With more social media conversation increasingly happening in DMs and out of public feeds, LinkedIn will expand its messaging tools to enable much more professional connection and interaction via InMails in the app.
And this could be one big step - today LinkedIn is enabling Company Pages to send and receive DMs.
But as LinkedIn explains:

"With Pages Messaging, members can now reach out to brands with one-to-one messaging, which has been only offered to member-to-member interactions until now, regarding topics like products and services, business opportunities and much more. Organizations will have a dedicated inbox so that they can manage these two-way conversations and prioritize inquiries that matter most to their business."

That will no doubt see a lot more people messaging companies to ask about opportunities, which, for big corporations, could require a bit of management. But with LinkedIn's 'focussed inbox' process also separating DMs based on priority, and topic settings for page messages, that should take at least some of the work out of sorting through such – while brands will also be able to switch off the Message option if they choose.
LinkedIn has been piloting the feature with smaller groups of users over the last month, so you may have seen it pop up in the app.
According to the company, more than 63 million companies are actually posting on their Company Pages in the app-that underlines the potential of Page messaging as a connection and engagement option. It can also facilitate all kinds of new, new types of direct interactions, and spark new opportunities.

And it may also soon have an AI assistant element too, which is another aspect LinkedIn's working on. That could be particularly helpful for lead nurturing, giving you the capacity to research the user that you're engaging with in-stream, without having to scroll through their profile or posts yourself.

There are a number of ways this can be leveraged - I wouldn't say it's a 'game-changer' per se, but it's another potentially valuable consideration to factor into your LinkedIn marketing approach.

According to LinkedIn, messaging for Company Pages is being rolled out starting today.