Over the past couple of months, I’ve read some great articles about how you should use Twitter and Facebook. The one thing that many of the articles have not included is LinkedIn. If you are a regular read, you know I’ve spent some time on LinkedIn and wanted to give you my top five pointers for using it.
5. LinkedIn groups: Don’t spam! You will be taken out of the group by the group manager. If you have a question or want to answer somebody that is great and it’s an awesome way to help others. But, if you are just there to inform people about your latest product or service or self promote, then think of another way to do this because many group managers will remove you from the group and most likely notify LinkedIn as well.
When looking for new groups to join, look for groups that have new discussions on a regular basis. Right now you are limited to only joining 50 groups and I’ve found after joining a group that they don’t have very much discussions in the group then I will leave that group and find another group that matches more of what I’m looking for. If you go to your groups tab, you can now see very easily how active each of your groups are. See below. I love this feature as well.
LinkedIN - Group Activity
4. Profile: LinkedIn will give you a status of 0% to 100% on Profile Completeness. The closer your profile is to 100% the better chance you have of being found.
LinkedIn - Profile Completeness
Also, make sure you have a photo of yourself and not your company logo. Many times, if you meet somebody at a conference or networking event, they may not remember your name but they’ll remember your face so make it easier for those new contacts to connect with you when you send an invite to them.
3. Status updates: Remember to update your status a few times a week. Many people forget about this and it’s a key area of LinkedIn. You can now link your Twitter account with your LinkedIn account. I only update my LinkedIn status about once a day or every other day. I try to post information that I know my network will find interesting, maybe an interesting article that I think they will enjoy, some type of project status or even just a great quote that I’ve found. I have also been known to ask questions on my status area and I usually get some great information back from my contacts.
2. Recommends area: I love this area for LinkedIn. Maybe you have a boss or ex-boss, co-worker, etc. that you want to recommend. Write something about working with them and maybe they will do the same for you. If your a consultant this is very helpful for new clients to learn more about you. It really works and it’s often an overlooked part of LinkedIn.
1. Personal Notes: If you want to connect with somebody outside your circle, that is great, but make the note personal. I love meeting new connections, but the one thing that I hate is getting a default “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” If you don’t know the person, write a personal note to the new contact so they know why you want to connect and maybe a little bit about you as well.
Here is a bonus feature that many of you may have heard about, but don’t use. If you enjoy reading books like I do, add this module to your LinkedIn profile, Reading List by Amazon. I love to read so I post the books I’m reading all the time and my connections enjoy reading my book reviews. It’s a great way to find out what your connections are reading and help each other out. Another feature I love on LinkedIN.
LinkedIn - Reading List By Amazon
So there you go, just a few of my pointers on using LinkedIn. Do you have any pointers on using LinkedIn, feel free to comment below.
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doug! you know I love me some Linkedin! I’ve actually been struggling a little with social media lately. If I really get down to root cause, it is the people that are letting me down. I’m working on some carrier-level telecom projects in Europe and Asia and I cannot get ANYONE to respond to me at a couple of targeted companies in Europe. I’m using Linkedin and Twitter. Bupkes. Donut holes. Nada. Nyet. Zippo. I tried leveraging groups too to know avail. I tried Answers on Linkedin. Got a couple of good responses but many along the lines of “have you tried Googling”? Really? That’s your big expert answer? What is this “google” that you speak of?
However! I still use Linkedin to keep in touch with my network. Still an insanely valuable tool. My facebook participation has waned a bit. Lots of noise and I am finding it difficult to sift through it. Lots of redundant content too. I find myself reading stuff on FB, getting part of the way through it and realizing I just read that in my RSS reader.
These tools are not all they can be yet. Waiting on Google Me. They are due for a hit. Wave. Buzz. Failures. Well…Voice is probably a hit. I need something to aggregate it all together, strip out duplicate content, strip out Farmville updates, strip out content from people that I rate as connections but too far removed from me where I don’t care that they are doing whatever inanely boring thing it is that they are doing with their cat.
5 good pointers! I haven’t had as good of luck with LinkedIn, but it sounds like I haven’t been using it to its full potential!
The Amazon module is an interesting concept. Are there other modules that can be added? And where do these show up? Is it on my public profile?
Good information though and thanks for sharing!
As always Mike, you make some great points. I totally agree with you – wave, hype all gone and buzz just the same. Google Voice is doing well.
Many like you, see the true value in using LinkedIN. It’s a very powerful tool to network with.
Thanks again for the comments.
Derek, thanks man. Much appreciated. To answer your question, yes the Reading List plug-in will show up on your profile page. On your main page it will be on the right hand side, under “Your LinkedIN Network”. You can search others in your network, industry updates, and all updates. Great stuff in there.
There are some other great plug-ins including: the WordPress plugin, Box.net and many more. Maybe I should do some more research and do a posting about it. Let me know if you’d find that useful I can start looking into it.
Hi Doug,
I’m not that big a fan of recommendations – I think they are being abused a bit, particularly by the open networkers.
I agree with you 100% re personal notes for connection requests. Interestingly, I see the generic invitation used quite often by so called social media experts – not smart.
I think there are two options that you’ve missed.
The first is to integrate your blog into your profile (you touched on this in one of your comments) – either via the WordPress plugin or via the websites option in your profile. I find I check out a person’s blog before I decided to connect as it gives me a useful insight into what they are really thinking. I’ve also found my blog generates leads for me via LinkedIn.
Secondly, another plugin – SlideShare. I like this option as it allows me to promote my public presentations via my profile as well as via the blog and SlideShare itself.
I actually wrote an outline last month that describes an optimal LinkedIn executive profile – what to focus on, what plug-ins to use, how much time to invest in maintenance etc. Be happy to share my thoughts
cheers Mark
Thanks Mark for the comments. I appreciate it. I will check out your blog posting. It sounds like a great article.
Yes, I couldn’t agree with you more. Slideshare is another great application. That one totally slipped my mind but you are 100% correct… it’s a great app.
I know, it’s scary how much some of the “social media experts” use the default / generic invitation. Maybe we can change that
Thanks again for reading the post and keep in touch Mark. I appreciate you reading the posting.