When asked to review an updated version of a book, I would generally decline; but when it comes to a book on social networking, the world changes so quickly. This is why I thought I would take a second look at I’m on LinkedIn–Now What??? A Guide to Getting the Most OUT of LinkedIn by Jason Alba.
I never really used LinkedIn all that much, preferring both Twitter and Facebook. Then last month, when I was teaching a seminar on social media, I went back to take a look and was pleased to see that LinkedIn had made a bunch of improvements. Reviewing Alba’s books gave me a lot more ideas about how we all could use it more effectively.
Who’s on LinkedIn?
It used to be that LinkedIn was a place for job-seekers and recruiters. I recall meeting one person last year from a company that had banned its younger employees from being there for fear they would be recruited. Back then my response was: “Maybe try giving them reasons to stay rather than focus on making it harder for them to leave?” Today I would echo what Alba says in his book: There are more than 28 million people on LinkedIn and most of them are NOT seeking jobs–they are networking, marketing their services and even launching businesses.
The rest of this review will look at the different tips Alba presents that caught my eye, as someone who is familiar with LinkedIn but not as active a user as I could be.
Pump up your profile – a few less obvious tips.
- Use both full names of companies, schools, associations and titles as well as the nickname or common abbreviation. People may look for one or the other. For example, University of Virginia and UVA, Downtown Women’s Club and DWC, the Museum of Fine Arts and the MFA, vice president and VP.
- Write recommendations. Not only is this good networking form, but it puts your name (with a link back to your profile) on other people’s pages. This helps make your own profile more visible.
- Get a vanity URL. If you have a publicly searchable profile (which is recommended), put your name in the URL (search engines search through URLs first before site content). Go to the Profile Page, click on the link next to “Public Profile” that says “edit.” You can then edit the URL and put in your full name.
- Make your public profile complete. “How much info should you make public?” was a question that came up in a recent Downtown Women’s Club teleclass with career expert Lindsey Pollak. She echoed Alba’s position that this is your chance to have people see your professional expertise the way you want them to. So you should take the time to make it as complete as possible. To paraphrase Pollak: Giving people full and quick access to a complete a picture of your professional experience is the point of LinkedIn. If you don’t want to play the game, then you probably shouldn’t be on LinkedIn.”
Communicating on LinkedIn
Alba gives a good overview on Message Settings. As with any social network, you can control how you receive messages. (This is why many of us prefer these to e-mail.) For example, you can choose to receive messages and invitations by e-mail immediately (recommended), but profile updates from your network can be sent via weekly e-mails. Other things, such as job notifications and service recommendations, can be items that you choose to see only when you log onto LinkedIn.
Make sure you have both (or all) of your e-mails listed on LinkedIn. This is how people find you, and if some people only have one of your e-mails and it’s not the one you used to create your LinkedIn account, you need to add them. You can do this under the Account & Settings link in the upper right-hand corner.
One helpful bit in this section is that Alba tells you what his settings are. I’ve found that when I teach people about social media tools, it helps to actually show them what I do and how I do it. Alba does this throughout and it makes this book, in particular, very user-friendly.
Searching for People on LinkedIn
This was a useful section because, as Alba mentions, sometimes searching on LinkedIn can be quirky.
- Increase the size of your network because your search results are based on your connections. In other words increasing the number of people you link to will expand the size of the search you can do and lead to better results.
- Connect with a few super-connectors. There are “open networkers” on LinkedIn who connect with thousands of people, even though they may only loosely know them. Just connecting to one of these will expand your network drastically.
Searching for Jobs on LinkedIn
I confess that I had never clicked on the “jobs” tab since joining LinkedIn. After reading Alba’s book, I took some time to mess around with it and this is truly a useful function. Not only are there exclusive jobs listed on LinkedIn, the tool that tells you who in your network has worked/is working at a company is perhaps the key to LinkedIn–finding a personal connection. Alba has a whole section on how to effectively use the job search function.
Groups and Answers
Of all the functions of LinkedIn, these two are what I have always found the most useful. We have a DWC+ LinkedIn Group (exclusive to our paid members), but since the addition of discussions, it’s become much more useful. Members can post business questions, make announcements, etc.
I’ve also been a big fan of Answers, where you can ask questions as well as answer others. I’ve used the Answers to do mini-focus groups for consulting clients and even made a few connections in doing so (one may even lead to a launch of DWC-London). I’ve also responded to others’ questions and been picked as “best answer” twice. This is another way to establish yourself as an expert.
Alba provides some good advice on forming a strategy as to how you use both Groups and Answers effectively.
Top Shelf Bottom Line: If you haven’t used LinkedIn or, like me, are not an active user, this is a good guidebook to pick up. It’s short, easy to read and full of actual examples of how Alba uses it. That for me was what made it easier to digest than a normal how-to book or surfing the FAQ sections. Most of all, I liked the autho’s view that: “LinkedIn is a powerful tool, not a silver bullet.” As with any networking platform, group or resource, you only get out of it what you put into it. And it should be only one part of a marketing/networking strategy, not the whole thing.
*****
Since we’re on the subject, here are some of my other thoughts on LinkedIn:
The recent LinkedIn improvements have been tremendous. In fact, we were surprised to see that all our DWC+ teleclasses that we list on Eventbrite were automatically picked up by LinkedIn (this was discovered after various calls and e-mails between DWC staff trying to figure out which one of us posted these to LinkedIn). LinkedIn has also added the equivalent of Twitter/Facebook “status updates” called “What are you working on?” I could see this being useful and plan to test it out.
Some of the applications that have been added are also worth testing out–posting your PowerPoints from SlideShare and your blog listings are good ways to further demonstrate your expertise. I also like the Company Buzz function, where you can track “tweets” from Twitter about your company. The Typepad blog link, which pulls in blog posts from around your network, is another useful idea. You can click on a link and write a comment on a friend’s blog post (a really effective way to network).
The only thing on my wish list is that under Groups, I wish LinkedIn would add an announcements section, so we could separate that out from our discussions. And I really wish the site would let me stay signed in rather than make me resubmit my password repeatedly, sometimes during the same session. Annoying.
This entry was posted on Saturday, January 17th, 2009 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.10 Responses to “I’m on LinkedIn–Are You?”
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January 19th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Diane,
Great article. I agree, anyone looking to get the most out of LinkedIn should definitely go back and read Jason Alba’s book. The greatest thing about LinkedIn is that, if you pump up your profile properly, build a solid network, and participate in appropriate groups, you never really need to click on that “Jobs” tab. Those jobs will find you!
I have posted your article to our LinkedIn Group for Career Branding here: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1765067&trk=hb_side_g Please join us!
Cheers, Craig Fisher
January 19th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Diane,
I agree with Craig…this is a great article. I have already reserved this book from my local library. I have posted your articel to our LinkedIn Group – Women’s Foodservice Forum here: http://www.linkedin.com/news?display=&sik=1232416886654 Please join us!
Thanks!
Vicki Kenyon
January 20th, 2009 at 4:25 am
An interesting article highlighting some pertinent excerpts from Jason’s book. But I have a few comments.
First, your network is really only those people you have a direct connection to. If you attach yourself to a super-networker, you don’t get their network as yours automatically in any real sense — if you want to connect to any of their contacts, you wtill have to do that manually. All the super-networker brings is a new route to an introduction.
And this brings me on to my second point, which is that many traditionally workers fight against the approcah of connecting to everyone and anyone. LinkedIn itself discourages contact with people you don’t know by warning against accepting invitations from strangers and placing a restriction on your account if just 5 people you reach out to decline your invitation. Sure, you can attempt contact through an intermediary, including a super-networker, but then that (or those) intermediary needs to have comfort in the motivation for your request for contact to their network to let it through. There are no guarantees they will, or that it will then get accepted at the other end (see point above on account restrictions if you get too many rejections).
The obstacles presented by LinkedIn to building a network of valuable new contacts are rarely discussed unfortunately. But they exist and mean the site offers more to job hunters than business development, sales or marketing professionals looking for an easy way to new customers.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
January 20th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
@craig and @vicki – Thanks for the great comments and for info about your groups.
@Ian – Just to clarify. When discussing connecting with “superconnecters” this was in a section of Jason’s book specifically focused on “search”. He, and I, were making a point that your ability to search is in direct relation to the size of your network and a “superconnector” can help expand your ability to search. In my mind, I saw the two things — search and contact — as separate, as there are many times I search for people on LinkedIn that I do not plan on contacting through LinkedIn.
Diane
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Fair point Diane. Can I ask, how do you greet the news that LinkedIn is now clamping down on LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networks, or the “superconnectors” you mention provide a valuable service?
More here: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/012009-linkedin-clamps-down-on-super-connected.html?hpg1=bn
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
January 25th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Ian – Sorry for the delayed response, but your comment got sent directly to our spam filter. Odd.
But, back to your question re: clamping down on LIONs. I have to admit that I’m more of the “to each his own” networking philosophy, where if you want to connect to thousands of people you don’t know, then that’s an individual choice. If you choose to accept an invitation from someone you don’t know, that’s also your choice. Does it really harm anyone? They mentioned people were worried about getting spammed, but they didn’t cite any instances of this happening, did they?
Besides if I see someone with that many contacts, I just assume that they don’t know any of them, hence I wouldn’t even think of asking them to make an intro or inviting them to connect with me. And, I do tend to ignore those requests unless they mention the DWC or some other connection we have. In fact, I don’t even recall getting more than a handful of linkedin requests over the past few years that were from “superconnectors,” which is probably why I view it as harmless.
February 2nd, 2009 at 10:26 am
[...] on LinkedIn –Are You? – Topshelf.entrepreneur.com. The recent LinkedIn improvements have been tremendous. In fact, we were surprised to see that all [...]
February 2nd, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Great article. And some really great insights too. Networking is the buzz word today. You stand to gain a lot through aggressive networking. You not only get to know people but also about job opportunities that are not advertised anywhere.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Great articles. FYI: The moderator of a particular linked in group can change andor add tab lables.
May 1st, 2009 at 1:41 pm
[...] I’m on LinkedIn – Are You? (topshelf.entrepreneur.com) [...]