What Does 1st 2nd 3rd Mean on Linkedin - Complete Guide [2025 Edition]

These aren’t just labels—they’re a roadmap that shows you who’s within reach, who can see your profile, and how to strategically grow your network.

Don’t believe me? You will after reading this article.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through what each connection degree means, why it matters to you, and how you can use it to expand your LinkedIn reach.

I’ll cover:

1. What does 1st, 2nd, 3rd mean on LinkedIn?
2. How to contact LinkedIn connections for outreach?
3. How to get 500+ connections on LinkedIn?

But first, why does it matter?

Why does understanding connection levels matter?

On LinkedIn, who you’re connected to—and how closely—affects everything from your reach to your visibility.

Connection degrees impact 3 key areas:

1. Outreach
2. Networking
3. Visibility

Outreach

Connection degree decides how easy it is to reach someone on LinkedIn. The closer a person is in your network, the fewer steps you need to contact them directly.

This helps a lot in making your outreach more effective and improves your chances of actually getting a response.

Networking

You can use connection degrees to build a network of relevant people.

Instead of sending a connection request to a random person, it’s much more effective to reach out to someone who shares a mutual connection with you.

This way, you’re not just growing your numbers—you’re building a network with people who are more likely to respond, engage, and add value to your LinkedIn experience.

Visibility

Your connection degrees also impact how visible you are. LinkedIn shows your content more to people within your immediate network.

Understanding these degrees can help you target and include more relevant people to your network.

You can create a bigger and more relevant audience for your profile and content.

Now let’s understand what these connection degrees actually mean.

What does 1st, 2nd, 3rd mean on LinkedIn?

On LinkedIn, there are typically 3 degrees/levels of connection you can have with others.

1. 1st degree connections
2. 2nd degree connections
3. 3rd degree connections

Let’s understand them one by one.

What does 1st mean on Linkedin?

This means either you’ve sent them a connection request that they accepted or they’ve sent one to you, and you accepted it.

In simple terms, these are people in your direct/immediate network.

What data is visible to you?

With 1st degree connections, you can view:

1. Their full LinkedIn profile
2. Contact information
3. List of all connections
4. Recent posts and activity
5. Work anniversaries, new positions, and other notifications

By default, the email address of your 1st degree connections is visible, unless they choose to hide it from everyone.

This means you can view their email address to reach them out directly.

Plus your 1st degree connections can endorse your skills, write you recommendations, and interact with your posts.

Also your posts are more likely to show up in each other’s feeds, so 1st degree connections see and engage with your content more often.

But how can I see all my 1st degree connections?

How to view 1st degree connections list?

1. Go to your LinkedIn profile
2. Click on “connections” hyperlink that shows your connections count
3. You can also sort them or use search filters

Actually there’s an easy way too. 👇

You can only have 30k 1st degree connections.

What does 2nd mean on LinkedIn?

In simple words, 2nd degree connections are your friends of friends.

They are not part of your network, but you share a mutual connection, which makes it easier to reach out.

What data is visible to you?

With 2nd degree connections, you have access to:

1. Their (almost) full LinkedIn profile
2. A list of mutual connections
3. Their recent public activity

Unlike 1st degree connections, you can’t view all connections of your 2nd degree connections. You can still see the mutual connections between you.

You can view their profile and recent activity but their latest content and activity won’t show up in your feed or notifications.

You can also see their recommendations but can’t write or request a recommendation.

But how can I see all my 2nd degree connections?

How to view all 2nd degree connections?

You can use the same method I explained above and then use the search with filters option to narrow down to 2nd degree connections.

1. Go to your connects list from profile
2. Click “Search with filters”
3. Select “2nd” and deselect “1st”

Or you can directly go to your LinkedIn 2nd degree connections list using LinkedIn search. Simply visit the following URL:

What does 3rd mean on LinkedIn?

They have no direct connection to your 1st degree contacts either. These connections are not part of your direct network.

What data is visible to you?

1. Their public profile
2. Their recent activity

Now the question is can I see the mutual connections?

Can I see common 2nd degree connections between me and a 3rd degree connection?

Sad news is—you can’t. LinkedIn doesn’t show the 2nd degree connections mutual between you and the 3rd degree connection.

I tried finding tricks and search filters to somehow find the bridging profiles but LinkedIn simply doesn’t show this data.

How to view all 3rd degree connections?

1. Redo the search with filters process
2. Select “3rd” instead of “2nd”

But this might give you mixed results. You’ll see 2nd degree connections too.

To get more accurate results, you can use LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s advanced search.

Besides 1st, 2nd, 3rd degrees, you have 2 more connection levels in LinkedIn.

1. Followers
2. Group members

Followers are LinkedIn members who see your public posts and activity in their feeds but aren’t directly connected to you.

They don’t need to send a connection request; they just follow you to keep up with your content.

Group Members are LinkedIn users who share a group with you. LinkedIn groups make it easier to connect with people who have similar interests or work in the same field.

Being in the same group lets you message each other even if you’re not directly connected.

Speaking of messages, what methods can I use to reach out to my LinkedIn connections?

How to contact LinkedIn connections for LinkedIn Outreach?

Let’s see all possible methods to reach out to:

1. 1st degree connections
2. 2nd and 3rd degree connections
3. Followers and group members

Reaching out to 1st degree connections

1. Send a direct message
2. Contact via email or phone

Option 1: Send a direct message

You can message them directly through LinkedIn. It’s easy, just go to your connection’s profile and click the “Message” button.

The key benefit of direct messages is you can send media and files directly to your connection’s inbox.

LinkedIn also supports video calling.

You can use LinkedIn’s video meetings and connect your Microsoft teams or Zoom account for instant video calling.

You can schedule your video calls too.

But I suggest starting with a professional and short text message.

Option 2: Contact via email or phone

You can send an email or do a phone call with your 1st degree connections.

As a 1st degree connection, this information is typically visible to you.

But I believe phone calls can be intrusive, so the better approach is dropping an email.

Also, you should respect the boundaries while reaching out to them.

1. Don't spam their inbox ❌
2. Don't be pushy ❌
3. Wait a few days before following up on LinkedIn ✅
4. Keep follow-ups friendly and brief ✅
5. Keep emails or phone outreach short and professional ✅

Reaching out to 2nd and 3rd degree connections

Since you’re not directly connected to them, it can be a little difficult to reach out to 2nd and 3rd degree connections.

Unlike the 1st, you can’t message them directly and there’s a good chance that the email is also not visible to you.

So how do you reach out to them?

1. Connection request
2. InMail
3. Find email

Option 1: Connection request

You can start by sending a connection request.

Linked allows you to add a personalized invitation note with your connection request.

Mention any shared connections, interests, or relevant context to make your request stand out.

Adding a friendly note in your connection request increases the chances they’ll accept.

You can follow these tips to write good LinkedIn invite/connection notes.

1. Mention something specific about them
2. Stick to one or two sentences
3. Mention mutual connections
4. Be friendly, not formal
5. Explain why you’re connecting

But what if my connection request is rejected or stays in the pending tab forever?

Option 2: InMail

If you have LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter subscription, you can use InMail to message them directly without needing to connect first.

InMail is especially useful if the person doesn’t regularly accept connection requests or if you’re reaching out for a specific reason, like business or career opportunities.

Use these tips to write an InMail message that’ll get you a response.

1. Keep it short and simple
2. Make it about them
3. Be clear about the value
4. Use bullet points
5. End with a clear call to action

But LinkedIn offers limited InMail credits.

Well limits suck, that’s why I prefer reaching out to prospects via email.

But there is no email.

In that case, you can use email finder tools to find and collect work emails of your prospects.

Option 3: Find email

1. Collects 25+ key data points including phone numbers
2. Enriches data with verified emails if not available in profile
3. Cloud-based, no installation required
4. Supports scheduling for repeated data collection
5. Exports data directly to Google Sheets and Amazon S3
6. Provides API access for easy integration

1. It finds public emails from LinkedIn profile
2. If not present, it looks for work emails outside LinkedIn
3. If not available, it uses an algorithm to guess work emails
4. It then verifies the emails to collect only valid ones

But how to use it?

It’s easy and literally takes 2 minutes to set-up and launch the crawler. You can do it in 4 simple steps.

1. Copy search URL
2. Create Squid
3. Adjust behavior
4. Launch

Go to Sales Navigator leads filters and choose 2nd and 3rd degree connections from the menu.

To narrow down your search, you can apply other filters too. Once done, copy the URL from the search bar.

But what about group members and followers?

Reaching out to followers and group members

You can’t directly message your LinkedIn followers if they’re out of network, unless they’ve open profiles.

For normal profiles, you’ll have to send them a connection request or InMail.

You can send direct messages to LinkedIn group members even if they’re not part of your LinkedIn network.

In fact, it’s a great way to send a message to anyone outside your professional network without using InMail credits or sending connection requests.

Just find the groups they’re part of, join one of them, and now you can text them directly.

For example, I want to reach out to this profile but it’s out of my network.

To connect, I can find groups in the interests section and join one of them.

But if you have a mutual group, you won’t have to scroll down.

Now all I have to do is visit the group, search this profile in the members list and send him a message.

But this only works if the group admin has allowed LinkedIn messaging between members.

I tried it 4 times and 1 time this method didn’t work and I found out the admin has disabled messaging for group members.

Now let me share some tips to get your first 500 first degree connections on LinkedIn.

How to get 500+ connections on LinkedIn?

As your 1st degree connections grow, so do your 2nd and 3rd degree networks.

For example, with 500+ first degree connections, you can potentially build a network of 250k second degree connections.

This means more people will see you as a "friend of a friend," making it easier for you to connect and engage with them too.

But how do I get more 1st connections?

5 tips to get more connections on LinkedIn

Here are some tips!

1. Use LinkedIn search
2. Do targeted LinkedIn outreach
3. Boost profile impressions
4. Improve your Social Selling Index (SSI)
5. Connect with competitors' audience

1. Use LinkedIn search

Make LinkedIn’s search work for you. Use filters like industry, location, and job title to find people who fit your professional goals.

For example, if you’re looking to connect with others in your industry, narrow your search to find people with similar roles.

This way, you’re connecting with people who can actually add value to your network and are more likely to connect with you.

2. Do targeted LinkedIn outreach

Do targeted LinkedIn outreach. Don’t just hit the connect button and hope for the best. Add a quick, personalized message that explains why you want to connect.

Mention mutual connections, a shared interest, or a recent post of theirs that caught your attention.

This personal touch makes it clear that you’re genuinely interested, which makes people more likely to accept.

3. Boost profile impressions

Make your profile stand out so more people see it. Use a professional photo, write a headline that explains what you do, and include relevant keywords in your profile.

This helps you show up in LinkedIn searches. The more people who check out your profile, the more chances you have for new connections.

Share useful content or engage with posts regularly to keep your profile active and attract even more views.

4. Improve your Social Selling Index (SSI)

LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) measures how effectively you’re using LinkedIn to build your brand and connect with others.

A higher SSI score makes you look credible, which can make others more willing to connect with you.

5. Connect with competitors' audience

Take a look at your competitors' connections and engage with people in their network. There’s a good chance they’re interested in your industry.

Reach out with a friendly connection request, and you’ll be building a network of people who are already interested in what you do.

Now let me answer some FAQs before wrapping up.

FAQs

Can someone see that I viewed their LinkedIn?

Yes, if they have LinkedIn Premium, they can see who viewed their profile. LinkedIn basic users can’t see who viewed their profile.

How do I know if someone has premium LinkedIn?

If someone has LinkedIn Premium, you’ll see a small gold “In” icon on their profile.

This icon appears next to their name and in their LinkedIn activity, signaling that they’re a Premium user.

Is it OK to connect with everyone on LinkedIn?

It’s better to be selective with your connections. Connecting with everyone can dilute the quality of your network and make it harder to reach the right people.

Why do some LinkedIn profiles say follow instead of connect?

The Follow button replaces the Connect button if a user has enabled Creator Mode or reached LinkedIn's 30,000 connection limit.

You can still connect by selecting More > Connect on their profile.

Conclusion

Do check Sales Navigator Leads Scraper, it can automate your LinkedIn lead finding process and give you verified emails of your prospects too.