LinkedIn Etiquette: The Do's and Don'ts

LinkedIn is a global network made for business professionals and recruiters. Its mission is to connect business professionals so that they can be more successful.LinkedIn is very useful for many different types of business professionals if you use it right. One way to ensure you are getting the most out of LinkedIn is to follow basic LinkedIn etiquette rules.

Do Be Prompt

Because LinkedIn is focused on business professionals communicating with other professionals, it requires that you don't leave them hanging on business days. When someone wants to connect with you or talk to you, try to answer within 24 hours of receiving the message. Even if you are not interested, being prompt with your responses is a professional courtesy.

Don’t Invite People to LinkedIn Using Their App

When you first join LinkedIn, they prompt you to invite people from your email list to LinkedIn. However, this isn’t the best way to do it. Instead, get your profile completed and then personally invite everyone else to connect with you on LinkedIn, which means they’ll then create their own profiles. But, only invite relevant connections-not your mom, dad, sisters, best friend, and so forth unless they are truly business connections.

Do Customize All Automated Messages

LinkedIn offers some automated messaging when you connect with people and for other types of messages such as recommendations. However, don’t use their messages and don’t send invites, connection requests, and so forth in bulk. Take the time to make a special message for each person.

Don’t Pester People

The worst thing you can do is try to connect to people too many times. If they don’t connect with you after one or two tries, give it up. Also, don’t send messages to people before getting to know them a little bit about your offer or something you're selling. No one wants to do that. They want useful information in a timely way, but they don’t want to be annoyed.

Do Connect to Engage-Not to Sell

In groups, on your feed, and in InMail, don’t connect with people because you have something to sell to them. Instead, you want to connect with people because you believe that you will be able to build a mutually beneficial relationship, and you want more engagement. The selling will happen but not if you start with that.

Do Stay Active and Consistent

LinkedIn rewards active participation. You should seek to update your status a minimum of three times a week and at most daily. But you also want to publish articles, share your blog posts(which can be shared automatically right on your profile) and participate in groups by commenting and engaging with the members. If you go dark for any period, it's like starting all over on LinkedIn.

Using LinkedIn can be very lucrative. However, remember that using any type of social platform for networking means you are in it for the long game. You need to nurture your audience and take your time getting to know them before throwing out your offers. Plus, the proposals need to be 100 percent relevant and useful to your audience.