During September I did a live interview with Lee Kantor and Amy Otto at Atlanta Business Radio. This is the second show that I’ve done and it also featured Teo Gracca with Net Teams. You can listen to the show by going to the following link: http://atlantabusinessradio.libsyn.com/index.php?post_year=2008&post_month=09 (scroll and you’ll see Teo’s mug shot)
I was told that it was a good show but once I do a show I never listen to it. First I know what I said; and second if I sounded like an idiot I really don’t want to know. Hopefully those who listen find some value.
Amy and Lee have a great show and feature some great business people in the Atlanta are. Check them out and who knows maybe they’ll have you on soon.
Just to clarify…I don’t really make any money writing about LinkedIn. At least not yet. I’ve written a LinkedIn book but so far I’m about 5 months behind when I thought it would actually be published. Every couple of months delay means that I have to go back and edit it to make sure it’s up to date. If you’re interested it can be found at www.linked101.com.
My book is a nuts and bolts look at everything on LinkedIn and tells you what it means and what it can do for you. The last four chapters deal with strategies and “Do’s and Dont’s”.
There are some other good resources such as Jason Alba’s book “I’m on LinkedIn, Now What”. Jason’s book takes a higher level approach than mine and doesn’t get down and dirty in the details. It was the first LinkedIn book that I bought and it was money well spent.
Jason’s a little more prolific as a blogger than I am and can be counted on to at least add a post a week. His book and blog can be found at www.imonlinkedinnowwhat.com. Check him out.
Another great source is Scott Allen’s www.linkedintelligence.com. Scott is no longer blogging about LinkedIn, but it’s worth taking the time to read through some old posts.
These should keep you busy if you’re interested in learning more about LinkedIn.
Two months is a long time. But two months slips by fairly quick in blogging world. You get busy and don’t add a new post for the week and the next thing you know it’s been 3 weeks (or nine). I’ve been busy with other projects and have had to put things on hold.
First I’ve been launching a new benefits company and developing the website. I finally finished that today and it can be viewed at www.iXLbenefits.com. Not that you care but I finished the site and decided I wanted to add a opening splash page. Once I created one that I liked it really didn’t match the site behind it so I redesigned the site around the splash page. I like the look and feel and love the fact that it doesn’t mention a single insurer or insurance plan.
Second, I’ve been developing the website for my LinkedIn group North Fulton Business Group. This can be found at www.northfultonbg.com. It’s launched as well.
There’s been a lot of action around LinkedIn and their groups. The problem with LinkedIn groups is that other than a way to be able to connect to a large group on LinkedIn that you don’t really know, there isn’t much to it. They now have message boards available, but so what. That doesn’t do much. And anyone these days can set up a blog and create a message board.
I still struggle with LinkedIn because with all that they have done right, I still think they’re missing some key pieces to foster interaction. Everything at www.northfultonbg.com could easily be duplicated on LinkedIn, which would create more of a foundation for online networking.
I don’t want to sound too pessimistic because LinkedIn is a great tool. Beyond enhancing my network, though, I’m still looking for ways to generate business. I think many of you are in the same boat. You’re on LinkedIn, but you still really don’t know how to use it effectively to generate consistent business.
I’ve currently identified one way to possible generate some business and will be testing it out over the next couple of months. I hope to be able to share a success story that you can duplicate.
If you would like to grade your linkedIn profile the following tool will do that for you. Go to http://linked101.com/review.html and see how you score relative to the average LinkedIn user.
I was just looking at my connections and noticed a new link that appears below each connections name…”View and Edit Details”. This is currently in beta, but it appears that you can add details such as phone number, address, email and notes to your contacts. Sounds great, right?
First let me say that I like that LinkedIn is adding functionality. The notes option could be interesting and a great way to track information to particular contacts. Now for the downside.
First, anything you add can be deleted if the person removes you as a connection. That may not be important since if the person removes you, you probably will not be contacting them in the future. This is a minor issue.
The real downside is that I already have all of my connections contact information in Cardscan, outlook and my Blackberry. (Because I usually have their business card before I send out an invitation.) I’m really not going to take the time to renter 250+ connection contact data into another application.
A better solution would be for LinkedIn to allow me to add this information to my profile and choose whether or not my connections can view this information. This is what Plaxo does and it’s one of the features I like about it. I still don’t really use Plaxo, but they at least have laid out the groundwork for a better way to handle this.
Another option (that Plaxo has) that I would like to see is the ability for me to classify my connections as a friend, business colleague, client, etc.
This is currently in beta so there is still the potential that this feature will be improved. For now it is a step in the positive direction.
A week or so ago my wife and I woke up at 1AM to the sound of a seal coming from my son’s room. For those of you with children, you may have experienced the joy of Croup. Croup is simply a virus that causes swelling in the throat, making it hard to breathe. My wife, the more detail oriented spouse, took my son to the emergency room and I stayed home with my two daughters.
Since I didn’t want to go back to sleep until they were home and I knew all was fine, I decided to catch up on adding some blog posts. Writing at 2 AM in the morning is not something I necessarily recommend.
Today I finally made it back to re-read the posts and I can’t say that they were the clearest posts I have written. And grammatically they were somewhat below par. The moral of the story is what you publish online, in emails, in letters, etc. is a reflection on who you are as a business professional.
I highly recommend that you read what you have written before sending or posting and that you spell check your work. So in this case do as I say not as I did. When you update your LinkedIn profile or make changes, copy what you have written and paste it in Word and run the spell check. Make any corrections and then copy and paste back into LinkedIn.
After all it’s your brand and if you don’t care enough to get it right, why will anyone else care.
(Spell checking this before posting found 4 errors)
LinkedIn has seen significant growth over the last year and the numbers keep climbing. As of last week there were over 25 million members. That’s an impressive number even if it does trail Facebook (50 million plus) and MySpace (65 million plus). Being a business networking site, it’s likely to not reach the saturation of the other two. That’s ok, since from a business perspective it has the ability to be more productive to your average professional.
Where LinkedIn struggles is in the ability of members to monetize their presence. Sure there are people who have made money as a direct result of being on LinkedIn. I have. But given the fact that there are over 2 million people in my network, there is room for improvement.
If I were to assign a grade to LinkedIn’s ability to help me
- Enhance my network: 10
- Expand my Network: 8
- Identify Prospects: 4
- Identify Potential Partners: 7
- Research: 7
- Build Online Brand: 10
- Secure Introductions: 8
The biggest hurdle is the ability to conduct a blind search to identify prospects. Part of this is because LinkedIn doesn’t really want the site to be a tool to identify prospects that you you don’t know. The downside is that even though you have an extended network, there is no effective way to search beyond your first degree connections.
I would like to see LinkedIn come up with a solution that allows me to drill down throughout my entire network providing more opportunity to identify potential partners and clients.
For now LinkedIn may have a lot of members, but until those members find value in interacting, it will lag behind it’s potential. And members will continue to think more in terms of the number of connections they have and not the monetization of their connections.
LinkedIn has four main featured sections on the site. Up until recently it was People, Jobs, Answers and Service Providers. In a recent update LinkedIn Service Providers was replaced by Companies. The Service Providers content is now within the Companies section.
Service Providers was probably the least utilized of the four main sections and if one had to give way for a new section I guess this was the smart choice. Still, other than the People section I personally believed the Service Providers sections provided me the most relevant value.
The section consists of a group of job categories that list the top recommended members based on client recommendations. I would have liked LinkedIn to do a lot more to promote the section. Recommendations from your client’s are a great way to build your online brand. It’s a powerful statement to be one of the top people in your job category within your geographic location.
The Companies page is focussed more on researching companies. The section is still considered in beta testing and should evolve over time. For now it’s interesting, but if they put in the functionality to search by more variables than just company name it maybe a really useful tool.
This is almost a case of the self-employed verses small to large businesses. The Service Providers section allows the self employed person to gain notice by placing high in the rankings, while the Companies section allows companies to gain notice from being in search results. Being a self-employed person, I admit I’m more partial to Service Providers. But since I target small businesses I may grow to like the Companies section.
For now, just be aware that each may serve a useful function to help you grow your business.
One of the ways that I use LinkedIn is to connect with people in my local Chamber. Many of the meetings have anywhere from 45 to 70 people. It’s simply imposible to meet everyone.
I assume that most people attending have the same goal as me…to meet and network with as many people as possible. So after each meeting I send a LinkedIn invitation to those that I am not connected to. I’ve found that most often this connection (where I don’t personally know the person and have not had a prior conversation with) usually leads to a conversation at the next event. In fact I make it a point to introduce myself personally at the next meeting. LinkedIn can be a great ice-breaker.
Yesterday I sent out about 6 invitations to people that attended the same event yesterday morning. Two people chose to not connect, but it’s how they chose to not connect that impressed me.
Not everyone accepts the invitation, but Bill McDermott and Mitch Copman both took the time to email me back their reason’s for not accepting the invitation. That says a lot about them as a person. The reason’s for not connecting are irrelevant. Some people are Lion’s, some ar Closed networkers and some like myself are what I would call a Networker (someone who uses LinkedIn to connect to those they know and meet and to those they would like to know or meet). Each person has to choose the strategy that best works for them.
Do you respond to every connection request? Or do you sometimes ignore and archive requests that you choose to not accept? What you do says a lot about you as a person. I’m not connected to Bill or Mitch, but because they took the time to respond to my invitation, I will keep them in mind if I ever come across someone that would be a great lead or introduction for them.
I woke up, work got crazy, and the next thing I new it had been three weeks since I wrote a post. During this time LinkedIn released a quick tutorial produced by Common Craft. IF you’ve never visited their site I would recommend that you do. They have created a style of explaining ideas that simplifies any subject so that my wife could even understand subjects such as blogs, RSS feeds, or even LinkedIn. For the record my wife is intelligent but has no understanding of technology…and doesn’t have a desire to do so.
If I was a big dog, I would do whatever was possible to have Common Craft create and ad for what I do. They have a creative way of taking a complex (to the masses not the geeks) concept and presenting it in a non-tech manner. Rather than link directly to the LinkedIn tutorials, I am going to link to their site so that you can see all of their creativity. The LinkedIn explanatorial can be viewed here.
For the record, Common Craft is the brainchild of the Sachi and Lee LeFever.
