Career coach Barbara Safani of Career Solvers tackles the art of the LinkedIn invitation in her terrific post: Make Your LinkedIn Invitations Work For You.

She proposes savvy alternatives to the standard "Since you are a person I trust..." default message that LinkedIn generates. I wish LinkedIn would replace that with "[please type your own message here, doofus]" to give people the hint that they need to do something more than click the "Send Invitation" button.

It really doesn't take much time to craft a personal message, yet more than 90% of the invitations I get stick with the default. What that says to me is that the person either didn't know how to change the message or didn't care to change the message. How does this lack of effort reflect on them and their willingness to invest in building a real relationship with me? Not well. 

Too busy? Well I'm busy too. Why should I bother to click the invitation link, log into my LinkedIn account, read your profile and decide whether or not to accept, when it's faster for me to just hit the delete key?

I always personalize my invitations, both on LinkedIn and on Facebook, even when sending them to people I know. I take the time to tweak the default message, even if just to add "Hope you're well!" at the end. Now, thanks to Barbara, I have some great templates to follow when reaching out to brand new connections.