Jan
25
2011Our company offers LinkedIn profile optimization and training services to customers. While no means a requirement, our customers are usually new to social media and function rich sites such as LinkedIn. A recent client of ours is an established internet marketing player who is comfortable playing around with settings. The client wanted to be ranked high (#1) within LinkedIn people search result for a certain term(s). The client noticed a popular trend through his own searches. Those who ranked highest for a phrase had the phrase repeated throughout their profile – not incorporated in a contextually relevantly fashion as one might expect (or want to read) but more so in an apparently purely repetitive fashion. Being an SEO guy, the customer wanted to employ the repetitive approach.
While this tactic may get one higher in the search results, does it convert to sales? Personally I find this tactic apparently gimmicky and I tend to shy way from doing business with owners of such profiles – at the very least I am not initially interested in the person based on their profile. If I see a word or phrase repeated over and over again I can assume I know what the rest of the profile says. Why would I want to read on?
Yet it seems some of the more successful (or at least highly connected and more importantly, recommended) people employ this excessively repetitious approach. For the sake of not naming names or being negative I’d rather not point to any specific profile as an example but am sure you have seen such strategies employed or maybe make use of it yourself. One example I saw had an individual list the same key word relevant titled position listed twenty plus times – once for each client, even though he didn’t list what he did specifically in each of these separate “positions”. It was obvious this was done to repeat the words of
“CEO | Social Media Marketing | Business & Marketing Consultant | Social Business Design & Management at … | Social Media Marketing | Business & Marketing Management Consultant at …”
over and over, as many times as possible within the profile.
Ultimately, the customer is always king. My business partner (who is by far the better writer) and I however, both believe in the quality approach – being convincingly informative – and inclusive only to the extent it serves the first goal. I know search engines have gotten smarter in the ways they rank content, especially handling content geared specifically towards them and not a human reader. Shouldn’t LinkedIn content work the same way? I know I’d rather read something that flows and progresses naturally and is also visually appealing. What do you think?
Jun
30
2010Here’s the LinkedIn profile for the recently arrested, alleged Russian spy, Anna Chapman. It turns out I’m two degrees away from her – completely random I swear. This means it would have taken just one person to introduce us. Not cool – especially given similarities in our stated geographic region and mutual membership in some LinkedIn groups.
I doubt this actually signifies anything other than the fact that the internet, and more specifically social media really connects us all, allowing us to play a newer, quicker version of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. Ms. Chapman was the only one of the eleven spies I searched my network for. I probably don’t want to know how many of the others I’m connected to (in some distant modern internet way of course).
Check your LinkedIn network for the eleven. Maybe some of you will find them among your first degree connections. Let me know below! You’re probably safe from big brother’s eyes posting here – I’m still growing my readership.
P.S. Gary Whitehill (my connection to the spy), I’d be expecting some men in suits to appear in your near future.
Anna Chapman’s LinkedIn Profile:
Apr
28
2010These seven very simple tips from the pulse (and dare I say bible) of social media, Mashable, should be the basis and bare minimum for activity on LinkedIn.
1. Include a Photo Avatar
2. Build Your Network of Connections
3. Use Status Updates to Your Advantage
4. Seek Meaningful Recommendations
5. Optimize Your Profile
6. Use Groups to Expand Your Reach
7. Consider Whether to Link Your Profiles
Read the full article which includes the strong reasons why you should implement these tips now and the easy to implement methods to do so here.
2. Build Your Network of Connections
Mar
31
2010
After months of having read on the LinkedIn blog about the proposed LinkedIn application for us bastard BlackBerry owners (the iPhone app has been out for a while now), I happened to notice the latest blog post. It’s finally here. For those of you that want to go directly to the download link, it’s here.
Version 1.0.0 installed.
First thing it asks me: Integrate your LinkedIn account with BlackBerry Contacts
uh-oh. I have a crap load (thousands) of LinkedIn contacts. Right off the bat the non open networkers are going to enjoy this app more than I am (I should add this as a con to my pros and cons of being an open networker article).
The default screen settings show me my connections Network Updates in the main screen real estate, a field to post my own status update and icons for six functions up top. These are:
- Network Updates
- Search
- Connections
- Invitations
- Messages
- Reconnect
This looks a LOT like the Facebook app. Not that that’s a bad thing. Just saying. While all of the functions seemed self explanatory, I had to click on Reconnect to figure out what that did. It’s basically the same as the People You May Know module from the regular web based LinkedIn site. I guess they had to trim down the description to fit.
The search function seems to be just a people search. Including search results beyond people to include results for Questions and Answers (or a separate function), jobs and groups would be nice. Come to think of it, I did not notice any ability to anything group related such as finding or joining groups or engaing in group discussions. I could be wrong however.
Integrating your connections with your BlackBerry contacts (linking their profiles with Blackberry contact info) is without a doubt the strongest functionality delivered by this app to compliment both the LinkedIn and Blackberry experience. However I think that will only help some users and not all. For most people the people you connect with on LinkedIn are already well known to you. As mentioned earlier, people like me probably won’t even use this feature on a large scale import. I don’t need to add 5000 acquaintances to my phone book. You can however link an individual LinkedIn profile to a particular contact from your address book. This could be handy I’m sure but currently drawing a blank as to how (it’s 3:45 AM I’m having trouble thinking outside my own box). Oooh, this is where I ask you the reader how will you use this? How could the BlackBerry app be used out in the real world?
The verdict:
Having it now installed on my Curve (8320) is much like having a toy I craved forever for before Christmas – just only the day after. The thrill quickly wears out. I do think the app would be good for anyone wanting to do some quick on the fly research on a person of interest.
http://blog.linkedin.com/2010/03/29/linkedin-blackberry/
Feb
12
2010Being an Open Networker isn’t for everyone (read: To Be or Not to Be an Open Networker). In fact, LinkedIn’s stated policies still stand against the practice of indiscriminately growing your connections. This is in spite of the growing trend of people choosing to be open networkers and these same people usually tend to be LinkedIn’s greatest fans. Below are tips to grow your LinkedIn network with ease, tact and within LinkedIn’s own guidelines.
- Only invite other obvious open networkers and people you know. LinkedIn will restrict your profile when a total of five people hit “I don’t know [IDK] this user” in response to your invitation request. This number is over the life of your account. It is reached easier than you think (trust me). Should you ever find your account restricted because of this, you will have to send an I’m sorry, I won’t do this again, it was an accident email to customer service requesting your restriction be lifted. To avoid this hassle entirely, do not invite anyone you have a doubt could IDK you. If you would like to invite a regular user, someone who has not identified themselves as an open networker (described below), try sending them a message first. You can usually send messages to users who are in the same group or you can use one of your limited InMails. Tip: if they’re not in a group you belong to, join one of theirs. After you’ve established a rapport as them if they’d like to connect.
- Let people know you’re an open networker subtly so other open networkers can find you. Join the largest open networking groups on LinkedIn. By joining these groups and just as importantly displaying the group badges on your profile, other members will identify you as an open networker and feel comfortable sending an invitation to you. TopLinked will send you a weekly InviteMe list which you can upload and mass invite a list of people who have identified themselves as networkers open to receiving invitations – by you. The list is sent freely to all members of the group but being on the list requires a monthly fee.
- TopLinked (80,400+ members at “press” time)
- OpenNetworker (31,100+ members)
- LION500 (27991 members)
You will see many open networkers with the terms LION, TopLinked or something similar directly after their name in their profile designating their membership to one of the above mentioned . Although doing this clearly announces to those in the know that you will accept a random invitation to connect and that you will not “I don”t know them,” I do NOT recommend you do this. For two reasons: a) people who aren’t open networkers may be weary of these terms that they either know designate you as an open networker or they don’t know what it means and think you belong to some _____ (insert their imagination) LinkedIn group. Either way they aren’t an open networker and you should strive to have some trusted connections – in the intended sense of the word trusted b) I read on another blog that LinkedIn will shut down your profile if they notice these designations. I doubt this true but for the very chance that it is, I wouldn’t do it. Keep it safe and stick to the globally recognized distinctions CPA, Phd, Dr and MBAs. If you have a certification that is meaningful to your field (like PMP) and you are on LinkedIn primarily to conduct business in that field, it would be appropriate to add that.
- Get invited, don’t invite. You do not have a never ending supply of invites. LinkedIn starts you out with 3000 invites. Right now that is the only thing that is certain. After you go through this initial set you can request an additional batch from LinkedIn customer service. I haven’t found any written policy and whether they will give you a set number of additional invites or even that they will. (so far I have gotten a batch of 500 additional invites with one request) To my knowledge LinkedIn doesn’t limited the number of invites you can receive and accept. To get invited, follow tip #2. To get invited by a large number of people and grow your connection base quickly, you can use OpenNetworker. For a small monthly fee ($9.95) this service will email your profile info to their entire member base. This gives you the opportunity to grow your network by thousands of connections. This is how most, if not all, of the most connected people (who aren’t widely known public figures) on LinkedIn have ammassed their connections and more specifically thousands of incoming invitations – which don’t count against your outbound invite limit.
- Control your email. Being an open networker will undoubtedly subject you to more email and communications. You’re reaching out to everyone for a purpose and you can expect your connections to advertise their purpose to you. You can’t eliminate all of the mail here are some tricks to keep your InMail (email within LinkedIn) and regular email in check.
- Set up an email just for use with LinkedIn and set this as your primary email address. You can then address any emails you get from being inevitably put on your contacts promotional mailing lists on your own convenience. I would recommend you still provide LinkedIn with any email address your contacts outside of LinkedIn may have for you a this will help people find you when trying to reconnect with you.
- Change your email notification settings to “No Email – Read messages on the website.” I have my notifications set so that I do receive external emails from people within the one group that I manage, WordPress D.C., just to be safe.
Settings (upper right) – - -> Email Notifications – - – > Receiving Mesages
- Filter out confirmation emails. If’ you’re inviting a ton of people, you’re going to get a ton of “So and So is now connected to you on LinkedIn” confirmation emails. In my example, I’ve set a filter in my gmail account to send all messages from connections@LinkedIn.com containing the words “has accepted your LinkedIn invitation” (just to be safe) and go straight to the trash. If you need any helps setting this up in Gmail, let me know.
- Do not use your connection list as your business mailing / pitch list. This should be self explanatory but I get the same emails from some irrelevant service or product pitch person biweekly. It is become almost worth my energy to romove those connections. I recently had a daughter of one of those guilty parties start sending me the same pitch doubling the number of emails I get for this one marketing scheme. I regress. Communicate with people in a context that is relevant to them. Looking for web design advice or a referral, email the web designers among your connections. Have a new mutli level marketing program? Email the connections that you know are into those things. Don’t email me.
Feb
07
2010If this site hasn’t made it obvious, I’m a LinkedIn open networker, or LION, as some of us refer to our selves. In layman’s terms I’m willing to connect to anyone. So, you know where I stand on this topic. However, I’m the first to admit what work’s for one, may not work for the other. Side note: that’s what I love about LinkedIn – the culture of people helping each other out to figure out what works. So I’ll try to objectively list the pros and cons of having either a small network of only your trusted and familiar contacts and a much larger network of diverse contacts. Then I’ll shamelessly tell you why I’m such a promiscuous networker.
Small Trusted Network
Pros:
- It’s a trusted network. You know everyone you’re dealing with. You pretty much know what line of work they’re in and that they’ll probably interact with you in a way that you’re comfortable with.
- Less emails and time dealing with account maintenance. You won’t have to deal with the inevitable invites to join this or that group, read e-book pitches or get notified of the next big thing in the multi level marketing world.
- Network updates are relevant and thus probably more interesting. When you log in to LinkedIn and read about what people in your network are up to on your homepage, you are reading about people you know. When your known associate updates their status about their new job you’ll probably have an emotional connection, whether it’s happiness or envy, versus meaningless text about a stranger taking up space on your homepage.
Cons:
- Your LinkedIn network is no more powerful as your network in the real world – who you know and who they know. You haven’t really tapped into the resources and opportunities available in a larger network of decision makers.
- You profile, and thus your resume, skills and or services, is found in search results by a limited amount of people.
- Less exposure to any links on your profile = less hits to your website or blog
Large Open Network
Pros:
- Outstanding search engine benefits. People pay big money to get visitors to their sites. If you have a website or blog you want people to visit, a well worded LinkedIn profile will bring in a lot of traffic. The more people you are connected with, the more people will be able to find you. This is a great start when you don’t have a budget for marketing.
- You are more likely to be able to reach out to the people you want to communicate with. A larger network means you have a much larger chance of having a mutual connection to your targeted decision who you want to be introduced to.
- Interacting (not just connecting) with relative strangers is much more likely to lead to referrals, whether it be job opportunities or potential clients. That works both ways. I can personally attest to getting both job opportunities and web design clients in addition to helping others find such opportunities through, all through relative strangers whom I connected with on LinkedIn.
People with more than twenty connections are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five. – Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur and business legend.
Cons:
- The larger the network the more irrelevant emails you will receive both within your LinkedIn account and in the email account you use set as your main LinkedIn email address. These are basically the equivalent of cold calls advertising all kinds of things. Within LinkedIn, you will get invites to groups you probably have no interest in joining. With 5200 connection I get about five emails a day that I waste time opening, subsequently deleting and unsubscribing from a list.
- Mixing your trusted connections with strangers requires special attention. I’ve gotten introduction requests from strangers whom I connected with trying to connect with one of my connections who, more often than not, is a former boss of a boss. While I am somehow O.K. with trying to help a friend of a friend connect with the busy person of power, I feel a bit awkward doing the same for a total stranger. Either way the person I’m helping is a stranger. Opening up of your network however, leads to more of these requests and I’m pretty sure some of my connections aren’t as welcome to random inquiries as I am and may think less of our own connection. If not managed well, your open network may be turning your known contact’s into an open network whether they wanted one or not.
Now here’s my take:
LinkedIn is a professional networking tool. O.K, it’s actually a professional social network. Just like networking in the non virtual, traditional business world outside, the more people you come in contact with or network the better your odds are of succeeding in your professional agenda. Of course it’s not all about the numbers game. We’re not talking just sales here. I don’t want to sales bash as there are a lot of truly professional sales people out there. You never know who knows who and whose contact is looking for X, where X may very well be the skills on your resume, your particular services or an opportunity that your friend is perfect for. Sometimes networking is most enjoyable when you’re simply helping.
With the professional nature of LinkedIn, why wouldn’t you conduct yourself like you would in any business setting – professional, courteous and and eager to pass on your business card. LinkedIn is an entirely different animal from other well known social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Facebook traditionally is the place to be private with trusted connections (a.k.a your friends). Twitter seems to be a mix of social and business interactions. Given Twitter’s public nature, I try to keep my activities there focused on business but with a personality. “Try” being the operative word. Since the most common reasons why people join LinkedIn to begin with (online reputation management, job seeking, service offering and powerful search engine benefits), not having an open profile and mindset towards connection building seems totally counter-intuitive to me. Of course, that’s just my highly subjective opinion.
If you do decide to go the route of the larger network, check out the resources page for both free and relatively inexpensive ways to grow your network. If you don’t decide to go the with an open network, you’re always invited to connect with me. From one connection, you’ll get 5000+ sceond degree connections and over a million and a half third degree connections. My email address is paul at linkedinguy dot com
**Update 3/21/2010**
I have now assumed a more passive stance towards open networking. While I still accept invitations from anyone willing to connect with me, I no longer actively seek to grow my network for just for the goal of increasing my connections. My current number of connections (5300) includes most of the supper connectors on LinkedIn. Through them alone, most people I could want to connect with usually are a degree or two away – thus somewhat approachable within my larger global network. To keep growing my network in mass amounts just isn’t worth my time – pursuing them, wasting my invites and dealing with the spammy few among them. I am already removing connections after repeated offenses – people that advertise the same thing over and over or send me to a site I can’t close out of without a browser reset (arggh).
Feb
01
2010I’m an open networker. But I’m just the average open networker (of which there are quite a few of us) – connected to the mega networkers and five thousand plus similarly minded people. I was wondering what benefits, and pains, the top five most connected people on LinkedIn enjoy compared to the rest of us. I got to ask the #4 most connected person on LinkedIn, Steven Burda, about his own experiences.
Mr. Burda is a young extremely enterprising individual who definitely knows how to successfully self promote. He works at Boeing in a financial capacity and runs his own consulting business, through which he has no doubt capitalized on his experience and success using LinkedIn. So the first question naturally is how did this rise to the #4 spot start? Steven has been on linked since 2006. His primary reason to join, was one many of us consider when first signing up.
Why
He said, like most people getting yet another invite to join a social network, he was skeptical at first. Nonetheless, he wanted to network with other young professionals. Having 0ver 40,000 connections you would think Steven has connected with anyone and everyone. Yet he says he has built his noteworthy connection base by only connecting with positive people. That’s probably a must for someone to stay excited about using this service.
How
Once he saw the overall benefits of being on and using LinkedIn, Steven started reading interesting profiles and reaching out to them, connecting with people based on shared interests, and always sending personalized invites. Don’t ask me how he finds the time to that, but I believe him. He also joined open networker groups like TopLinked to connect with other open minded individuals looking to grow their professional network of contacts. Steven is not premium member. He said he can do everything he needs to without.
In the process he said he has fun making business acquaintances both locally and all around the world. Steven says he’s had the opportunity to interact with people he normally would never have had the chance to meet. Some of these people he’s gotten to meet in person as well. He enjoys the personal development he has obtained through interacting with people. Through his participation of LinkedIn’s Questions and Answers functionality he’s been able to learn about himself and follow up with experts of various fields.
Successes
I asked him for some success stories he’s had from being on LinkedIn and specifically through his status as one of the top connected person. Why else would one go through the hurdles to be one of the top connected? He says he can’ t tell me how many times he’s been approached with opportunities. That provides a great sense of security, especially in this economy. Steven said he believes in the saying, “dig your well before you’re thirsty.” The opportunities he has had extended to him include numerous job inquiries as well as invitations to test new products in the hopes he’ll be a product champion to his massive network. He has also been featured in several books focusing on modern networking.
Tips on Growing Your Network
Steven says
- to have fun but keep your profile professional.
- Pictures of friends and children are kept on Facebook.
- Pay it forward. 99 percent of the time he is willing to facilitate an introduction -provided there’s a legitimate request. He says he’s never lost a penny, just time.
- Never try to sell anything in your emails.
- Quantity and Quality – don’t focus just on numbers
Pains
Besides the obvious inbox nightmare I think would come with having that many connections, there are other logistical concerns with having 40000+ connections that I haven’t even thought of. Steven grew his noteworthy network to 40,000 plus connections before LinkedIn imposed it’s site wide 30,000 connection limitation. LinkedIn was nice enough to let him keep the connections that he had made surpassing this limit, but it was pretty much game over conducting business as usual.
Because of this limitation Steven can’t connect to anyone new. So who care’s right? He’s already #4 for those seeking bragging rights, right? But Steven can”t connect his own neighbors or even family members who have joined LinkedIn, and often largely in part to his evangelism for LinkedIn. To add someone new he would have to remove well over ten thousand connections just to be able to add one. On top of that there’s the over 50,000 pending invites – which he claims, if accepted, would make him the most connected person on LinkedIn. Tough to develop opportunities like this.
To be #1
I already asked Steven what successes and benefits he has over the normal person on LinkedIn or even compared to an open networker like me with thousands of connections of my own, but what benefits does the #1 guy (Ron Bates) enjoy that even Steven does not? Besides the greater exposure of being #1, Mr. Bates has even further reach. That means by being connected to more people Mr. Bates is indirectly connected to the most people within the overall network of the currently six million plus individuals on LinkedIn. However the difference between one and four isn’t that much. Both Steven and Mr. Bates are what Steven calls Supper Connectors. Through a connection with either, you will have a very high chance of being indirectly connected to anyone you may seek an introduction with.
In the end
Steven says LinkedIn has a love hate relationship with him. Obviously they love his evangelist influence and overall goodwill within the LinkedIn community. He believes it is because of people like him, the mega connected, however that LinkedIn imposed the 30,000 connection limit. Steven is a virtual hub. Through him you can reach almost anyone – had he been allowed to grow his network naturally anyway. I guess the 30,000 limit keeps anyone from from reaching evryone (especially as LinkedIn continues to grow) thus protecting LinkedIn’s premium services – which happens to include the ability to reach anyone one on LinkedIn whether you’re connected to them or not. Minus the connection limit, Steven concurs with LinkedIn’s policies such as account restrictions for people receiving too many “I Don’t Know” responses from connection invites. I guess you can say their feelings for each other are mutal.
In the end, Steven says he’s a big believer in LinkedIn. LinkedIn is not networking. It’s just a platform, a tool. People make it happen and it is how you utilize it.
Steven Burda’s linked in profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/burda
Oct
14
2009
Last week the media (here, here and here) covered how the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was going to implement new rules regulating advertising online, specifically that online sources, to include bloggers (such as myself), disclose whether they were compensated for a positive product or service review. As both a beginning and aspiring blogger and as a staunch advocate for consumer rights, this raised more questions than it answered.
The questions that sprung to my mind, and I’m sure are drawing a fuzzy picture across the coaxial and fiber cable networks are abundant. What constitutes payment? Where is the line drawn? At what point is a post or an article sponsored? Finally, how is Big Brother going to actually police this?
I write positive product and service reviews in my blog Paulie’s Picks but I don’t get paid for these posts. I did, however, have a person on the receiving end of a positive review paste my Paulie’s Picks logo and link back to my site. This raises traffic to my site and thus potential ad revenue. Is my positive review sponsored now? What if the bike store I wrote about loves that I send them business and gives me a substantial discount next time I buy a bike there? At what point does the sponsored content switch get turned on? I am no lawyer. In fact, I only got accepted to my third choice law school after blowing off my Law School Admission Test. Yet ethically the line seems to be a clear one.
When an article is written:
1) was something given in return for the writing?
2) is or was there the promise of something in exchange for the writing?
3) is material gain expected from a specific party in exchange for the writing?
If the answer to any of these is yes, then the content is sponsored. How you factually confirm the status of every piece of written content out there, is beyond me. In the meantime, I think there is a simple standard solution that can be provided. Authors can designate their work as Sponsored Content or Sponsor Free. Conveniently, I’ve provided two draft icons for such purposes. As you can see, this piece is Sponsor Free.
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