7 Tips to simplify your LinkedIn Inbox

Are you deluged by LinkedIn mail? Or missing timely updates and messages? Here's how to fix either problem.

LinkedIn can generate a lot of email and notifications. Here are seven tips on how to manage it to your advantage, and keep on top of the essentials.

Invitations to connect. Invitations to join groups. Messages from connections. InMails, introductions and Open Profile messages. New connection suggestions. Profiles sent to you. Job suggestions from connections. Network updates. LinkedIn Pulse. Group digests. Comments on your posts. Accepted invitations. Endorsements. Mentions! The list goes on... 

Here are my top seven tips to manage your LinkedIn notifications effectively.

1: Choose the email that suits your way of using LinkedIn

You can have more than one email address registered with LinkedIn, especially if you run your own company page.

It's a good idea to have both your personal email and company email registered, so people can find you using either, but also so that you can use your personal email to maintain your LinkedIn profile when you change jobs and lose your old company email address.

• Amazes.me: This shortcut will take you right to where you can add an email address to your account: https://mzs.es/lisadd

If you choose your work email address as the primary LinkedIn email, your updates can easily interrupt your workflow, or mean that you either miss, or ignore important notifications in the flow of a busy workday.

Choose a primary address that suits the way you use LinkedIn - for example, I use my Gmail address as my primary address, as this means I can access my LinkedIn-related mail from a browser tab right next to the one that's open showing LinkedIn. In actual fact, I forward email into my Gmail account from a number of email accounts so I can filter and manage things efficiently. 

2: Use email filters and rules

When I get paid for my work online, I get an SMS message to my phone and an email which is highlighted, tagged, and copied to a special folder. It's important, so my system is set up to notify me fast.

In the same way, you can create rules with your email client to filter, sort, and file messages from LinkedIn. Connection requests can be placed in a folder, for example, and you can see at a glance if there's anything unread there. Similarly, you can put all your mentions or endorsements into one place to work through acknowledging them efficiently at one sitting.

• Amazes.me: Here's a great productivity tool you can use with Gmail to manage your messages: IFTTT.com

3: Set the frequency of emails

LinkedIn makes it easy to set the frequency of emails to suit your way of working - but the controls are placed little bit out of the way. Here's how to find them and change them to suit you.

• Amazes.me: This shortcut will take you right to the email frequency settings: https://mzs.es/lisfreq

Step 1: Go to manage your Privacy & Settings as shown below, by clicking on the little profile picture of yourself at top right.

Step 2: Click onto the 'Communications' tab (just below the default open tab 'Profile') and then select 'Set the frequency of emails'

Step 3: As you can see from the screenshot below, you can now choose the frequency of different types of mail, from No Email to Daily Digests or even to get immediate notifications.

4: Check you're open to the right kind of communications

This is important: if you've not told LinkedIn (and its members) that you are open to career opportunities, guess what happens? You won't get notice of any career opportunities. And in the same way, if you have an open profile, and are open to connections, you need to make sure your settings reflect this.

To reach these settings, follow the steps for the tip above, then click on 'Select the types of messages you're willing to receive'.

• Amazes.me: This shortcut will take you right to the types of communication settings: https://mzs.es/listype

As you can see from the screenshot below, there are three separate areas. 1 and 2 are self explanatory, but the third area 'ADVICE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE CONTACTING YOU' is an important one that is often overlooked, partly because the dialogue box to add the advice defaults to being a tiny size. Drag bottom right to expand it and add meaningful instructions.

You can see that I've used this option to give very specific advice for people outside of my network about how to contact me.

I use a service called Shortwhale rather than using an email address to help reduce spam, and also to make sure the messages I do receive are more structured and focused. Shortwhale is free and powerful, I recommend you take a look at my shortwhale page, and set up your own in a few minutes if you like the idea.

Don't forget to click 'Save changes' when you're finished here!

5: Remember to specify who can send you invitations

This is important if you want to grow your network, and if you want to restrict invitations to connect to those who know you, or those who have actually read your contact instructions or summary where you provide an email for contact.

To reach these settings, follow the steps for the two tips above, then click on 'Select who can send you invitations' as shown above.

• Amazes.me: To get straight to this option, use this shortcut: https://mzs.es/liswho

I have set my settings to be open to invitations from anyone on LinkedIn, which is the recommended default. There is the option to choose only those who know your email address - but remember that you need to let people know this address somehow, somewhere on your profile, or you'll be restricted to connecting with those who have contacted you by email previously - and who have good memories and typing abilities.

I personally find having to enter an email address  to connect to someone is a royal pain in the butt, as there's no warning it's going to appear, and I can't browse the profile to find the address without backing up a step - so I often just give up on connecting. 

Why add this friction and frustration when you can easily disconnect from an inappropriate connection?

6: Remember to manage your Groups updates

Updates from groups can be distracting or be invaluable - so be sure to also choose your email settings here.

To reach these settings, and choose the tab 'Groups, Companies and Applications' then choose 'Set the frequency of group digest emails'.

• Amazes.me: To get straight to this option, use this shortcut: https://mzs.es/lisgroup

As with the general LinkedIn email updates, you can choose Daily, Weekly, or No email updates.

Remember that you can also choose whether or not the administrator of the group, or group members can contact you - but these settings are controlled for each individual group.

To amend individual group email settings, under the same 'Groups, Companies and Applications' tab, choose 'Select your group display order ?' - and from here you can also re-order the display of groups when you view them collectively - and push your favourites to the top.

• Amazes.me: To get straight to this option, use this shortcut: https://mzs.es/lisgroupmem

• Extra Tip: If you're job hunting under the radar, be sure to switch off notifications to your network when you join certain groups to maintain your privacy - shortcut is https://mzs.es/lisnotify 

7: Keep 'noisy' people quiet on your home page stream

I have quite a lot of people in my LinkedIn network. Some of their updates (no names) are too frequent, irrelevant, inane or just frankly annoying. Some are just noisy buggers who only ever share news about themselves.

But I can filter them out easily by just selecting from the little arrow dropdown next to any update I see and clicking on 'Hide' as shown below.

As you can see, I no longer will be annoyed by that person's updates, but can roll this back if I make a mistake. This means I can concentrate on seeing what I want to see, without distractions and noise - more signal, if you like.

Sometimes though, I wonder if I am missing out too much from my noisy friends, so I check to see whose updates I am blocking from time to time.

To do this, from the 'Account' tab as shown below, I choose 'Manage home page content you are hiding' and can reactivate any offenders if I wish to. 

• Amazes.me: To get straight to this option, use this shortcut: https://mzs.es/lishomeblock

So these are my seven tips to keep your inbox working properly focused, your workflow more efficient, and to keep you sane when using LinkedIn. I hope you found them useful and they have helped you to manage your time and information flow more efficiently.

• Do you have any questions or tips to share? Please add a comment below, and please share this article if you found these tips useful. Follow me for more tips, insight and advice on making the most of using LinkedIn.

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David Petherick makes your online presence visible, legible and credible at Amazes.Me.  Follow him on Twitter at @petherick or circle him on Google Plus. Please feel free to connect on LinkedIn

You can listen to all of David's Tips for a better LinkedIn Profile at https://soundcloud.com/petherick/sets/linkedin-top-ten-tips