LinkedIn Introductions Part 2

In my previous post, I discussed the process of getting introductions via your LinkedIn connections.  LinkedIn offers three levels of connections. There is my direct contacts. Those contacts’ contacts. And then there are the contacts’ contacts’ contacts.

Let’s say I wanted to connect with Steve Griffin. I  did a search and found out that five people in my network are connected to him (see below.)  I can then send any (or all) of those folks a request to introduce me to Steve. I would then write my introduction message to Steve and send it to Scott Cunningham. Scott would then forward my message to Steve by adding something that would make Steve more likely to accept my message.

Alternatively, let’s say I wanted to connect with Steve Shapiro. As you can see, he is three degrees away from me. The process is the same though the route is a little more circuitous.

In this situation I would send a message to Douglas Castle  (or any of the other contacts who have a connection with SOMEONE who knows Steve) and ask that he look for who in his network is connected to Steve.  You see, I can’t see who in Douglas’ network is connected to Steve. So I have to ask Douglas to do this for me. Douglas can then ask his contact if he would connect me to Steve. In this situation, my message to Steve would go through Douglas, Douglas’ contact and finally Steve.

I will cover the proper etiquette on how to do these requests in another post.

Tagged as: LinkedIn