Sales consultancy company Sales Benchmark Index recently published The LinkedIn Message Writing Guide that provides step-by-step instructions for writing effective messages that will help you connect better on LinkedIn with people you know or want to know.

The guide breaks down four opportunities to connect on LinkedIn:

1. Asking one of your contacts for an introduction to someone in their network.

2. Contacting someone you don’t know, but you have a common connection.

3. Someone shared an interesting link that you read and you want to connect with them.

4. You shared an article in your network and someone read it.

As the guide notes, the best way to initiate or nurture a personal relationship on LinkedIn is through a personal message. You can do this in four ways:

To download the complete guide, which has four message templates you can repurpose for your own use to capitalize on each of the opportunities above to connect, just click on the link in the first sentence of this post.