Communicate with messaging - LinkedIn Tutorial

- [Instructor] Another benefit of LinkedIn is that it can be used as a powerful messaging platform, almost in the same way that you would use email or instant messaging. Now, you can access your messages by navigating up to the messaging icon at the top. Notice here for Carmen's, she has a red circle with a 1 in it, meaning she has one unread message. I'll click that, and here you can see that she's received one message. It's a message from Lisa, and she sent a message saying, "Thanks for connecting, Carmen. It was great to meet you as well. Let's jump on a video chat next week and discuss a potential partnership." And from here you can have this back and forth conversation and your messages will be kept in chronological order, so it's always easy to keep track of the conversation. So Carmen might reply, "Next week is perfect. Thanks so much!" And we can now send this message by clicking send. But we also have some other options to add some other things, like we can add an image, we can attach a file, add a gif, or an emoticon. So if there are any files that are relevant to the conversation, you can attach them here just like in an email. In this case, I'll just click send, and that sends that over to Lisa. And she'll receive a notification saying that she's received a message. Now over here on the left hand side is where you'll find all of your conversations. As you start to have more conversations, they'll appear here so you can quickly access them. You'll also be able to come up here to the top and filter your messages by clicking here on the filter button, and you'll be able to see all messages, archived, connections, and so on. When you click a message, the entire conversation will show up here in the panel to the right. Now, the top here where you see this pencil and paper icon is where you can create a new message. So if I click that, I can begin typing the name of one of my other connections. I can select them, and then from here I can type in my message and send it off. Now, another way to get to your messages is from the message popup at the bottom of the screen. Here you'll find your list of messages just like we do in this panel here to the left. And clicking on a message here opens it up in its own panel. And this can be kind of a quicker way to work with messages, especially if you need to be viewing another part of LinkedIn as you're writing the message. Notice I can navigate back to my profile page, for example, and these panels both stay open. So you can choose whether you prefer to work like that or by going to the main messaging area. Now, it's important to note that you'll only be able to send messages to your direct connections. This is a good thing because it prevents you from being bombarded with spam messages from anyone and everyone on LinkedIn. Before you communicate with someone, you'll have to be connected with them. Now, there are a couple of exceptions to this though. One is if a Premium member turns on a feature called Open Profile. If they do, you'll be able to send a message to that member. Also, if you have a Premium account on LinkedIn, you'll have the ability to send messages using InMail. You receive a specific number of InMail credits based on your subscription, and then you can use those to send messages to people you're not connected with. Now, finally, when sending messages on LinkedIn, there are a few things to keep in mind. If you're messaging someone you don't know, include details of how you might know each other and why you're interested in connecting with them so that it doesn't feel so much like a random connection. Remember, LinkedIn is a professional network, so be thoughtful of other people's time and keep messages short and to the point. And, lastly, try to approach each connection with a mindset of adding value, not just extracting gain for yourself. LinkedIn is about win-win relationships, and most people aren't going to remain as connections if you're constantly spamming them or abusing the platform by sending message after message making requests.