Making the right connections on LinkedIn

Congratulations! You have a LinkedIn account and you are using it to expand your network. As you reach out to connect, keep these tips in mind:

Don't use LinkedIn like Facebook -- Facebook and LinkedIn have different purposes. Facebook is for connecting with friends, acquaintances and people with whom you share a common interest (but don't know). In contrast, LinkedIn was built to give business people a way of networking with people they know from various parts of their careers so they can find new opportunities, exchange information, and improve their careers. Keep in mind that you should know and be able to professionally recommend those that you connect with in LinkedIn.

Tell people why you want to connect with them -- LinkedIn will construct a generic message to send to someone when you want to connect with them. Rather than sending that message, take 30 seconds to create a customized message. Remind the person how you know her and why you would like to connect. If you're trying to connect with someone that you see infrequently, that note could be extremely helpful. It could be the difference between making an connection or not.

Use your network to contact people that you want to know better -- If there is someone that you don't know and whom you'd like to be in contact with, use your network to make an introduction for you. Having a "warm" introduction can really pave the way for a good conversation. By the way, notice that I said "contact" and not "connect". Keep in mind that you should only connect with someone if both of you know each other's work and would feel comfortable providing recommendations.

It's okay to weed -- Undoubtedly you'll connect with people with whom you really don't have a relationship. It happens. So occasionally go through your contacts and delete weak links. Don't worry, the person does not receive a message tell them that you've dropped them and it is unlikely that the person will notice.

Remember quality over quantity -- Finally, remember that it is more important to have a few high quality connections in LinkedIn rather than a high number of poor quality connections.

That's it. If you keep these in mind, you'll have a high quality network in LinkedIn that will be ready to help you when you need it.

Reid Hoffman -- CEO of Linkedin -- on using LinkedIn

Less than 6 minutes in length and worth watching.

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Technorati tag: LinkedIn

Using LinkedIn

I have built up a good group of contacts in LinkedIn and have joined several groups. Recently, I've been trying to use LinkedIn to find local speakers for a series. You would think LinkedIn would surface speakers for me, but it hasn't. Why?

• The search feature doesn't allow me to narrow my results in a way that is useful to me.
• The type of business owners I've been looking for aren't using LinkedIn.
• The people who have responded to my queries to several groups have not been located in Syracuse. ("I'd love to speak...I'm in California..." Didn't I say that I was looking for local speakers?!)

Exasperated, I finally hit on the idea of looking at specific people's contacts to see if that generated a list of possible speakers. After going through several local, well connected people's contacts, I again realized that the business people I'm looking aren't on LinkedIn. I did, however, come up with some great ideas for speakers, so the exercise was not a total waste!

So the bottom line is that LinkedIn is a wonderful tool, but it is not the "end all" or the only place you should be checking for possible partners, employees or employers.

If you are committed to using LinkedIn (and it is a tool you should use), then be sure that your profile is complete and contains lots of information. The more, the better. Others will need that information in order to know what you do. It will also make you pop up in more search results (and that is always a good thing).

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Technorati tag: LinkedIn

20 Ways to Use LinkedIn Productively

Although LinkedIn seems to have a firm foothold in the business community, many people are just getting introduced to the service. For those who are using it, they have found that LinkedIn helps you stay connected to current/former colleagues, acquaintances and friends. It allows you to find out "who knows whom" and to hopefully find the contacts that you need. And it helps you with the whole "six degrees of separation" thing that shows that we're all connected to everyone else in the world.

Last year, Web Worker Daily published 20 ways to use LinkedIn productively and these are tips that are still worth using. If you're not using it, maybe this list will help you figure out why you should add it to your growing list of social networking sites.

BTW the way, tips #7 is to use LinkedIn as an easy resume. Recruiters are indeed making decisions based on your profile (which can contain much of the same information as a resume) and then passing along a LinkedIn profile to a hiring manager. If your profile is not complete, you may be eliminating yourself from being considered for positions or assignment that you would like to have.

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Technorati tag: LinkedIn

From JibberJobber blog: LinkedIn maintenance you need to do immediately

The person in JibberJobber blog is correct; we spend a lot of time building our profiles in LinkedIn and don't want to loose that work. To guard against it, she recommends doing two things (quoting):

1. Export your contacts. Simply click on Contacts, scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click on Export Connections, and follow that process. Just leave everything at default and you’ll end up with your connections in a .csv file, which opens in Excel.
2. Export your profile. You’ve probably put a fair amount of thought into creating your profile, right? What about any references you have gotten? Simply click on Profile, then find the grayed-out icons above your name, and click on the adobe pdf icon. This exports your profile, including recommendations, into a very nice, presentable document (kudos to whoever at LinkedIn did that formatting, it is very well-done!).
   

I just did this and it took less than a minute and was easy. No I have this information on my PC in case I ever need to recreate my profile on LinkedIn. Why would I need to do that? Ah...read JibberJobber.

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Technorati tag: LinkedIn

Survey reports that hiring managers are turning to online social sites

An article in the May 16, 2008 Central New York Business Journal reports that many hiring managers are turning to online social networkings in order to find new employees. The survey, done by ICR, an independent market research firm, reported that:

...62 percent would turn to professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, and 35 percent would refer to social networking sites, like Facebook or MySpace.

Colleen Accetta, branch manager for Robert Half Finance & Accounting, said:

It can't replace the personal touch, obviously. It can't replace the traditional hiring process but it certainly opens the field for you to include employee referrals, working with specialized recruiting firms, just casting a wider net, I believe.

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Technorati tags: Social Networking Tools, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn

Article: Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Which is better for business?

Which is better for business? ComputerWorld created six business scenarios to see which networking site performed better. While they found no absolute winner, you might read the scenarios and decide to select one site over the other.

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Technorati tags: LinkedIn, Facebook

Blog post: Best of Linked Intelligence 2007

This blog post contains links to ten tips, including how to politely decline a LinkedIn invitation.

LinkedIn can be very powerful. In order to tap into that power, you need to know what to do (and what not to do). Therefore, make it a point to read tips that people publish and to continue to learn how to use this tool.

Article: LinkedIn Introduces New Features and the Intelligent Applications Platform

This article give a bit of an overview of what's coming with the new and improved LinkedIn...and here is more from Wired. Not everything is released yet, so we'll need to be patient.

Article: Why you'll finally use LinkedIn

This article is a quick read and gives you the reporter's and LinkedIn's CEO perspective on the site. For example:

Linkedin, by contrast, is a sort of high-end consensual database of colleagues. In some ways it aims to turn the entire planet's workforce into one big set of colleagues, who only come to know one another when one can solve a problem for the other. You can look for that job or find that consultant or employee, because Linkedin's member data is essentially open for all to see, and because the site offers search tools to help you slice and dice it. (They are much more sophisticated and useful if you're a paying member.)

BTW an updated version of LinkedIn is in the works that will make it more of a portal that you use daily.

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Technorati tags: Connecting, LinkedIn

Blog posts: LinkedIn for Newbies

Well this is a link to a 10-part series on LinkedIn for newbies. If you're using LinkedIn, but still not feeling connected, this posts may provide the help and inspiration that you need.

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Technorati tags: Connecting, LinkedIn

Article: (part 1) Social Networking Tools: Let's Be Social

[This article is divided into three parts: Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3. This article was previously published in the November 2007 issue of the RPCN Newsletter and a version of this article appeared in Oct/Nov issue of the Bulletin of the Information Technology Division/SLA.]

After the presentation I did at RPCN on Sept. 21, I realized that it might be useful to talk more about how I use various online social networking tools and when. I am a firm believer that you need a defined reason (or benefit) to may your use worthwhile, so I am chronicling my benefits in hopes that you might see how they will benefit you.

I spoke about social networking tools in three categories. Some tools help you connect with other people. Others provide ways for you to share information with others. Finally, a growing number of tools facilitate collaborations. A trend is for a tool to work across these three categories and several that I use do just that.

CONNECT

We are used to connect face-to-face, on the phone or via email. Social networking tools allow us to connect in ways that ensure that we are:

• Accessible
• Able to exchange information fast
• In the know and considered part of "the crowd"
• Not "missing in action"

In fact, these tools allow us to be "hyper-linked." You are linked to your colleagues not just in one way, but many ways.

The tools you use to connect to your colleagues will depend on the tools they are using. The people with whom I want to connect are using LinkedIn.com and Facebook.com. Some of us also connect as friends through various sharing services (below) including Flickr.com.

LinkedIn describes itself as "a place to find and leverage professional opportunities, now and throughout your career." There are more than 14 million professional on LinkedIn who:

• Present their professional capabilities
• Find and connect with colleagues
• Use their extended networks to find and reach potential partners, clients, or employees
• Discover business opportunities
• Locate information

A basic account on LinkedIn is free. Premium accounts are available for those who really want to work their networks in LinkedIn. As an example of a LinkedIn profile, you can view mine at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jillhurstwahl . Notice that others on LinkedIn can leave recommendations on your profile that are visible to everyone.

If you are using LinkedIn and want to learn more about using it effectively, read LinkedIntelligence.com, a blog that focuses specifically on LinkedIn. The blog gives great advice for making LinkedIn work better for you. You might also read The LinkedIn Personal Trainer written by RPCN member Steven Tylock.

Facebook.com was originally a place for college students to connect. (Some of us may have memories of the printed face books given to us as college freshman). After a while, Facebook was opened up to high school students, and then to business people. Facebook has replaced MySpace for some, because of its better features and functionality. Facebook describes itself as "a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet."

Here is a good place to talk about privacy as well as learning more about your colleagues. It is important to consider what information you do not want to disclose about yourself online and then be consistent in applying your rule with every social networking tool. For example, I am very honest about who I am and what I do, but I do not disclose my home address.

Since people generally are willing to be more open about their lives in these social networking tools, you can often learn more about your colleagues through these tools rather than what you can learn from them face-to-face or via email. Someone can easily "buffalo" us in a quick face-to-face meeting, but may drop his/her guard online because the person sees these tools as both serious and fun (and we tend to disclose more when we're having fun).

To read a blog post I did on Facebook, go to http://tinyurl.com/ypwg2z . I'm on Facebook for a few minutes each day, updating my status (what I'm doing), checking on a colleagues, and perhaps sending a message to someone else. Facebook has become an important tool for staying in contact with several specific people. I've been able to use Facebook to teach my "friends" what I do in my consulting business, which I believe to be very valuable.

Friends? Many of these tools allow you to connect with "friends." Friends are those people that you want to be connected with, whether they are a friend, acquaintance or someone you don't really know. Who you consider a friend is a very personal decision. Some people will "friend" someone they have actually met face-to-face. My rule for who is a friend is different for each service I use and based on what I'm trying to achieve in a specific social networking tool.

** Continued in Part 2 **

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Technorati tags: Connecting, Sharing, Collaborating, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, MySpace

Quick LinkedIn statistics

These statistics were published in the Sept. 5, 2007 issue of USA Today and give you an idea of why you should be a part of LinkedIn:

• Founded in 2003
• 154 registered users
• More than 1.4 million members who self-identify as senior executives
• All Fortune 500 companies have executives that are members of LinkedIn
• On average, 25 new members join every minute

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Technorati tags: Connecting, LinkedIn

Book: The LinkedIn Personal Trainer

Born out of helping others with LinkedIn, Steven Tylock has written a book entitled The LinkedIn Personal Trainer. The book is a comfortable mix of explanatory text and short exercises to help anyone build a better profile in LinkedIn, create stronger connections, and ensure that LinkedIn does help them professionally. It's actually written in a question/answer format that seems very natural and not stilted.

I read an electronic version of the book while traveling and was amazed at what I learned, even though I've been using LinkedIn for several years. I found myself making notes of things I wanted to change in how I use LinkedIn. One idea I wrote down was to give more recommendations to colleagues. Tylock suggests that we actively seek recommendations for ourselves, but I think we should also voluntarily give recommendations to others, especially those whose work we value.

I've always said that you must "work" LinkedIn in order for it to work for you. Tylock's book proves that my adage is true and gives plenty of tips to help with that effort.

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Technorati tags: Connecting, LinkedIn