LinkedIn Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts

Creating a useful LinkedIn profile, and knowing how to interact with your connections on the professional social network, isn't always as straightforward as it seems.

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Dixson says it is fine to decline a connection, but that if such a case arises, it's good form to explain why. For example, you might respond this way: "Thank you for reaching out. I'm glad you enjoyed my talk at the trade show. While I'm happy you contacted me, I don't add connections until I've done business with a person directly. As such, feel free to e-mail me in the future and we can see what opportunities might come up in the future."

If you are the one sending a connection, be sure to not use the canned invitation of "I'd like to add you as a connection" when sending the invite, especially if you feel you don't know the person incredibly well or that their memory might need some prodding. At the very least, even if they decline it, they'll be less likely to hit the dreaded "I don't know" button.

Finally, make your connection list public, Dixson says. If you don't, you are essentially defeating the purpose of LinkedIn. It's a social network, and there isn't anything more inherently unsocial than not allowing your contacts to connect with one another. The only exception would be is if you feel showing your connections would undermine your company's competitive advantage.

5. Recommend and Getting Recommended

The recommendations feature on LinkedIn can be a powerful way to show that your work has been endorsed by influential people. With this in mind, Dixson recommends a "360 degree strategy" that shows the various ways in which you do your job and the people you serve.

"You want managers, peers and clients to recommend you," Dixson says. "These should be people who know you well and who can really speak to your competencies as they're relevant to what you're positioning yourself for."

Though it's nice to be recommended, Dixson says it's vital to build up your own social capital by recommending others, a key to good LinkedIn Etiquette (and social networks in general): what goes around comes around. If you go and write a good recommendation for a colleague, odds are someone will do the same for you in the future.