How do reach out to prospects on LinkedIn?

[Trent]

I trying to be more active on the platform to increase my visibility and network. My question is how do you reach out to prospective clients? I sent a few connection requests today, with a short message to intro myself and why I’m reaching out to them. You can’t message people not already in your network, so is this the proper way to do it? Or do you just send a connection request and then intro yourself after they accept? – by /hq/StrugFug – –