put in my e-mail signature. A simple copy-and-paste works. I lose formatting, but that’s okay:
Yes, this info is in my LinkedIn profile… but maybe the inviter didn’t read it, and never will. At least this way they are sure to get my most important links and info right in their inbox 
12 Responses to “Accepting Invitations and Marketing Your Stuff”
By Luke Harvey-Palmer on Sep 1, 2008 | Reply
Jason - simple, but such an important point. I am astounded by the number of people who make no effort to provide a personal message or more information on why we should connect? I wrote a post recently about using LinkedIn (http://www.harveypalmer.com.au/ourblog/?p=136) more efectively for business - and I might just add this point to my next post…How not to be RUDE on LinkedIn!
By Ari Herzog on Sep 2, 2008 | Reply
Once again, you make a good point. On your signature, though, can you make it any longer? *grin*
By Jason Alba on Sep 2, 2008 | Reply
@Luke - did you know you can embed an a tag into your post, to make that a hyperlink? It would look like this: blah blah blah click here
@Ari - I tried to make my signature longer but I got lost :p Actually, I’d love to shorten it up AND still show people what I do/offer. Suggestions?
By Ari Herzog on Sep 2, 2008 | Reply
Jason: You’re an author, speaker, and CEO. I get it. What happens when you lead another company or write another book? Why not use one title and one URL? (Think of Lord of the Rings here.)
Such as:
–
Jason Alba
Author and Speaker
http://www.jasonalba.com
By Jason Alba on Sep 2, 2008 | Reply
@Ari, I have to think about that… perhaps people would be more inclined to actually click on the link if there was so little information. However, aren’t author/speakers a dime a dozen?
By Ari Herzog on Sep 2, 2008 | Reply
I try to practice the KISS method so my email sig is:
–
Ari Herzog
writing online @
http://www.ariwriter.com
But that’s me. Whether I change it, who knows.
You could have something equally simple proving you’re an expert without showing your ego, such as:
–
Jason Alba
Author & Marketing Wizard
on Facebook and LinkedIn
http://www.jasonalba.com
By Luke Harvey-Palmer on Sep 2, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the tip Jason..it seems that placing a link between brackets negates the href elements of the text? Here ’tis again…
http://www.harveypalmer.com.au/ourblog/?p=136
By Luke Harvey-Palmer on Sep 2, 2008 | Reply
I think I will just give up right now!
By Jason Alba on Sep 2, 2008 | Reply
No problem Luke… the code is this (although I’m not going to put the <> at the beginning and end:
a href=”http://www.harveypalmer.com.au/ourblog/?p=136″
and then make sure to put a closing
/a
(of course those open and close with the brackets)
By Josh WiseStamp email signatures on Oct 1, 2008 | Reply
You should simply use http://www.wisestamp.com
to create a noticeable simple email signature.
check it out
Josh
By Jon Floyd on Oct 27, 2008 | Reply
Has tier server been down today. I have tried to get on but to no avail. Any issues that I should know about.