LinkedIn For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 5

Managing Introductions and InMail

In This Chapter

Understanding introductions and InMail

Sending introductions

Sending InMail

Accepting and forwarding requests

Declining requests gracefully

One of the goals of using LinkedIn is to expand your personal network of friends and colleagues by seeing who is connected to you at each degree level. When you can see the second and third degrees of your network, your next goal is to start interacting with these people and see how they might fit into your network, goals, or ambitions. However, the whole system of contacting people requires some order and decorum (otherwise, nobody would feel comfortable signing up for the site in the first place). Therefore, LinkedIn offers two methods for meeting and connecting with people outside your immediate network: introductions and InMail. Not so coincidentally, I cover introductions and InMail in this very chapter.

Introductions are simply where you ask to be introduced to a friend of a friend, ...