Navigating LinkedIn’s New Inbox: The Good and The Bad

It seems like most everyone (at least in the US) has the new LinkedIn Messaging Inbox. I was just converted to it on Friday, and although I was prepared to be disappointed based on the feedback I have been reading, I was pleasantly surprised. It just takes a little getting used to. There is one major feature I am not thrilled with but as an optimist, I like to start with good, sandwich in the bad and end with good, so here we go:

THE GOOD

The interface of the new inbox is much more like Facebook, twitter DMing, and texting from your phone. The platform keeps all of your conversations together. It even brought in my messages from 2009 in a simple to follow stream. I especially like how it tracks group messaging. Per my example below, I can see the two avatars on the right hands side that I am conversing with (A). When I click on it I am able to see the names on top (B)and have many more options such as Adding people to the conversation, Marking as Read or Unread, muting conversation, forwarding the conversation, reporting and deleting (C). What I really like is the ability to attached files to the messages, this is a feature that was long overdue (they even have added emojis).There is a warning however, be sure to uncheck ‘press enter to send’, because if you are used to traditional email, attempting one new paragraph could send a message long before it is ready (D)!

LinkedIn also offers a quick reply in response to inMail that includes the following options:

• Interested
• Maybe later
• Not interested

Once you’ve clicked on a response, a quick reply message  will automatically populate in the text box of the message response. You’ll have the option to edit the text before sending, or you can select the Back button above the response to cancel.

In addition, if you have Sales Navigator, you can easily toggle back and forth so your messages are easy to access.

My favorite new option is the ability to see and manage outstanding invitations. This helps you easily follow up with people you reached out to, and also allows you to cancel outstanding invitations (which will limit your I Don’t Knowresponses in the future). Here is how you get there:

1. Hover over open invitations (E) and click see all.
2. Choose the drop down on the top right (F).
3. Click the circle next to the person’s name or names you’d like to withdraw the invitations to and click cancel request (G).

THE BAD

First, blind copy has gone away. You can no longer send messages to 50 people at a time without them seeing one another. This makes me sad.

Next, you can no longer search by sent message when you are searching messages, you can only search by name.

And lastly, the new LinkedIn Invitations makes it very difficult to read the personalized invitations. It is 3 steps deep, and I believe this will cause many more invite declines moving forward. Here are the steps to read the messages:

1. To see your outstanding invitations, hover over (E).
2. Now you have 2 choices, first hover over each invitation and click on the check mark to accept or the X to decline. From here you do this, you will not see an personalize invitations from these people unless you would go back to your inbox to see the conversation, but it doesn’t populate immediately. However, once you click the check mark, you will be able to click the email button here and it is simple to send a welcome message.
3. Choice number 2, click the see all and hover over each message icon (I) to read what they have written. You can also see your shared connections from here. Then click the check mark or the X (H).
4. Messaging from here is trickier than option 1 as you will have only 5 seconds to see a hyperlink (K) to visit that person’s profile to send a message. So if you are looking to send a note to them, you better do it fast!  BONUS: If I have a few invitations that I am accepting, I will right click open a new tab(K) so I can accept them all and then take the time to message each one individually.

THE GOOD AGAIN

We still have the ability to reply to the invitation without accepting the requester into our network. Simply click the reply arrow (J) at the top of their message and you can begin a conversation. This is a great feature if you are on the fence about accepting someone into your network. I will typically accept most invitations, but occasionally I will get one from someone with a very limited profile and no shared connections, in this case I may send a message like:

NAME, Thank you for your invitation request, typically I only connect with people I know, may I ask how you found me and how you think we may benefit from one another?

So, there is a new learning curve with LinkedIn’s new messaging, but all-in-all, I think I’m Gonna Like it Here!