 Are you making the most of LinkedIn messaging? LinkedIn messaging is a really good alternative to business email. I find that it gets really good response rates from clients and it's fully featured. But are you aware of all the features? In this video, I'm gonna take you through six features that are really useful that you might not be aware of. So I'm gonna show you how you can create a video meeting, such as Zoom or Teams, directly from a text-based LinkedIn messaging conversation. So you'll see within this conversation here at the top, there is a video icon with a plus symbol on it. So if we tap on that and then look at the bottom here, we've got a couple of options, create instant meeting link or schedule a meeting for later. And then underneath you can see that we've got a choice of providers. So I'm currently signed into Zoom. I'm a big fan of Zoom, but if I want Teams, that is an option as is LinkedIn's own video meeting service. But we're gonna go for Zoom and let's create an instant meeting. So if I tap on that, the details are populated straight into the message ready to send off. Also possible to schedule a meeting. So click on schedule meeting for later and then date, time, duration, time zone come up and then you can just tap create to schedule that for a later time. So this is a useful feature when you're having a text-based conversation and perhaps you want to move it to one where video and audio are available. And rather than having to go over to your separate app for Zoom or Teams, you can just do that straight away within the message. So if you want to be open to more messages on LinkedIn, you can actually have what's called an open profile, which is indicated by this symbol here, the LinkedIn logo in gold. So this is definitely available for anybody on a premium plan with LinkedIn, but it's also available to some people. It seems to be a bit random, but it is available to some people on regular LinkedIn. So for example, I've actually got the ability to switch open profile on and off. So just to clarify what it means, it means that if you have open profile that anyone can send you a message, not just your first degree connection. So you're essentially making yourself more accessible. So how do you switch it on? This is what you do. So you go to settings and I'm just gonna go to my profile here and then drop down to settings at the bottom. It's the same process on desktop, although settings is located in a different location, but find your way to settings on desktop or mobile as illustrated there. Drop down to data privacy and you'll see that there is a messages section under who can reach you there. So tap on that and you may have this option. You'll definitely have this option if you're on LinkedIn premium for open profile messages. So if I tap on that, that means that I'll now have the gold LinkedIn logo and anybody, not just my first connections can send me a message on LinkedIn. So the process for sending an invitation to connect on the mobile app on LinkedIn is different from the desktop version of LinkedIn. On mobile, if you click the connect button, the invitation goes straight through and you're not given the opportunity to add a message or a notes to go through that, which can be quite useful because then you can put your invitation to connect in context. So what you need to do on mobile is to go to the three dots here on the right hand side, tap that and you'll see that there's an option to personalize invite. So you can put in your message there and then click the connect button. So I'm gonna show you how to start or favorite messages in LinkedIn. So you can see that I've got a number of starred messages in my inbox and they are indicated with a gold star like this. So this is a useful feature whereby you can go back and read messages at a later date or you can prioritize messages that are important to you. You can highlight them. It's a feature that's available in number of email clients and messaging apps and also available on LinkedIn. So how do you actually star or favorite a message? So what you need to do, you need to be in the message conversation itself and in the top right, you'll see that there is an empty star symbol but if I tap on that, it then becomes a gold star. So that is it. It's really as simple as that and you can see that the message that I've just tapped there is now favorited. Just one final thing that is another way of doing this. So let's just go to another message conversation here. You can actually click the three dots and then click star there but you need to do that in a couple of steps whereas it's much easier just to click the icon on the top right. So that is how to star a message. So I'm gonna show you how to use the search and filter features in LinkedIn messaging. So you'll see at the top here, we've got a field that says search messages and what you can do is just tap on that and you'll see immediately you've actually got some filters underneath here that you can use in conjunction with the keyword that you're looking for. So let's just type in social media here and then as I'm typing, you can see that the results are beginning to appear underneath but to filter those down about I might wanna filter by say my connections. So conversations with my connections. So that has filtered those down to a degree there. Also unread is a filter that I find particularly useful because those are messages that you've yet to read and possibly yet to action as well. So if we just back out of that there, you can also actually search for people. So if I just type in the name Kareem there, you will see that he comes up there as a person. So I can tap on that and send him a message and previous message conversation has also appeared there. In addition to that, you can actually tap the symbol here, the filter symbol to the right of the messaging box and you can filter by drafts on this device, unread, my connections, email, archive, spam and start. So in connection in conjunction with the first feature that we looked at where you can start or favorite a message. This is really where it comes into its own because you can click on that and then your starred messages will immediately appear underneath, which is pretty useful so they all appear in one place and then you can action them as required. So just a small time saving tip for you that's only available on desktop. So when you've completed your message, you're going to want to send it. So you can click the send button but actually you can just click the return key as well just to save yourself a little bit of time. I mean, sometimes that could cause a message to be sent accidentally but overall personally I find it's a time saver. So to decide which option you want you can click the three dots here and at the moment we've got clicking the send button will send the message but if I change that to press enter to send I can literally just tap the enter key on the keyboard and you can see that that's confirmed there and the message will be sent off. Finally, just a bonus tip. So if you look on screen now you'll see a link to our video where we explain how to send an audio message via LinkedIn. It's a handy change from sending text messages works really well although it is only available on mobile. So check out the video and give that a try. Hopefully you enjoyed that video and if you did please like it and also subscribe to our NLLC channel. For more of our videos, check out the links below and you'll also find details in the description of our training courses as well. Hopefully you are now in a position to make greater use of LinkedIn messaging. See you on the next video.