LinkedIn message after meeting someone Two hundred characters, one detail.

Both numbers are from LinkedIn’s own help page on personalising invitations: each message can be up to 200 characters, a free account can personalise up to three connection requests a month, and Premium members can personalise all of them. The same page says invitations sent from “People You May Know” on mobile cannot carry a note at all, so go to the person’s profile instead.

• On a computer: open their profile, select Connect, then Add a note.
• On a phone: open their profile, tap the More icon, then Personalize invite.

Three a month is the constraint that matters after an event. If you met eight people, spend the notes on the three conversations that were going somewhere, and connect with the rest without one. A request with no note from someone they met yesterday is still recognisable; a note wasted on a stranger is not coming back until next month.

These are examples to adapt, not people we met. Every bracket is a placeholder of roughly the same length as what goes in it, but a long event name will eat your spare characters quickly, so count again after you fill it in.

Notice what is missing: no pitch, no calendar link, no “I’d love to pick your brain”. A connection note has one job, which is to make them press Accept. The follow-up proper comes after, in a message or an email, and it follows the same rules as any other: short, specific, and a small ask or none.

An accepted request is not a follow-up; it is permission to send one. The message that follows should do what a good email does: the specific thing they said, anything you promised, and a small ask. Send it within a day or two of meeting, the same window as for email, because the timing matters more than the channel.

If they do not accept within a week or so, do not send a second request. Email them if you have an address, or leave it: people ignore LinkedIn invitations for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with you, including never opening the app.

Most people do both, and that is fine: a connection request so you stay visible to each other, and an email for the actual follow-up. What does not work is using the connection note as the follow-up. Two hundred characters is room to say you remember them, not room to be useful.

Being exact about what it does:

• Your LinkedIn on your card. Add your LinkedIn to your Cardr card and it goes into the contact the other person saves when they scan your QR, so they can find you without searching.
• Their details back to you. The exchange asks for their name, email and phone, not their LinkedIn, so you leave with a way to email them. Note where you met in one sentence and Cardr files it against the contact, free.
• Drafts, not LinkedIn. On Pro, Cardr drafts follow-ups by email, WhatsApp or text from your note. It does not draft connection notes or post to LinkedIn; you can copy a draft and cut it down if you want to.
• Reminders stop when you have written. If you followed up on LinkedIn, press “Mark followed up” on the contact and Cardr stops reminding you about them.

The routine this all fits into is in the professional follow-up guide.