Calling LinkedIn Targets "Friends"

Dear Cybersorter,
I want to connect to some business people on LinkedIn to try and boost my job prospects.
I have sent out lots of requests citing the contact as a “friend” because I haven’t done business with them. That’s the point.
I want to do business with them but first I have to contact them. Is there a better way to do this?
– SR

Dear SR,
Despite LinkedIn’s tagline, “Relationships matter”, they don’t – at least not to people who don’t have any relationship with you already. It’s frustrating for those who wish to make new contacts but not those who don’t wish to be automatically opened up to every Tom, Dick and SR begging for a job.
Sorry.
At least send a polite introduction note, rather than the automatically generated “SR has indicated that you are a friend. I would like to add you to my professional network.” Those two sentences suggest you are lazy, you haven’t checked anything out thoroughly and you have just called the person a friend while trying to join their professional network, quite possibly denoting mild schizophrenia.
It’s not a great idea to send out requests willy nilly as you are more likely to irritate than ingratiate.
What works best is contacting people directly, by phone or email or better still, in person (that’s not a free pass to walk up and down their street all night until they either come out or call the police)