42 Rules To 24 Hour Success On LinkedIn

E-mail: info@superstarpress.
com
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Cupertino, CA 95014
42 Rules for
24-Hour
Success on
LinkedIn
By Chris Muccio
with David Burns
and Peggy Murrah
ii
Copyright 2009 by Chris Muccio with David Burns
and Peggy Murrah
All rights reserved. No patent liability is assumed with
respect to the use of the information contained herein.
Although every precaution has been taken in the
preparation of this book, the publisher and author
assume no responsibility for errors or omissions.
Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting
from the use of the information contained herein.
First Printing: January 2009
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60773-018-7 (1-60773-018-9)
Place of Publication: Silicon Valley, California, USA
Library of Congress Number: 2008940965
eBook ISBN: 978-1-60773-019-4 (1-60773-019-7)
Trademarks
All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be
trademarks or service marks have been appropriately
capitalized. Super Star Press cannot attest to the
accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this book
should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any
trademark or service mark.
iii
Warning and Disclaimer
Every effort has been made to make this book as
complete and as accurate as possible, but no warranty
of fitness is implied. The information provided is on an
"as is" basis. The author, contributors, and publisher
shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any
person or entity with respect to any loss or damages
arising from the information contained in the book. As of
the time of this printing, none of the Authors has any
formal business relationship with LinkedIn. LinkedIn
has not endorsed this book.
If you do not wish to be bound by the above, you may
return this book to the publisher for a full refund.
iv
Praise For This Book!
"Reading this book will give you a solid foundation for
your LinkedIn strategy!"
Jason Alba, CEO of JibberJobber.com and author
of 'I'm on LinkedInNow What???'
"Peggy, Chris, and David have created an easy-to-read
and implement guide to LinkedIn that really does the job
of getting you connected fast. In the social networking
jungle, this is one of the best guides you'll findfor a
site that reaches YOUR people!"
Suzanne Falter-Barns, http://www.getknownnow.com
"'42 Rules to 24 Hour Success on LinkedIn' provides
straightforward, common sense advice on how to get
the most out of LinkedInthe most popular social
networking site for busy professionals. In this compact
book, Chris, David, and Peggy show you what to do to
leverage the power of social networking on LinkedIn.
And they do it in an easy to use, enjoyable read. If you
want to build a network of likeminded professionals, you
need to be on LinkedIn. If you're on LinkedIn you need
to read 42 Rules to 24 Hour Success on LinkedIn."
Bud Bilanich, The Common Sense Guy, Bestselling
author of 'Straight Talk for Success'
v
"These 42 Rules provide entrepreneurs, corporations
and job seekers with gems of advice and are the perfect
resource to make sense of how you can generate
success with LinkedIn. For new users, it provides a
terrific overview and for experienced users, it is a great
reminder of the things you may know intuitively but may
have forgotten in the rush of our hectic schedules."
Michael Port, author of 'Book Yourself Solid & The
Contrarian Effect'
"The book is a very practical, yet easy and fun read. It
is impressive in its clarity presenting the various
aspects for generating 24-Hour success on LinkedIn
without the typical hype. You will come away
understanding the core business principles driving your
LinkedIn success."
Mitch Meyerson, Founder of Guerrilla Marketing
Coaching and author of 'Mastering Online
Marketing'
http://www.MitchMeyerson.com
"From a business perspective, social networking is
changing every day with new technology, tools and
strategies. With so many options at our fingertips, users
are challenged simply trying to determine where to
begin and how to effectively use these tools. Given this
bewildering landscape, the book '42 Rules for 24-Hour
Success on LinkedIn' ties it all together quite simply and
vi
provides excellent practical tips and advice as how to
effectively embrace this change."
J. John Simione, Senior Vice President, MARSH,
http://www.marsh.com
"As an Executive providing counseling to hundreds of
displaced employees annually, I am always looking for
new ways to provide job seekers with leading edge
tools to help make their searches more effective. This
book nails it! It is a user-friendly roadmap for
understanding the power of LinkedIn and helps move
readers successfully along the path of their choosing. I
highly recommend this to both clients and businesses!"
David Bennington, Vice President-Consulting
Services, Right Management
"Amazing! In this timely and cutting-edge book, the
authors share their secrets to increasing your ROI on
your online networking efforts. They give an abundance
of tips and strategies to develop relationships using
LinkedIn. Learn how to automate and leverage
relationships through Social Fusion. I strongly
recommend this book to anyone that wants to increase
their sales results. If you want to build visibility and
develop profitable relationships, read this book!"
Rick S. Cooper, MBA, The Sales Results Expert,
http://www.rickscooper.com
vii
"LinkedIn has quickly emerged as a powerful
networking tool, and "42 Rules" is a terrific actionable
guide to help the savvy professional leverage LinkedIn
effectively. The Rules provide a strategic framework
that enables the user to quickly build their LinkedIn
network, and more importantly, use that network to
drive their LinkedIn "brand" to deliver results,
opportunities, and action."
Alex Sevilla, Assistant Dean & Director of MBA
Programs; The University of Florida
viii
Publisher
Mitchell Levy
http://superstarpress.com/
Executive Editor
Laura Lowell
http://42rules.com/
Cover Designer
Cate Calson
http://calsongraphics.com/
Layout
Teclarity
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42 Rules for 24-Hour Success on LinkedIn ix
C o n t e n t s
Intro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Section I Setting Up Your Foundation . . . . 4
Rule 1 Rules are Meant to be Broken . . . . . . . 6
Rule 2 Answer the Most Important
Questions First . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Rule 3 Get LinkedIn or Get Left Out? . . . . . . 14
Rule 4 Consider the ROI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Rule 5 Optimize Your Activities. . . . . . . . . . . 22
Rule 6 Overcome the Overwhelm . . . . . . . . . 26
Section II What LinkedIn Offers . . . . . . . . . 30
Rule 7 Success Starts With a Clear
Understanding of Your Goal . . . . . . . 32
Rule 8 Communicate Constantly Without
Being Annoying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
x Contents
Rule 9 It's Never Too Early to Build
Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Rule 10 Focus on Career Development . . . . . 44
Rule 11 Be Smart When Applying for
Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Rule 12 It's More Than a Job Posting . . . . . . . 52
Rule 13 Precision is the Key to Business
Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Rule 14 Find and Be Found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Rule 15 Think Outside the Box . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Section III The LinkedIn Profile . . . . . . . . . . 68
Rule 16 Understand Your LinkedIn Profile. . . 70
Rule 17 Give Yourself a Fast, Powerful
Makeover! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Rule 18 You Are Your Brand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Rule 19 Promote Your Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Rule 20 Personalize Your Profile. . . . . . . . . . . 88
Section IV Building Your Network . . . . . . . . 92
42 Rules for 24-Hour Success on LinkedIn xi
Rule 21 Lay the Foundation for Your
Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Rule 22 Use Invitations to Connect. . . . . . . . . 98
Rule 23 Understand Invitation Etiquette. . . . 102
Rule 24 Add People to Your Network . . . . . . 106
Rule 25 Don't Abuse Introductions and
InMails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Rule 26 Manage Your Connections. . . . . . . . 114
Section V Recommendations and
Answers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Rule 27 Manage Your Recommendations . . 120
Rule 28 Make Recommendations . . . . . . . . . 124
Rule 29 Ask a Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Rule 30 Answer a Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Section VI Learning the "How-To" for
Other LinkedIn Functions. . . . . 136
Rule 31 Manage Your Account . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Rule 32 Get Serious About Search . . . . . . . . 142
xii Contents
Rule 33 Think About Upgrading . . . . . . . . . . 146
Rule 34 Manage Your Settings . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Rule 35 Create Your Own LinkedIn
Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Rule 36 Companies Can Play Too. . . . . . . . . 160
Rule 37 Share, Share, Share . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Rule 38 Connect with Your Existing
Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Section VII LinkedInThe Expanded
Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Rule 39 Separate Professional from
Personal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Rule 40 It Changes the Way We Do
Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Rule 41 Beware of Addictive Behavior . . . . . 182
Rule 42 These Are Our Rules,
What Are Yours?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Appendix A Fast FactsInteresting Tidbits
about LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
42 Rules for 24-Hour Success on LinkedIn xiii
Appendix B The Crystal Ball What Might
LinkedIn do in the Future?. . . . . . . . 192
Appendix C 42 Things You Can Do with
LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Appendix D 42 Rules In ActionProducts &
Services to Help You . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Author About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Your Rules Write Your Own Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Books Other Happy About Books . . . . . . . . . 212
xiv Contents
42 Rules for 24-Hour Success on LinkedIn 1
I n t r o
We all continue to hear the same
phrases over and over againI'm too
overwhelmed, I'm too busy, I can't put
my full attention to that, etc. To be
honest, if you ask my family, I am right
in there with the "time challenged"
too. It seemed that increasing
business success and finding more
time went hand in hand or so I
thought. One day, when I met my
buddy Pete at a coffee shop, he talked
about a certain type of success and
described it in rather simple terms. He
described a little kid, sitting on a dock
with his fishing rod in the water. The
kid fishes for some time, but nothing
happens. So at some point, he gets
bored, decides to lay back and takes
a nap while leaving his baited hook in
the water. When he wakes up, he
excitedly finds that he hooked a fish
while he was sleeping. The reason
why he was successful without having
to be actively engaged was pretty
straightforward. He prepared himself
2 Intro
for success by doing the simple thingsbaiting the
hook and putting the hook in the water.
I think that is a great metaphor for this book and
social networking. This book is not about achieving
success in 24 hours, rather it is about doing the
simple things that set you up for the opportunity to
achieve success 24 hours a day. social networking
occurs globally, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I
know that I have arisen on multiple occasions to
find that people I used to work with from outside
the USA had found my profile and were interested
in reconnecting with me. Now that is what LinkedIn
is about; a place to find people and a place to be
found. It's all about leveraging a communication
tool and it is up to you to determine how you will
use this communication platform to create your
success. This might range from the simple
connecting with people you've lost contact with, to
finding a new job, to finding new talented
individuals to add to your business, to creating a
new revenue channel.
Given the tough economic times and the hype of
social media, social networking and of course,
LinkedIn, there is a certain curiosity about this
business potential that seems to be only lightly
addressed. Since LinkedIn or any social network is
a 24-Hour tool, to most effectively position yourself
to achieve your success any time of the day or
night, you need to be like the little kid who took a
nap while fishing. You need to "bait your hook and
put it in the water" and, to help you, we offer you
42 Rules for 24-Hour Success on LinkedIn 3
our 42 rules. As there are a variety of users with a
variety of ideas for their success, some of the rules
we offer may apply to you while others may not.
These are by no means the only rules, so feel free
to share them, discuss them, refine them and
create new ones. Most importantly, please keep in
mind the most basic rule-simple preparation, just
like our little fisherman learned, enhances your
chances for 24-Hour success!
4 42 Rules for 24-Hour Success on LinkedIn
Section I
Setting Up Your
Foundation
GOAL: Create a clear understanding
for why you are using LinkedIn, social
networking and social media. Support
it with a thoughtful strategy and a com-
mitment of time.
Section I: Setting Up Your Foundation 5
R u l e
1
Rules are Meant to
be Broken
What makes
us different,
makes
LinkedIn
great!
Who is the typical LinkedIn user? If
you go by demographics, then it is
a 41-year-old who has a household
income of $109,000. However that
doesn't tell the whole story.
LinkedIn claims a membership that
is growing at a rate of 30 people per
minute, yet there really is not a
typical "user." If you look around,
you will find people who work solo
and use LinkedIn as the proverbial
office water coolera place to go to
interact, share stories and be part
of a community. This type of user
might be using LinkedIn for
personal and social development.
Then there are the people who
create their own income. This can
range from the one-person inde-
pendent consultant to the
Chapter 1: Rules are Meant to be Broken 7
managing partner of a consulting practice, from the
small business owner to the commissioned sales
professional. It includes everyone who generates
his or her own income streams. Yes, they
encounter a significant amount of risk, but they
also tend to lean to an entrepreneurial way of
thinking as they prospect for new, efficient and
effective ways to generate revenue streams. Their
interest generally lies in business development.
Shifting the risk profile, you also shift the perspec-
tive of the user to those who prefer the stability of
a steady income. This can include anyone from the
job seeker to the professional looking to manage a
career path. While these people may have entre-
preneurial inclinations, their income stream is not
dependent on generating new sales. Instead it is
dependent on their ability to manage, lead, work in
groups, build relationships and generally help their
employer in an effective manner. Any dollar they
add to the business, they generally don't see.
While they may understand that communication on
LinkedIn can drive additional revenue, it is not their
priority for participating on LinkedIn. Their priority
is to stay plugged into a professional network that
can help them leverage their career development.
What makes us different, makes LinkedIn great!
The one commonality is that all these users are
looking for some sort of development and benefit
from LinkedIn yet, clearly, benefiting from LinkedIn
means something different to almost every person.
As you read through this book, our rules take an
approach that does not try to be everything to
everyone. Instead, we follow a natural strategic
development process where concepts build upon
themselves. Not all the rules are going to apply to
each type of user and, even for those that do, there
may be a variety of ways to achieve similar results.
So while we don't advocate going against the net-
iquette and norms established throughout social
media, we do expect that you will use the rules as
a flexible guide and bend or even break them if you
see more effective ways to achieve a particular
goal.
To further increase the effectiveness of this book
for you, we have created a free downloadable
workbook that you can find at
http://www.LinkToProsper.com/24hoursuccess.
This workbook is a stand-alone resource as well as
a companion for these 42 rules. You will find a wide
range of tips, questions, comments, etc. that will
help you support your 24-Hour success!
Chapter 1: Rules are Meant to be Broken 9
R u l e
2
Answer the Most
Important
Questions First
LinkedIn is a
communica-
tion tool. It is
a place to find
people and be
found.
Let's start with a question, Why are
you on LinkedIn?
On the surface, this seems to be a
simple question: only five words
and none were more than 10 letters
long. But it seems that whenever
we ask that question, we're asking
something on par with an existential
question like, "What is the meaning
of life?" because the response we
get nine times out of ten is a con-
templative silence. So we try to
break the uneasy silence by asking
another question, "What was your
encouragement to register on
LinkedIn?" and with that usually a
big smile appears and they say,
"Oh, I received an invitation to sign
up." To which our reply is, "That's
great, what are your goals for being
Chapter 2: Answer the Most Important Questions First 11
registered on LinkedIn?" This time the responses
range from that contemplative silence to the ambi-
tious, "Gain more clients."
LinkedIn is a place for business professionals to
be "found" and "to find" people. It is a vehicle to
communicate. It is a tool to use with your business,
in your career management, your education, your
social endeavors and probably a whole lot more.
Yes, you can turn contacts into clients and yes, you
can turn prospects into customers but by itself,
LinkedIn is not a magic elixir.
In simple terms, LinkedIn is a conduit; it is a con-
nector. The people who receive the greatest
results understand this and use LinkedIn accord-
ingly. If you asked some of the people who have
achieved successes with LinkedIn how they would
define one formula for LinkedIn success, it would
be similar to the following:
So as we begin this book, we pose some questions
for you to think about.
Why are you on LinkedIn? Do you understand
how you can most effectively benefit from it?
What are you looking to achieve with
LinkedIn? Are your goals realistic? Have you
created a strategy and supported it with
realistic action items?
LinkedIn
+
Strategy/Action Plan
+
Initiation = LinkedIn Success
+
Allocated Time
+
Execution
Chapter 2: Answer the Most Important Questions First 13
How are you showing initiative? You are
reading these rules, so that indicates that you
have the drive and commitment to learn. What
else are you doing to enhance your ability to
achieve the goals you've established on
LinkedIn? For instance, if you are on it to
network, are you networking? What have you
been doing to build relationships?
How much time are you fitting into your
schedule to properly participate and execute
on your strategy? Unfortunately, this is not the
field of dreams (i.e. build it and they will
come). Without allocating time in your busy
schedule to work your action plan, you may
end up more like a billboard in a jungle, bright
and shiny but not seen by many people.
To reiterate, success on LinkedIn is not like
rubbing the magic lantern and having the genie im-
mediately appear. 24-Hour success should not
imply immediate gratification. What 24-Hour
success implies is literally setting yourself up for
success by doing all the "right" things that will
eventually help you succeed. In the wired world we
live in, success can occur during the middle of the
business day, when you are sitting in front of your
computer or while you are sleeping in bed.
R u l e
3
Get LinkedIn or Get
Left Out?
Success is
not based on
what you
know, but
rather, who
you know.
The old clich is that success is not
based on what you know, but
rather, who you know. Understand-
ing your online identity is critical to
creating success, and LinkedIn is
currently one of the more powerful
tools that can help you. The
challenge is how to learn the most
effective ways to use LinkedIn
without wasting time navigating the
help functions, the online forums or
Googling the gurus.
In typical day-to-day, face-to-face
networking, when people are asked
about their usage of LinkedIn, it
seems that most people share the
same experience. They sign up for
LinkedIn, gather some contacts,
and search out people they may
know from schools, prior employ-
Chapter 3: Get LinkedIn or Get Left Out? 15
ers, or from professional associations. Once
they've tapped that out, they are lost as to what to
do next or how to realize any benefit from being on
LinkedIn.
As successful professionals, your time is valuable
and what you choose to focus on must provide you
with an effective result. Therefore, as you begin
reading this book, let's start off with some quick
and immediate tips to help you dramatically
improve your understanding of the LinkedIn expe-
rience and build your base of useful contacts.
Focus on Relationship Building
The cornerstone for your success starts with
ensuring your understanding of what successful
networking really means. It is not the sleazy
concept of dropping off a business card and then
racing to someone else to repeat the process over
and over again. That type of person merely wants
you to hear about them. They could care less
about spending time to get to know you. Pretty
shallow, right? Why would you do business with
someone who doesn't care about you? If that is
your idea of networking, don't even bother with
LinkedIn.
Networking is about building relationships and
getting to know the other person and how you
might be able to contribute to their success. Suc-
cessful networkers build their own credibility
through their actions, which in turn builds a comfort
level with the other party. This increased level of
comfort leads to a stronger relationship. So, would
you rather have business dealings with someone
who is shallow or someone you've developed a re-
lationship with? Relationship building should be
the focus of your perspective and participation in
LinkedIn.
Commit Time Weekly to Participate
This sounds like the most basic concept, but it is
very important to adhere to it. Unfortunately many
people join and collect contacts but invest no time
or energy networking, so they gain nothing from
the site. This is a clear example of reaping what
you have sowed. Remember LinkedIn is just a tool
to connect and open doors, but it still takes work on
your part. Set aside at least an hour or so each
week to invest in building your network.
Seek and Give Recommendations
One of the hardest things some people find is to
adequately "brag" about their accomplishments.
Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, you
have probably compiled an impressive list of
career successes. Having someone else
"promote" your accomplishments is a very
Chapter 3: Get LinkedIn or Get Left Out? 17
powerful tool. It builds your reputation and
strengthens relationships as well as increases the
value of your network to everyone connected to it.
LinkedIn offers Recommendations, which is a
function that allows someone else to describe you
and promote you to the world. Request recommen-
dations from people who know you well and will
best describe your strengths, achievements, etc.
On the flip side, make sure you spread the recog-
nition of people you know and recommend them.
Remember, relationship building is a two-way
street.
R u l e
4
Consider the ROI
Measuring
your ROI from
social
networking is
difficult. The
most effective
way to
measure ROI
is to measure
the tangibles.
As these rules begin to increase
your "knowledge portfolio," let's
take a quick look at how you might
consider measuring Return on In-
vestment (ROI) for your online net-
working efforts. LinkedIn, of course,
is the main professional social net-
working site but by no means the
only one on the internet.
ROI is a common measurement
that evaluates the amount of
"benefit" derived from an invest-
ment. For instance, assume your
social networking investment
consists of spending five
hours/week on LinkedIn. Now, let's
assume your time is worth
$200/hour. Across a year, your in-
vestment is roughly $50,000! So
is it worth your time?
Chapter 4: Consider the ROI 19
Well this is where it gets gray. The problem is
that when it comes to measuring the ROI, returns
are not direct and immediate. Thus the big
question is how do you properly measure a
return from your activities?
Let's try to attack it from a financial analyst's stand-
point. They are interested in annualized results (i.e.
results that occur across a 12-month period). For
example, assume in an average week, you connect
with ten new people in addition to following up with
20 existing contacts. Thus, by the end of the year,
you can directly attribute say, $30,000 of sales to
your networking. Mathematically, for all your effort,
your return looks like this
(($30,000$50,000)/$50,000) = -40%. Clearly a
negative return of 40% is an outright failure, right?
As Lee Corso (from ESPN's College Gameday)
likes to say, "Not so fast, my friend." Why? Let's
take a closer look.
First, while you have directly connected and
followed up with people, you have undoubtedly
also connected with an untold amount of people in-
directly (friends of your connections, people who
saw your communications, but didn't communicate
directly with you, etc.). There is no way to calculate
what benefits these returned. At the very least, one
non-tangible benefit is establishing brand
awareness for yourself. A more tangible but
un-measurable benefit is that these "passive con-
nections" more than likely contributed to your sales
as well. Either way, this benefit is missing & can't
be calculated but it is still a benefit.
Second, the time it takes to build customer rela-
tionships varies. For some the time is immediate,
while others need to work through their "marketing
funnel," which may take a year or longer. Thus all
those "long-termers" who take more than 12
months to show results (based on the calculation
parameters above) are not captured either but
they too provide benefits.
The point is clear, or in this case, sort of a foggy
gray, that measuring your ROI from social network-
ing is difficult. So, short of giving away a free car to
everyone to encourage a direct response, is there
anything one can look at to determine if they are
getting the "Bang for their social networking
buck?"
Perhaps the most effective way to measure an ROI
most tangibly is to measure the following:
Web Traffic Measure it & look for web traffic
growth.
New Links Focus on the number of new links
your website/blog, etc. receives. Depending
on the quality of these links, you should see
your search engine ranking improve modestly.
Chapter 4: Consider the ROI 21
Growth in your Opt-in Lists Two things here
look at "total" growth as well as observe the
growth trend from month to month. Expect in-
creasing amounts of opt-ins, the longer you
continue using effective tactics.
Credibility Components Expect an increase
in the number of "authoritative elements" in
your "profile"on LinkedIn, this could include:
recommendations, questions answered, best
answer, etc.
Occam's Razor states "all other things being
equal, the simplest solution is the best." However
in this case, that doesn't fit. The simplest solution
to measuring the ROI in social networking may be
misleading. The astute social networker will
include the above elements to provide the most
effective measurement from the benefits of your
social networking endeavors.
R u l e
5
Optimize Your
Activities
Social media
will change
your
business;
catch up or
catch you
later.
Business Week had a great
headline with a recent article,
"Social Media Will Change Your
Business, Catch Up or Catch you
Later." It's a great headline in that it
is both catchy and true! We know
some of the more famous elements
of social mediaLinkedIn,
Facebook, YouTube, Digg, Techno-
rati, and of course, there are
literally hundreds more.
Let's narrow our focus for this rule
to LinkedIn. In Rule 4, we looked at
Return on Investment from your
social networking activities, and
here we look at optimizing your ac-
tivities. With millions of users and
growing daily, LinkedIn offers a
variety of opportunities to quickly
connect with a vast audience to
Chapter 5: Optimize Your Activities 23
enhance the potential for your career and business
success. So how does one go about being "opti-
mized?"
Simply put, social media optimization is doing what
you need to be doing everyday with your interac-
tions within your social marketing spheres. Simple
concept...but it demands a lot of time and a lot of
effort. To help, we will highlight four things you
need to know to optimize and grow!
People base their buying decisions on
experiences other people have had
Social marketing sites have become the new main-
stream media of the marketing age. Your presence
allows you to interact with your customers and help
enhance their experiences with you. Keep in mind
that more and more searches are being refined to
be searches based on experiences. Since your
customers are going to talk about their experienc-
es, make sure you provide them with something
positive to talk about.
Social media offers effective low-cost ways
to market your business
Social media helps you start the conversation with
people who may be looking at you. You can get
your message out to millions of people at a time at
a very low cost or even for free. For instance, you
can post a video on YouTube and provide a link to
it on LinkedIn or link your blog to your LinkedIn
profile or answer consumer questions through
LinkedIn Answers or the list is limited only by
your creativity.
Grow your audience using the "CAP"
Approach
With millions of users on LinkedIn, how can you
begin to transition from being a "billboard in a
jungle" to being "a LinkedIn magnet?" One way
would be to follow the CAP approach.
C = Content People want new, they want unique,
they want original, but what they don't want is
boring. However LinkedIn provides a fairly boring
standardized format, so it is up to you to use it cre-
atively. Here are a couple of ideas: describe
yourself in a manner that is clear, descriptive and
interesting, use video links in your profile, and par-
ticipate in group forums. Be as original as you can
be.
A = Awareness Make yourself known to search
engines, RSS aggregators, listings, social
networks, and fellow bloggers. Publish your URL
appropriately when you post. The more times you
articulate your message to more people, the more
likely you are to find people who are interested in
what you have to say.
Chapter 5: Optimize Your Activities 25
P = Participate with Passion Participate
properly. If you don't, you can expect to become
exactly like the "movie of the week," hot for a short
time and then totally forgotten.
Leverage External Resources
Optimization can be very time consuming. The
most common tasks are the most time consuming.
Look for ways to outsource this.
If you need a recommendation for a Virtual
Assistant (VA), try http://www.peggymurrah.com.
They've offered VA services since 1999, which is
ancient in internet years, and have been providing
quality services ever since.
R u l e
6
Overcome the
Overwhelm
Many people
are struggling
to understand
where to
begin and just
as many are
simply trying
to find out
how to
properly
participate.
By now, based on the hype, we are
all somewhat aware of the potential
that Web 2.0/Social Networks can
offer you. However, after speaking
to various groups of people, two
things are becoming very apparent;
many people are struggling to un-
derstand where to begin and just as
many are simply trying to find out
how to properly participate. In this
rule, we will offer you "quick-start"
guidance to help minimize your
feeling of being overwhelmed, and
guide you through the "participation
puzzle."
social networking opens up a whole
new level of contact with your pros-
pects, your customers, your
business partners and your em-
ployees. The elegance of social
Chapter 6: Overcome the Overwhelm 27
networking is the way it enables constant yet
non-intrusive communication regarding literally
anything your business needs to communicate
about. So the benefits are clear, yet many of us are
struggling to come to terms with the following:
ISSUE - Not Sure How to Participate / Afraid of
Being Blackballed There are many nuances to
participating on various social networking sites,
and they too seem to change daily. Most of these
sites are communities where people have invested
long hours into participating. You may even say,
they've invested part of their lives into these sites.
Given these investments, they don't take it lightly if
someone jumps in and doesn't properly partici-
pate.
QUICK START GUIDANCE Netiquette is
important here. We advocate taking some time to
get the lay of the land. Read through the FAQs,
check out the "power users" and use the search
engine to read up on what others say about the
site.
ISSUE - Trying to Figure Out How to Get
Positive Attention Getting attention is probably
the most important thing you can do in this Web 2.0
world and also the most competitive. Not only are
you competing for attention from the social media
world, but you are competing with the offline world
as well. We've already estimated that there are
hundreds, if not thousands, of sites out there with
thousands of users on each site. In addition to that,
there are 225 billion pages of editorial content
pumped out every year. Given this, how valuable is
attention? Think of Paris Hilton. What exactly does
she do? One thing is for certain and that isshe
gets attention. According to Forbes, last year she
made a cool $6.3 million, received 3,600,000 web
hits and was mentioned in almost 18,000 press
clippings. Clearly attention is valuable.
QUICK START GUIDANCE We advocate
following the CAP principle (see Rule 5)
ISSUE - You Don't Have the Time to Devote to
This It goes without saying that in today's
fast-paced information age, everyone is multitask-
ing and there is little time available for anything
new. Need we say more on this topic? Can you
identify with the phrase "I'm in overwhelmhave
to get out of it fast?"
QUICK START GUIDANCE So is this a deal
breaker?
Actually Noyou can make time if you step back
and think about this logically. Remember your first
step? You were being strategic as to which sites
you participated in. Some sites are more time-in-
tensive than others. However, if you laid out your
goals for these sites and supported them with
realistic action plans, then all you need to do is
"measure" your execution and continually tweak it
to be more effective. Thus what you might be
looking at is spending 15 minutes a day on
Chapter 6: Overcome the Overwhelm 29
LinkedIn, or five minutes a day on Twitter or an
hour a week launching videos on YouTube. The
point is if you understand what you are focusing on
building, you can maximize your results without
sacrificing more time.
Section II
What LinkedIn
Offers
GOAL: Generate a high level perspec-
tive of ways that LinkedIn can offer op-
portunities for success for Businesses,
Job Seekers, and those seeking Can-
didates.
Section II: What LinkedIn Offers 31
R u l e
7
Success Starts With
a Clear
Understanding of
Your Goal
The definition
of "user
success" will
vary from
user to user.
LinkedIn is a powerful tool because
of its incredible opportunity to
network with other people and pro-
fessionals. As was noted in Rule 1,
there is no "typical user" per se,
instead there is a variety of users
from all over the globe across a
variety of industries who all plug
into LinkedIn. As the diversity is
broad across LinkedIn, so is the
definition of "user success," which
will vary from user to user.
Success through Gaining
Knowledge
Many people receive benefits from
LinkedIn Answers, which is a
database of questions that users
can read and respond to. It's a lot
Chapter 7: Success Starts With a Clear Understanding of Your Goal 33
like tapping into one's own informal board of
advisors. It's a free place to go to get answers to
questions that previously may not have been
addressed due to a lack of knowledgeable re-
sources. It's also a place that can help stimulate
ideas. A friend recently told us of excellent advice
he received in response to a question he posed.
He was interested in using viral marketing to
increase revenues and was looking forward to
applying the advice he received in his pursuit of
business success.
Success through Enhancing Credibility
Conversely, by answering questions, users have
opportunities to provide advice that highlights their
expertise. Since it is easy to see the profiles of the
person giving the answers, providing answers is
also a great way to promote a user's profile. To be
fair, it isn't the end all, be all. To achieve success,
you need to consistently work on providing
answers that enable you to showcase your talents,
which in turn enables you to promote yourself.
Success is Finding a Job, a Candidate or
Strengthening Career Management
At a recent lunch, an acquaintance shared his
success in landing a new position and told us, "I
had no idea the opportunity was available. I
received a call out of the blue after a recruiter saw
my profile which was identified by a mutual
contact." For many, the most tangible use of
LinkedIn is for their careers. Some people find
jobs, others have jobs that find them; employers
have a low-cost way of identifying talent and, of
course, those interested in career management
have a very effective tool in which to do so. It goes
without saying how simple it is for recruiters to
conduct more effective job searches across
LinkedIn and for many, having an extra channel
that passively enables them to learn about new
career opportunities is exactly what they are
looking for.
Success is Meeting and Reconnecting with
People
LinkedIn is a social network. Thus by definition,
users should expect to interact socially. For many
LinkedIn users, this is all they want to do. Prior to
the advent of the online social networks, keeping in
touch with people from one's past was very
time-consuming. In many cases, it was difficult or
impossible to reconnect. Thus, losing contact with
former colleagues, friends and classmates was
something that was an unfortunate byproduct of a
person's growth. However, social networks have
begun to eliminate the difficulty in reconnecting
Chapter 7: Success Starts With a Clear Understanding of Your Goal 35
with these people and, as millions are finding out,
it is very exciting to reconnect and catch up with
people from your past.
R u l e
8
Communicate
Constantly Without
Being Annoying
LinkedIn isn't
just your
ordinary
communica-
tion tool. Its
elegance is in
its passive
communica-
tion capabili-
ty.
If you were to stop and try to
visualize what effective communi-
cation means, you might envision
two people completely engaged in
a conversation. Since it isn't always
possible to meet and communicate
with people face to face, certain
business tools are used as commu-
nication surrogates. These include
cell phones, faxes, emails, texts
and nowLinkedIn.
As you move across the communi-
cation spectrum, you see that the
need for two active participants to
create effective communication
decreases tremendously. For
instance, for a phone call to be
most effective, you need two
people talking. However, this is a
time consuming task. Often one
Chapter 8: Communicate Constantly Without Being Annoying 37
party is not available or simply doesn't want to
address a particular issue at that moment, so they
don't take the call. Conversely, LinkedIn isn't just
your ordinary communication tool. Its elegance is
in its passive communication capability. Yes, there
are still two participants, but the "writer" doesn't
have to actively engage anyone to effectively com-
municate with any and all interested readers. So,
how can constant communication help?
More professionals will be aware of your identity
and the business that you have. LinkedIn is more
than just another social networking site. It has
millions of members worldwide and they are all
professionals! When you add connections with
people in the same business niche as you, you are
providing those professionals with information
about yourself and what you have to offer. By com-
pletely filling out your profile, interested readers
get a bird's eye view of who you are and what you
can do.
LinkedIn helps you get in touch with professionals
who might need your services. When people start
knowing you and your services and they start
talking about you and your products, then you will
see the power of word-of-mouth marketing on the
internet. As long as you remain professional in
your conduct and relationship with people, they
begin to effectively promote your services.
One of the beautiful things about LinkedIn is the
ability to note "what you are working on." If you
take a look at various profiles, most people just
ignore this function. Through our limited research
(of simply asking people why they do), it would
appear they avoid it because they:
don't understand the value of it
don't know how to properly use it
don't really feel they have anything important
to add
really don't spend any time adjusting their
profile at all
Let's spend another 30 seconds and get a better
understanding of how this function could benefit
you. Whenever you update "what are you working
on," that update is passively broadcast to
everyone in your network. Thus it shows up on ev-
eryone's LinkedIn home page without having to
send them an email, make a phone call or
otherwise disturb them. Since you want this
function to remain a credible one for you, don't
abuse it. If you note every time you go to the store
to get a gallon of milk, your brand will suffer. There-
fore, update it for only for events of significance
that add to your brand. For instance, let people
Chapter 8: Communicate Constantly Without Being Annoying 39
know about a new blog you set up or a new
business deal you've landed or one you are
pursuing. Who knows, perhaps someone in your
network can help you in pursuit of that deal.
R u l e
9
It's Never Too Early
to Build
Relationships
Social media
is about new
ways of com-
munication,
and commu-
nication is the
foundation for
relationship
building.
Harvey MacKay nailed it with the
title of his book on networking, "Dig
Your Well Before You are Thirsty."
Given the uncertain economic
times, do you know for sure if your
job is going to be there in 6 or 12
months? Since social media is
about new ways of communication,
and communication is the founda-
tion for relationship building, do you
know where to begin to properly
launch a relationship-building
campaign that could lead to your
next position?
Most job searches today begin with
a search of the online job boards.
Statistically speaking though, less
than 10% of people searching for
jobs that way actually land them.
Job searchers need to be trying
Chapter 9: It's Never Too Early to Build Relationships 41
other avenues as well. Some of the traditional
ones include: networking, looking through help
wanted ads, working with professional outplace-
ment firms, like DBM or Right Management, and
working with headhuntersto name a few. Now
it's time to add LinkedIn and social networking to
that list!
Once you have identified companies that you want
to target, LinkedIn can quickly help you determine
if you have any warm contacts into those compa-
nies. Here is a suggested list of tactics to follow:
Using the list of companies that you've gener-
ated, search them on LinkedIn (all 500 of the
Fortune 500 are on LinkedIn) and see which
individuals show up in your search results.
Split these individuals into two categories by
looking through their profiles. Category #1
would consist of a list of people that are
currently working at a particular company and
Category #2 would be comprised of people
who previously worked there. Don't get too
crazy in terms of the size of your lists. Keep
them manageable and focused on key rela-
tionships, relative to your expertise.
Sort these lists based on your Tier 1 or 2
contacts.
Next, research the profiles of your "best con-
tacts," looking for key phrases on the type of
work they do and jot notes down about their
specific job functions.
Now, armed with a little "intel," assuming you
have an effective LinkedIn network, try to
contact those whom you consider the most
relevant people to your search within those
companies. The key point here is: the warmer
the contact, the better.
If you don't have a large network on LinkedIn, here
are some additional tips you could follow.
Let's assume that you have identified a list of
people on LinkedIn who seemed to be relevant to
the type of position you're looking for. Now look for
ways to make contact with them in a non-intrusive
manner.
See if any of them are using the LinkedIn
Answers functioneither asking or answering
questions. Either way, try to provide an
answer to these questions. This may get their
attention.
Chapter 9: It's Never Too Early to Build Relationships 43
If not, read through their profiles and take
another routesee who has recommended
them and determine if there was any way for
you to connect with the person doing the rec-
ommending via LinkedIn Answers or other-
wise. If so, that could provide you a solid
entre to your "cold contact."
Finally, see if your cold contacts participate in
any of the LinkedIn Groups. If they do, try to
join those groups and try to establish contact
that way.
If you would like to connect with us, please follow
the links to our profiles
http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/ChrisMuccio
http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/PeggyMurrah
http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/DavidCBurns
Send us an invite noting that you've read the book
and we'd be very happy to accept your invitation.
R u l e
10
Focus on Career
Development
LinkedIn
connects
people and
gives them a
chance to get
together for
professional
and
work-related
reasons.
LinkedIn is more than just another
social networking site on the
internet. It can actually help you in
your career development. With
millions of professionals out there
whom you can connect with, you
can make your career grow with the
help of LinkedIn and other profes-
sionals.
Your LinkedIn profile may be
considered as your online
resume
As a professional, your educational
background, your organizational
and company affiliations and other
important professional information
may be displayed in your LinkedIn
Chapter 10: Focus on Career Development 45
profile. This way, other professionals and
employers can easily learn about you and what
you have to offer.
Optimize your keywords
You can increase your visibility by adding
keywords that are related to your profession and to
what you do best as a professional. If employers,
and people who are looking for a resource person
related to your field, search by those keywords,
you get a better chance of being the first person on
the list.
Connect and grow your network
From your email address book, you can easily add
friends to your LinkedIn network. You can also
search friends who were employed by the same
company you are connected with right now. There
are a myriad strategies you will come across in
some of the other rules. To maximize the effective-
ness of your network, aim for at least 50 people in
your first-degree connection.
Use LinkedIn Answers to the max.
Just like Yahoo Answers!, LinkedIn has LinkedIn
Answers that allows people to post questions to
the network. If you have any concern in your
career development or in the way you do your
work, you can just use this feature and solicit
answers from all sorts of professionals in your
network. You can also answer the questions
posted by other people in the network so that
people can notice what you know and what you
have to offer.
Your action plan
Now it's your turn. Here are five things you can do
to enhance your Job Search Process on LinkedIn.
Job Search Jargon use the search function
to find people with similar skills to you and
learn what jargon they used in their summary
or in their professional description to be found
on a search. Then incorporate that jargon into
your profile.
Interview Enhancement learn about the
people you will be interviewing with. For
instance, let's say your research reveals you
both went to the same college. Wouldn't infor-
mation like this offer a great bonding opportu-
nity?
Chapter 10: Focus on Career Development 47
Reverse Reference Checks prospective
employers check on you. Now with LinkedIn,
you can check on them and perhaps get the
inside scoop from people who worked at a
company.
Stronger Employee Reference Checks to
supplement the glowing references prospec-
tive employees offer, you can find others who
worked with them previously and get a
balanced perspective.
Company "Health" Assessment do an as-
sessment on the comings & goings of people
at the company you are looking at. Check if
there appears to be high turnover, strong
prospects for career advancement, etc.
With its millions of users worldwide, LinkedIn is
one of the best features of Web 2.0. It connects
people and gives them a chance to get together for
professional and work-related reasons.
R u l e
11
Be Smart When
Applying for Jobs
You have
access to
tons of
information
via LinkedIn
that can help
you position
yourself and
stand out
from the
crowd.
LinkedIn makes it easy to be really
smart about the jobs you apply for.
You have access to tons of informa-
tion via LinkedIn that can help you
position yourself and stand out from
the crowd. To search for a job, go to
the LinkedIn main menu located in
the upper left corner of the screen.
Click on the Jobs link. Next, enter
keywords that describe the
position, like Accountant or Project
Manager or Human Resources
Specialist. You can further refine
your search by selecting Country or
Zip code. Then click the blue
Search link.
If you want to specify even more
detail when conducting a job
search, click the Advanced Search
link located directly below the
Chapter 11: Be Smart When Applying for Jobs 49
keywords box. On this page, you can specify the
title, company, function and industry. You can also
specify location, experience level, the time of
posting and, optionally, enable a search by date of
posting.
Once you click Search, you'll be supplied with a list
of positions that meet your specified criteria. You'll
see title, company, location, posting date and the
name of the individual who created the posting.
Select a job by clicking on the title. A page will
open up that includes all the job detail. On the right
side of the page, you'll see a box that says Posted
By. At the bottom of the box, you'll see a link to
Apply Now. Click the button and you'll be on your
way.
Need a Job Referral
First, go to the page for a specific job you're inter-
ested in. On the right side, about half way down the
page, you'll see a section called Inside Connec-
tions to the Company. Next, click on the name of
the person who you want a referral from. Then go
to the upper right corner of the screen and select
Get Introduced through a Connection.
Alternatively, you can click on the job poster's
name to apply directly to the jobif it's set up that
way. Otherwise, you'll see a box located on the
right, labelled Posted By. Below that you'll see the
link Request Referral. Click on the link and you'll
be on your way to finding someone in your own
network through whom you can get a job referral.
Want an Inside Connection?
An Inside Connection is a connection to someone
in your network of connections. When you're on
the page for a particular job posting, you'll notice,
on the right, a section that says Inside Connections
to the Company. Click on one of the selections and
you'll be taken to a list of people who are
connected with that company or to people at that
company in some fashion. You can use a LinkedIn
Introduction to contact those individuals who may
be two or three degrees from you.
To increase the chances you'll have an Inside Con-
nection, invite more people to join your LinkedIn
network. The more connections you have, the
more likely they'll be connected to the individual
who posted the job. More is better!
Confidentiality
Not to worryno one has access to your resume
except the job poster to whom you've actually
emailed your resume.
Chapter 11: Be Smart When Applying for Jobs 51
R u l e
12
It's More Than a Job
Posting
When you
post a job on
LinkedIn, you
get a lot richer
perspective
on the
candidate. It's
almost like
"reality TV"
for the hiring
process.
When you're looking for a great
candidate to add to your team, it's a
good idea to tap into a variety of
resources to find the best possible
person. LinkedIn is a great
resource for HR professionals and
other recruiters who are looking to
hire. When you post a job on
LinkedIn, you get a lot richer per-
spective on the candidate. It's
almost like "reality TV" for the hiring
process as you can observe what
candidates broadcast about them-
selves,things like their profiles,
their Answers, and their initiatives.
There is a fee for posting jobs.
However, it is less expensive as
compared with other online
services. Since LinkedIn positions
itself as a social networking site for
Chapter 12: It's More Than a Job Posting 53
business professionals, you might be able to find a
better fit more quickly than you would by posting a
similar position to a more generic job site.
It costs $195.00 to post a single job for 30 days.
Every job you post will automatically expire after
that time. You can renew your posting at any time
for the same cost as the original posting, with each
renewal providing you with an additional 30 days of
online visibility.
You also have the option of purchasing "Job
Credits" which allow you substantial savings if you
buy a 5- or 10-package bundle of job posts. If you
purchase five Job Credits, then each job posting
costs you only $145.00. The 10 Job Credit
package averages only $115.00 per postinga
substantial savings.
If you want to post a job, you just need to follow a
few easy steps. First, go to the LinkedIn Menu
located at the upper left on any LinkedIn page.
Click on the "down arrow" located next to Jobs.
Select Post a Job.
Fill out the job details. At the bottom of the online
form, you can save a Draft so you can work on it
later, or you can click on Next so you can review
the details. Keep in mind that the job description is
limited to 25,000 characters. Also, don't worry if
you change any of the pre-populated inputs. This
basic information is being pulled from your own
LinkedIn profile. If you make any changes here on
this information form, rest assured that your
original profile will remain unchanged.
If everything is to your liking, click Post this Job to
submit it to the system. You'll receive a confirma-
tion that the job is posted and you're finished!
If you've posted a job on LinkedIn, anyone can
view it. If the job is closed or if it expired, then you
and any applicants will still be able to view it. If the
job is deleted, it will not be viewable at all.
It's easy for others to apply to your job posting.
They just need to click Apply to submit their
resume. You'll receive the application at the email
address you set up when you added the job
posting. When you receive the information from
the applicant, you'll be able to see their profile, all
the information that they sent to you, as well as
their relationship to you and your network.
Thanks to the wonders of technology, each time
someone applies for a job you've posted, you'll au-
tomatically receive an email with their application.
You can also check on your job applicants through
the LinkedIn system. Go to the navigation bar in
the upper left corner of any LinkedIn Page. Click
on the drop-down arrow located next to Jobs.
Select Manage Jobs and then you'll see the names
of the applicants.
Chapter 12: It's More Than a Job Posting 55
R u l e
13
Precision is the Key
to Business
Development
There are
many, many
thousands of
experienced
professionals
on LinkedIn
whom you
might not
normally have
access to,
who will
provide
advice and
career
guidance.
LinkedIn is a business tool just like
your cell phone or your PDA.
However, it is not a magic elixir. It
can function exceptionally well in a
variety of ways but it can't be every-
thing to everyone. Even with
millions of users, people are still
trying to figure out the most
effective ways to use it. One thing is
for sure; it functions best as a "pre-
cision-type" tool, (i.e. reach a
specific person, learn a specific bit
of info). If you are looking for
something to "carpet bomb" and
work as a mass market broadcast,
there are more effective tools than
LinkedIn.
LinkedIn can help connect profes-
sionals and business people via the
internet. In addition, any individual
Chapter 13: Precision is the Key to Business Development 57
or small business owner can tap into its "mentoring
potential" and create their own "informal personal
advisory board."
A tool like this should not be taken for granted and
ignored. There are many, many thousands of ex-
perienced professionals on LinkedIn who will
provide advice and career guidance that you might
not normally have access to. Utilize LinkedIn
Answers and ask the questions that can help you
and your career prosper. They are really helpful,
not only for the advice offered, but for the exposure
to other people's thoughts and concepts that you
might never have been exposed to otherwise. In
many instances, tapping into this wealth of
knowledge is invaluable.
The Yin to the Yang of the previous comment is to
participate regularly on LinkedIn Answers and
demonstrate your knowledge to the world. As
we've stated previously, relationship building is a
two-way street. Participating regularly in LinkedIn
Answers is a great way to establish relationships,
help or impress others and build up your contact
lists. Make an effort to find and answer at least two
questions per week.
social networking is about connecting others. One
of the biggest questions that comes up is, "How
can I use it for business development?" Here are a
few ways that LinkedIn can help you with business
development.
Prospect for Account Entry Points Look for
ways to generate warm introductions based on
your network. For companies you are looking to
prospect with, look for connections or contacts
within your network that can be connected to them.
Identify Key Decision Makers Generate a list of
key people within the target organization that you
would want to contact to discuss your value prop-
osition.
Minimize Cold Calling by Prospecting through
your Network Look at whom your primary
contacts are connected to. See if they have con-
nections that you would like to meet. Keep this re-
lationship oriented and don't abuse it.
Company Intelligence Read through the
profiles of leaders at companies you want to
prospect with. Learn about the key initiatives they
have achieved and possibly identify key selling
"points of pain."
Target Market Research Use LinkedIn to
research the background and career experience of
your customer. Helps you properly prepare for your
selling process.
By no means are these the only tips that you
should be aware of. Please feel free to share your
tips at:
http://www.LinkToProsper.com/Tips.
Chapter 13: Precision is the Key to Business Development 59
R u l e
14
Find and Be Found
People need
social
interaction.
LinkedIn
provides that
but more
importantly, it
opens the
door to
business
interaction.
With the proliferation of online
social networks, both online and
offline businesses have better
potential for growth and network-
ing. Due to that broad potential, the
social networks themselves are
making significant dollars.
LinkedIn, which notes that they are
profitable, hopes to generate $100
million in revenue in 2008 from a
mix of advertising and fees. By
comparison, MySpace, which is sig-
nificantly larger, has been
estimated to be grossing $800
million and Facebook about $300
million. So given all this "potential,"
we looked at ten possible ways to
tap into this "potential."
Chapter 14: Find and Be Found 61
Most online social networking sites tend to be
merely for friendship. LinkedIn is more than that.
Millions of registered users and businesses are
using LinkedIn. This includes all of the Fortune 500
as well as famous people like John McCain,
Barack Obama, T. Boone Pickens, Bill Gates and
many more. In addition, there are over 150 indus-
tries that are represented in LinkedIn.
Given this broad spectrum of users, we based our
list on the simple premise that LinkedIn is a place
to be "found" or "find people" and through that phi-
losophy, began to expand it out.
1. Find & Follow "Thought Leaders" focus on
your particular industry or keep it broad and
look for some well known "gurus."
2. Increase your Credibility use it like reality
TVhave people follow your significant busi-
ness moves through the "what are you work-
ing on now function."
3. Increase your Web Traffic use LinkedIn to
drive traffic to your blogs, websites, etc.
4. Be an Idea Generator use LinkedIn An-
swers to get ideas for articles and posts to
your own blog.
5. Informal Advisory Board use LinkedIn An-
swers to tap into a variety of experts to an-
swer your questions for free. It can be a great
means of exchanging experience and busi-
ness savvy.
6. Enhance your Brand it's about giving more
than you are getting.
7. Competitive Intelligence follow your com-
petition, determine the internal corporate
structure of a competitor, review the compa-
ny culturei.e. turnover rates, promotion,
and operational relationships, both internal &
external.
8. Industry Intelligence learn what others in
your market are focused on.
9. A Network of Support and Community small
businesses sometimes lack this, especially
with solopreneurs. With the coming of Linke-
dIn, small business owners can readily inter-
act with others who have similar experience
to their own. Who knows, business owners
just might find angel investors willing to fund
their ventures within the LinkedIn community!
Chapter 14: Find and Be Found 63
10. Locate Industry Experts Quickly the Linke-
dIn Advance Search page allows you to tap
into a rich list of experts on almost every top-
ic, industry or company. This is very impor-
tant when you are looking for a critical skill
set or much needed market research.
11. Bonus target key employees that you may
want to hire away from your competition.
People need social interaction. LinkedIn provides
that but, more important, it opens the door to
business interactions. We offer our short list of
ways to tap into the potential this offers. However,
our list is merely a drop in the bucket. Depending
on your use of LinkedIn, there are many more
ways that you can, and will, tap into. Remember
the only limit to one's vision, is one's vision.
R u l e
15
Think Outside the
Box
Great
business
people who
make
business
decisions
have the
knack for
making great
business
decisions in a
timely
manner.
Great business people who make
business decisions have the knack
for making great business
decisions in a timely manner.
Perhaps that is something they are
born with but, for sure, it is also
based on the business support
tools they have. LinkedIn should be
one of these support tools as they
have the capability of providing
relevant information rapidly that
can be used to assist in hiring, in-
creasing sales and enabling more
effective uses of business relation-
ships.
Here's a rapid fire look at the
potential LinkedIn offers business-
es: research prospective partners,
find industry experts, locate and get
background information on
Chapter 15: Think Outside the Box 65
potential employees, perform research on compet-
itors, contact media, close sales rapidly with much
less effort than traditional channels, etc., all of
which can greatly improve your business.
Hiring Top Talent great companies are built
around top-tiered people and top-tiered people
usually associate with other top-tiered people. So
how can those relationships be effectively lever-
aged?
Apply LinkedIn to leverage your employees'
networks to find even more high quality talent. The
most talented employees in any field are usually
not looking for work because they are already
employed. What better way to gain access to them
than through a referral from one of your trusted
employees?
More effective evaluation of Human Capital
the typical hiring process begins with the interview
and then proceeds to a background check.
Wouldn't it be more effective to vet all your appli-
cant's references before you have an interview?
Apply LinkedIn to view your applicants' profiles
and verify all their references before your first
meeting. Taking this to another level, think of the
due diligence that can be performed using this
process when considering the talent evaluation of
a target company prior to the actual acquisition of
that company. This alone could be worth millions.
Speaking engagements these can be very
powerful ways to reach your business partners,
prospects or customers. However not all invita-
tions to speak will result in getting your business in
front of the proper audience.
Apply LinkedIn to quickly check out the group to
find out if they are legitimate and would be
valuable for your company. Use a LinkedIn search
to determine if you have any common contacts
who you can contact to learn more about the
group. Based on this research, you can quickly
determine if it makes sense for you to commit.
These are but three specific applications of how
LinkedIn can help your business. When used stra-
tegically, LinkedIn gives you a much deeper reach
into your industry, the ability to access much
greater talent, which in the end gives you greater
knowledge that produces better results.
By having your team connected to LinkedIn, you
can use each other's network as well as connect
with your team. As we wrap up this rule, let's leave
you with one more example of applying LinkedIn to
a business scenario:
Suppose one of your sales people is calling on a
new account and, in searching this company, they
see that one of your connections knows the
President of this new account. They now have the
potential to leverage that connection chain to build
Chapter 15: Think Outside the Box 67
a relationship with the new customer. This could
result in a much quicker sales cycle and accelerate
your business.
Section III
The LinkedIn
Profile
GOAL: Determine the most effective
way to communicate your brand and
your value through the LinkedIn
profile.
Section III: The LinkedIn Profile 69
R u l e
16
Understand Your
LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn
claims that
users with
complete
profiles are 40
times more
likely to
receive
opportunities
on LinkedIn.
If you're looking for new business
opportunities or if you're looking to
grow your career, LinkedIn is the
place to be. LinkedIn offers you the
opportunity to connect with tens of
millions of professionals located
throughout the world, which can
help you to accomplish many of
your professional goals.
It's a great place to find a job, seek
a reference, hire a new employee,
find an expert to interview, or just to
network with others in your industry.
You can connect with friends, col-
leagues and classmates from high
school or college. With the
Question and Answer feature, you
can showcase your background
Chapter 16: Understand Your LinkedIn Profile 71
and expertise by answering the questions of others
from over 20 categories.
Completing Your Profile
LinkedIn claims that users with complete profiles
are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities on
LinkedIn. To help you develop out your Profile,
LinkedIn provides a completeness scale for you.
For instance, you may have noticed a little text
blurb that states "Your Profile is 85% Complete." If
you were ever wondering what attributes consti-
tute a complete profile, they are:
Entering your current position
Filling in two past positions
Providing your education history
Adding your profile summary
Uploading a profile photo
Adding your specialties (which is also a great
SEO tool)
Gathering at least three recommendations
Updating & Revising Your Profile
Whenever you make changes to your profile, you
need to select the edit link (which is either to the
right or left) for EACH of the major categories on
your profile (i.e. summary, education, etc.) and
then follow the directions.
You may be aware that when you make a substan-
tial change to your profile (for example by adding a
new current job or school or website, etc.), your
entire network receives an alert. You can control
whether your connections receive updates. This is
done by navigating to Profile Updates on the
Account & Settings page.
Other Elements of the Profile
The Featured Logo If a user has the "In" icon,
they have premium accounts. Users with this icon
showing may become Featured during searches if
they most closely match the search criteria.
Thus
Premium Account leads to "In" Icon
and
"In" displayed + most accurate search result =
Featured
Chapter 16: Understand Your LinkedIn Profile 73
Status If you are looking for a simple, yet non-in-
trusive way of communicating with your network,
the Status function is the perfect tool. This tool
allows you to share information regarding your
current focus. When you choose to use the "What
you are working on?" feature to enter a descrip-
tion, a status update is triggered and sent to your
connection's home pages.
Your Photograph A picture is worth a thousand
wordsor so they say. Adding your photograph to
LinkedIn allows you to create another connection
with anyone visiting your profile. A nice, profes-
sional headshot is the best choice, but any profes-
sional-looking photograph will do. When you add a
photo it shows a different level of commitment to
using the LinkedIn tool. Given the fact that we're
visually oriented, adding anything that enhances
your profile is a definite plus.
You have complete control over who sees your
photo on LinkedIn. In fact, you have access to
three levels of privacy. You can allow your direct
connections, your network, or everyone access to
your photo.
R u l e
17
Give Yourself a
Fast, Powerful
Makeover!
Updating your
professional
headline is
something
that offers an
incredible ROI
in terms of
benefit gained
vs. time
spent.
For most people, their LinkedIn ex-
perience begins with an invitation
from someone they know. It is
probably the curiosity factor that
gets them to initially register with
LinkedIn. We actually took a little
non-scientific survey and that was
what was overwhelmingly indicated
as the impetus for registering.
While curiosity is an impetus, it is
not one that is overwhelming. Thus
people tend to go through the
signup process as quickly as
possible, usually not completely
filling out their profile as no one
likes to spend unnecessary time
signing up on another one of these
ubiquitous websites. Unfortunately,
by racing through this, they also
tend to overlook one of the most
Chapter 17: Give Yourself a Fast, Powerful Makeover! 75
important elements to their LinkedIn success.
During the registration process, one of the very
first things someone needs to do is to create their
professional headline. It may be subtle, but it is im-
portant, yet most people quickly skip past it ad-
dressing it only with the bare minimal requirement.
Think about this. Do you realize that every time
your name appears on LinkedIn, your professional
headline also appears? Your name could come up
in a search or within someone's network or in the
Outlook toolbar, but the bottom line is that every-
where your name comes up, so does your profes-
sional headline.
Essentially, this headline functions as your
3-second brand statement or your 3-second
bumper sticker. Let's illustrate the power of this
with a little example which of these headlines is
more powerful?
John Doe 20 year expert facilitating
$100,000,000 in High Tech Mergers
or
Bob Doe Owner, Doe & Associates
Clearly, the first professional headline is more
functional and quickly enables you to understand
what John Doe does and where his key strength
lies.
Now let's look at a practical implication of the two
headlines above. Let's say you are doing a search
on High Tech Mergers. Assume both John Doe and
Bob Doe have the right keywords in their profile
and they alone show up in the search. When you
look at the search results, all you are able to see is
a name and the professional description. Think
about it, who are you going to be drawn to in a list
of names, John or Bob Doe? It is very likely you will
at least check out John because he tells you he is
an expert in High Tech Mergers while Bob doesn't
tell you anything of relevance.
We were speaking to a group of "C Level" business
people discussing the value of a LinkedIn profile.
To illustrate this point, we presented an individual's
profile piecemeal. First, we highlighted his 300+
connections. Next we showed his vanity link, which
made it easy to find his profile. Following this, we
showed his links directing traffic to his blog and
website. Then we asked, "Is this a maximized
profile?" Most heads nodded yes. So we finally
showed his professional description, which was
very vague and bland and asked if anyone in the
room knew what this individual did. Since it was so
nondescript, no one understood what this individu-
al's expertise was. Now we asked again, "Was this
a maximized profile?" This time, the answer was a
resounding NO. The moral of the story is "Activity
is not achievement." In this age of multitasking and
business at the speed of light, no matter how many
people you connect with, if people can't quickly
Chapter 17: Give Yourself a Fast, Powerful Makeover! 77
ascertain your business value, the odds of them
seeking to do business with you rapidly diminish-
es.
While we call it a 30-second makeover, whatever it
takes you to do, is absolutely worth the investment
of your time. Updating your professional headline
is something that offers an incredible ROI in terms
of benefit gained vs. time spent. Invest in yourself
and quickly show the world your expertise and
project your brand!
R u l e
18
You Are Your Brand
Each of us
projects our
brand
through
everything we
do, wear,
touch or
discuss.
There are millions and millions of
registered users on LinkedIn. Given
that sheer volume, how are you
going to get people to find you and
more importantly, when they do find
you, are you projecting the right
brand that will help your chances
for success?
Let's start by asking what is your
brand? Whether we acknowledge it
or not, each of us projects our
brand through everything we do,
wear, touch or discuss. Therefore
as many famous marketers have
said, "You are Your Brand." We've
compiled a list of things you can do
to enhance your brand and improve
your ability to get "found" on
LinkedIn.
Chapter 18: You Are Your Brand 79
Become a Thought Leader and find new
relevant content that relates to your brand.
Search on Google and Technorati for stories.
Do a weekly scan of YouTube and the
podcasts on iTunes to see if there are any new
ones relevant to your brand.
Convert your new, relevant information into a
thought provoking question on LinkedIn
Answers.
Conversely, use some of that information to
provide well thought through answers to
LinkedIn questions.
Consider using this "fresh content" to set up
your own blog and offer key insights into your
expertise.
With your blog, use an easy-to-remember,
content-appropriate domain name for your
brand.
Register your site with all the top search
engines.
Link your blog back to your LinkedIn profile.
Use a specific name, relevant to your brand to
name this link (i.e. Operations Guru.com vs.
My Blog).
Utilize the "what are you doing" function on
your LinkedIn Profile but note only relevant
things to your brand (not inconsequential
ones).
Along with your name, LinkedIn provides you
with a small area to describe yourself. This is
your "3-second pitch"it is displayed every
time your name comes up. Make sure you
communicate your brand in this 810 word
area. For instance, replace "Owner Video
Corp" with "Video Expert providing cost-effec-
tive solutions to XYZ-type clients."
Add your LinkedIn vanity URL to your email
signature and business card
LinkedIn allows you to email up to 200 people
at a timeat some reasonable interval and
when the information is relevant to your con-
nections, communicate this information.
When you invite someone to get LinkedIn to
you, personalize the note.
Provide LinkedIn recommendations to people
whom you know very well. People appreciate
these very much and this usually turns into
something that will get returned to you.
If you are networking in person, be aware of
your clothes and appearance. They reflect
your brand.
Don't seek business opportunities right off.
Instead, seek areas of shared interest and
build a relationship.
Try to always ask someone if there is
something that you can do for them.
Prepare ahead of time and read the blogs or
check out the websites of key people that you
communicate with.
Don't lie, don't pitch and don't spam. Your
brand should be that of providing value, not
snake oil.
(Bonus) Be Confident!
There are probably a bunch more tips to add, and
we welcome them all. Feel free to share this list or
leave comments with your own tips at
http://www.LinkToProsper.com/branding. All the
best to developing your future success stories!
R u l e
19
Promote Your
Profile
Your profile is
a billboard for
you.
Your LinkedIn Profile is Your
Brand and it is the starting point
of your LinkedIn experience. It is
one of your most important
elements on LinkedIn.
It's the place where you will
summarize all of your professional
endeavors including your employ-
ment, your website, your awards,
certifications, background informa-
tion, education and interests. It's
also where you can post your pho-
tograph, adding another way to
connect with others. Your profile is
visible to the people who are
included in your networkthe
people with whom you've directly
connected. You should consider it a
Chapter 19: Promote Your Profile 85
work in progress as you continually update it to
increase its effectiveness.
Your Profile is a Billboard for You
Think of your profile like a billboard; you never
know who is going to see it but for those who do
read it, you want it to be as effective as possible.
LinkedIn actually lets you know who has read your
profile. Have you ever noticed that little text box on
the right side of your LinkedIn Home page that
states, "Your profile has been viewed by 103
people in the last 28 days. In the last 5 days you
have appeared in search results 89 times?"
If you haven't, that might mean one of two things:
Since that feature is in LinkedIn beta testing, it
might not always be available.
Otherwise, more important, fewer than five
people viewed your site in the last 30 days.
If you answered "b," then you really need to focus
on attracting people to your profile, which can be
done relatively easily.
Promoting Your Profile
A very simple and quick way to promote your
profile is to create a vanity link and add it to your
email signature. Perhaps do something like
thisWant to connect with me on LinkedIn?
Please visit http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JohnDoe.
Another straightforward way to promote your
profile is accomplished simply through inviting
more people to connect. Once they receive the in-
vitation, they can accept and then view your
profile.
An additional way to promote your profile is to use
HTML logos and links on your blogs and internet
sites.
A broader way to promote your profile relates to
the search engines. Currently public profiles on
LinkedIn are being indexed in the major search
engines. Thus limited information from your profile
can show up on a Google search, if you set your
public profile preferences to display the sections of
your LinkedIn profile that you want non-LinkedIn
users to see. This information is limited to only
your name, title, industry, metropolitan area,
number of connections, and number of recom-
menders. To contact with you, any of these viewers
would have to go through and follow officially
LinkedIn sanctioned channels. You can always
edit this function on the Settings Page and clicking
on My Public Profile.
Chapter 19: Promote Your Profile 87
So Who Can View My Profile?
As we've seen, people who aren't on LinkedIn can
view a subset of your profile if you so choose. Reg-
istered users on LinkedIn, who are within your
3-degree network, can see your name and full
profile. In addition, certain premium corporate sub-
scribers can see the same information if you allow
those views. Everyone else outside your network
will only see a limited view of your profile.
R u l e
20
Personalize Your
Profile
Insight for
your LinkedIn
profile!
Accessing Your Profile:
Creating a Personal URL
Wouldn't it be great to have a pro-
fessional looking URL for your
LinkedIn profile that would be easy
to communicate verbally or would
look great on your business card,
website or other marketing collater-
al? Well, now you can.
When you create a LinkedIn profile,
a link is automatically created for
you that includes the LinkedIn
domain name followed by a stream
of random letters and num-
bersdefinitely not easy to
remember and certainly not attrac-
tive. This link is what takes
someone directly to your LinkedIn
profile.
Chapter 20: Personalize Your Profile 89
An attractive feature of LinkedIn is that you can
personalize this URL using your name (if it's not
already taken) or other identifying words, such as
the name of your company. For example, Albert
Einstein might have created a personal LinkedIn
URL that looked like this:
http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/AlbertEinstein.
You can create your personal URL by clicking on
Account & Settings at the top of your LinkedIn
page. Next, go to Profile Settings, click on Public
Profile and you'll be taken to another screen. At the
top you'll be able to edit your Public Profile. Now
you can add your personal URL to anything you
want.
Keep in mind that someone else may have already
reserved your namebecause many people have
the same name. If yours is taken, you might try
adding an initial or a title or a suffix (Mr./Ms.,
Doctor, MD, PhD, etc.). Alternatively, you can add
the name of your business. Also, keep in mind that
your personal URL must include at least five
letters.
Your Profile and LinkedIn Groups
Groups are communities within LinkedIn where
you can connect with others who share similar af-
filiations by industry, association, company, or
some other common connection. When you join a
LinkedIn group, your profile becomes visible to all
of the group members.
Keep in mind, however, that group members
cannot see your network of connections unless
you make them visible to them or unless you are
personally connected to that particular group
member.
Remember you can control if others can view your
connections by going to Account & Settings,
Settings, Privacy Settings, and then clicking on
Connections Browse. You can control whether or
not your connections are able to view the people
you are connected to, although they will always be
able to see shared connections.
Adding Connections but without Alerting
My Network
The default on LinkedIn is to allow your connec-
tions to be notified whenever you add a new one.
If you prefer not to alert everyone (and prevent
your connections from seeing each other in your
network) you can adjust this on the Account &
Settings page. Once on the page, under Privacy
Settings, click on Connection Browse. Select "No"
for the questions, "Allow your connections to view
the rest of your connections list?" Then save your
changes.
Chapter 20: Personalize Your Profile 91
My Photo Disappeared? What Now?
Did you upload a photo but now you find that it's
missing from your LinkedIn profile? It may have
been removed because it was flagged by another
user or LinkedIn management as inappropriate. As
a professional networking site, LinkedIn requires
that you must use a photo to which you own the
rights. That is, you cannot use copyrighted photos
even if they are of you! You must own the copyright
to your material.
Also, it must be a picture of you and not someone
or something else. As a professional site, you're
not allowed to use images of scenery, animals,
designs, or anything of the like. You can change or
update your photograph at any time, however, by
following the simple upload instructions.
Section IV
Building Your
Network
GOAL: Generate efficient strategies
that enable you to build an effective
network.
Section IV: Building Your Network 93
R u l e
21
Lay the Foundation
for Your Network
Quality
matters here.
Fifty quality
contacts are
infinitely
more valuable
to you than
500 people
you really
don't
communicate
with.
LinkedIn says "it's not about con-
nections for connection's sake" and
we agree.
First, decide whom you want to
invite. Quality matters here. 50
quality contacts are infinitely more
valuable to you than 500 people
you really don't communicate with.
The quality of your network should
not be measured numerically.
Instead, it should be measured by
the number and quality of the
resources available from your
network.
Chapter 21: Lay the Foundation for Your Network 95
3 Degrees of Separation
LinkedIn functions in a very similar way to the old
"6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" game, in which any
actor can be linked through their film role to Kevin
Bacon. The main difference is that LinkedIn
focuses on three levels of connections.
Assume you are like the sun and the center of your
network universe. Directly connected to you are
your 1st degree connections. These are your "hot
connections." The people directly connected to
your 1st degree connections are your 2nd degree
connections. These are sort of your "warm con-
nections." Finally, the direct connections of your
2nd degree connections are your 3rd degree con-
nections. These can be considered your "cool con-
nections."
My Contacts
Your 1st degree or direct connections offer the
ability to:
View or browse profiles
Have direct contact via email
Forward Introductions to people who aren't
directly connected to the intended recipient
View information regarding my contacts (this
is set by default but can be adjusted in the
Account & Settings page)
Your 2nd & 3rd degree connections obviously are
more removed and offer very little free "direct"
contact.
Your Strategy
In one of the first rules in this book, you were asked
the question, "Why are you on LinkedIn?" and
"What are looking to achieve?" Your answers to
those questions should help you build out your
network foundation. Let's say that you determine
your goals for using LinkedIn are to meet potential
future employers within the new media space.
Given the three degrees of separation, it is almost
a guarantee that you have the potential to connect
with some very important influencers in that space.
So with the direction you choose, begin to build
your network with people you know who can
connect you to others within that business vertical.
You don't need to strictly adhere to this by limiting
everyone else from connecting to you, but you
should be prioritizing how to find the right "connec-
tions."
Chapter 21: Lay the Foundation for Your Network 97
It Takes Effort
We will touch on this in greater detail in another
rule, but it bears mentioning here too. You get what
you give on LinkedIn. If you don't try to connect
with people who can help you achieve your goal,
you won't. We know one example of someone who
kept trying to connect individually with people in a
specific business vertical but, for some reason, it
just wasn't working. He decided to take another
approach and set up his own group, which actually
helped him become a well-connected person
within his business niche. The key takeaway here
is to keep trying if your efforts don't immediately
pay off.
R u l e
22
Use Invitations to
Connect
For two
people to
"connect,"
one must
invite the
other and the
other must
accept.
Let's start with the basics. Each
registered user builds their network
on LinkedIn via "connections."
Thus if you have 55 connections,
you have 55 people whom you've
either invited to be part of your
network or vice versa.
Keeping with the basics for a
moment longer, for two people to
"connect," one must invite the other
and the other must accept. If the
person being invited is already on
LinkedIn, all they need to do is
accept the invite. If the person is
not on LinkedIn, they will need to
register in order to accept the invi-
tation.
Chapter 22: Use Invitations to Connect 99
The most basic way for people to build their
network is to start with their personal contact lists.
People in these lists might include someone you
have worked with, collaborated on projects with or
maybe attended school with.
To add people to your network, you can invite them
one at a time and enter their email address into the
Quick Invite box or Add Connections button. If you
are a brand new user, this is recommended, so
that you can begin to get an understanding for how
the process works. You will need to know their First
and Last Names as well as their email addresses.
Invite Connections Already On LinkedIn
For a quicker method, you can quickly see which
of your contacts are already on LinkedIn and invite
them en masse. You can upload your contacts
from Outlook or upload a .CSV file of your contacts
into the "Other Contacts" section of your LinkedIn
account.
Using LinkedIn's Colleague and Classmate
Reconnect
Colleague Reconnect enables you to find current
LinkedIn users whom you may have worked with in
the past or may currently be working with.
Similarly, Classmate Reconnect enables you to
find current LinkedIn users who were (or currently
are) classmates of yours.
In both cases, LinkedIn searches users experienc-
es that match yours (i.e. same employer, same
college, etc.) and the displays the results which
enables you to decide who you may want to
connect with.
Using the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar
This is a tool that is both efficient and effective.
Among other things, for every email you receive,
this tool enables you to check the LinkedIn status
of the sender. A major benefit of this tool is that it
can identify people who:
you normally communicate with
are on LinkedIn
may have been overlooked in all the other
ways you have of adding connections
This icon is located in the top right corner of every
email. Simply mouse over it to check a person's
status.
Chapter 22: Use Invitations to Connect 101
LinkedIn Grab
In addition, the LinkedIn Toolbar has a feature
called "Grab," which allows you to "grab"
someone's email signature and automatically add
it to your Outlook Contacts.
Sending Invitations Directly from Outlook
The Toolbar also provides a "Dashboard" function.
There is a section within this function labeled
"Contacts to Invite." You can click the invite link
which will invite people to join your network right
from there without you having to login to LinkedIn.
You are also able to personalize the message you
want to send.
Withdrawing an Invitation
If after sending an invitation, you want to withdraw
it, simply go back to the invite and click the
withdraw button.
R u l e
23
Understand
Invitation Etiquette
Receiving,
accepting &
limiting
invitations.
When you go to a party, arrive for a
business meeting or play golf, you
generally follow a certain etiquette
for the proper way to interact. For
the most part, people want to do
what is socially approved and to
this regard there are various books
that teach them. However instead
of offering a book, we'll offer a rule
on LinkedIn invitation etiquette.
Receiving Invitations
Upon receipt of an invitation you
can do any of the following:
Accept the Invite
Or If you don't know the user,
you can:
Chapter 23: Understand Invitation Etiquette 103
Do Nothing Invitations typically expire
after a few weeks. If no action is taken,
you will receive reminders that you have
an outstanding invitation. If an invitation
does expire, assuming the person is very
interested in connecting with you, they
will still have the opportunity to resend
you an invitation.
Click "decide later" which will archive
the message and prevent the member
from sending you another invitation at a
later time. This, along with the next two
options, will prevent any future reminders
from coming to you.
You can use the "Reply" link and send
a message back to the inviter. LinkedIn
offers the following as an example, Thank
you for the invitation to connect however
I'm afraid I cannot accept it at this time.
LinkedIn is a powerful tool for managing
my professional network and designed to
help me maintain the connections I have.
It is a LinkedIn best practice to only
connect directly to those whom I know
well and would recommend. I'd like to be
able to give a referral to any of my con-
nections when asked. If I don't know you
well enough to do so, LinkedIn isn't as
powerful for my network. Please under-
stand and remember to invite me to
connect after we've had a chance to work
together.
Click the "I don't know" button. While
this prevents the sender from sending
you another invite, it may also place a
mark on the sender's account that tells
LinkedIn this person may not be using in-
vitations correctly.
Accepting My Invitations
You can tell when someone accepts your invitation
a couple of ways.
You receive an email with the acceptance
You can see your status change on your home
page
Chapter 23: Understand Invitation Etiquette 105
You can view the status of your invitation from your
LinkedIn Inbox.
Limiting Invitations
As mentioned previously, the goal of LinkedIn is
not to gather connections for connections' sake.
Instead, it is to build out a quality network.
In the process of doing this, you may find that you
want to limit the type of people who can connect
with you. For instance, if you have been receiving,
or simply don't want to receive invites from people
you don't know, you can turn on LinkedIn's invita-
tion filtering feature. The basic effect of this is to
allow you to create a "white list" of people that are
only found in your uploaded address book.
Since LinkedIn notifies you of all incoming invita-
tions by default, you will need to adjust this setting.
If you select the "Only notify me of invitations from
people in my 'Other Contacts' list" option, invita-
tions sent to you will not appear in your email inbox
but will be diverted to a "Blocked Invitations" page.
If you want, you can check these whenever you'd
like.
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24
Add People to Your
Network
Building your
network is all
about effort.
The more time
and effort you
put in, the
greater the
value of your
network.
If we received a penny every time
we heard people complaining that
they weren't really successful in
building out their network (yet never
really put in any effort), we might
have enough money to buy a cup of
coffee at Starbucks. All joking
aside, building a quality network is
going to require effort. Anybody
that says differently is trying to sell
air.
We are not advocating spending
hours on this but we are looking to
identify time effective ways for you
to increase the quality of your
LinkedIn network. Let's start by
taking a look at the easiest ways to
grow your network and then
progress to those that take a little
more effort
Chapter 24: Add People to Your Network 107
"Contacts 101" It is to your benefit to approach
this strategically and make a list of the people you
know well (friend, family, co-workers), and then
invite them to link in. "Dig" into your past when
filling in your profile. The more you include, the
better your chances of being found by people
you've previously associated with. In your profile
include past companies, education, affiliations, ac-
tivities, etc.
Utilizing the People You May Know Function
LinkedIn provides a list of suggestions for
people whom you may know but not yet be
connected to. This is located in the upper right
corner of your Home page. The information that
populates this list is generated during the
uploading of your contacts. LinkedIn counts the
number of emails sent to a particular person and
this is used to determine whom you may want to
invite.
A Customized Email Signature Another simple
yet subtle way for you to efficiently connect with
people is through adding a link in your email signa-
tures. To help facilitate this, LinkedIn offers a cus-
tomized email signature for Microsoft Outlook.
Actually, they offer 15+ types of designs. Recipi-
ents whose email settings do not allow HTML
email will not see the signature included with your
message.
Non-Customized Email Signature There is a
pretty simple and low tech way to get someone to
learn more about you and possibly connect with
you. Use a vanity link in your email signature. This
would look something like this
http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JohnDoe. It shows up
in all emails and is a passive way to get people to
see all your credentials.
Groups The jury is still out on the value of them
but, at the very least, you have the opportunity to
connect with people who have similar interests.
We've made some interesting connections this
way.
Answers Ask and answer questions. It is a great
way to promote yourself. Generally expect to make
a couple of connections through each activity,
however we have heard about people that get 10
or more new connections through their Q&A.
Consider becoming a LION A LION is a
LinkedIn Open Networker, meaning that you agree
to accept all invitations. The phrase is included in
your profile and thus searchable. People seek out
LIONs during searches to increase their network.
If quantity is what you are after, this is a relatively
simple and time effective way to generate connec-
tions.
Chapter 24: Add People to Your Network 109
SEO Yourself Use your profile link in various
places on the web like blog comments, etc. This is
another simple tactic that will also help to improve
your Google page rank.
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25
Don't Abuse
Introductions and
InMails
Focus on
building out
your network
with quality
introductions;
seeking
connections
for
connections'
sake is
garbage
in/garbage
out.
Having the ability to tap into
contacts of your contacts is
obviously very powerful. Thus you
should consider ways of leveraging
your contacts to get introduced to
their contactskeep in mind
however that this is a relationship,
and don't abuse it.
Introductions
One way to expand your network is
to browse the connections of your
direct connections. This will enable
you to potentially find people whom
your direct connections know and
you would like to be introduced to.
Chapter 25: Don't Abuse Introductions and InMails 111
Hence, LinkedIn offers its Introduction feature.
This is one way to contact people in your network.
To be clear on terminology here, connections are
made through invitations, not through Introduc-
tions.
Let's assume that you want to connect with
someone who is two degrees away from you. You
would contact a direct connection for both you and
that person. Then you would ask this direct
connect to forward an Introduction. It is up to them
as to whether they will forward it. This is another
example of where a "quality" network is more
valuable than a "quantity" network. The better you
know this direct connection, the higher the likeli-
hood that they will make the introduction for you.
To be most effective, LinkedIn introductions should
only be used with 2nd degree members. In this
manner, you will know everyone who may see your
request.
Also, when reaching out to another member via an
Introduction, ensure that you review that member's
profile closely and determine what type of contact
they are open to.
Depending on your membership, you will have
between 5 and 25 introductions you can use per
month. You can always tell how many you have left
by going to your Account & Settings page.
InMail
This is another way to contact any user directly on
LinkedIn. However you need to purchase these.
InMails are private messages that enable users to
contact each other with LinkedIn acting as the in-
termediary to ensure that all messages remain
confidential and that contact information is kept
private. If the recipient is not in your network, you
will only see the recipient's name and email
address if the InMail message is accepted.
InMails can be purchased individually or as part of
a premium account. Since senders pay for each
InMail sent, they tend to choose the people they
contact with care. If you use them, understand
that, once they are sent, they expire within 15 days
if not read by the receiver. This is free when con-
tacting an Open Network Member.
InMail Feedback
This is a reputation system LinkedIn uses to
minimize spam. It is based on recipients'
responses to senders' InMail messages. In
general, you are notified only when InMails come
from senders with a 3-star rating or higher. You can
change your preferences in your Contact Settings.
As with Introductions, you can always tell how
many you have left by going to your Account &
Settings page.
Chapter 25: Don't Abuse Introductions and InMails 113
People like to talk about how their network
connects them to over 1 million people. With these
tools you begin to tap into and leverage these con-
nections.
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26
Manage Your
Connections
Failing to
manage your
connections
is akin to
asking
someone out
on a date but
never
showing up.
As we've been highlighting, one
important goal of your LinkedIn ex-
perience is to build out a network of
quality contacts. Thus, as it
develops, you will naturally need to
manage it. This will range from
simple managing of views to
removing connections you no
longer need. Here are some things
you should be aware of.
Sorting Connections As you
add new connections to your
network, they are aggregated in
one location and the only way to
sort through them is alphabetically.
We know that many people want to
sort them in a variety of ways
including by function or by how well
you know the connection, etc.
While LinkedIn does not allow you
Chapter 26: Manage Your Connections 115
to do this on the site, it does provide an export
function, which enables you to export your connec-
tions in a .CSV format, which can then be easily
loaded into Excel. From there you will be able to
sort, rank, prioritize and group your connections
exactly as you want to.
Missing Connections Have you ever logged on
but couldn't find a connection you know you've
already added? This occurs because you've set up
multiple accounts while accepting an invitation to
connect. It happens quite a bit actually, or at least
it happens quite a bit to people whom we are
connected to. To remedy this, you will need to
transfer your contacts and close the duplicate
account.
Managing the Way Your Network Views Your
Connections By default, your direct connections
are able to browse through the connections of all
the other people in your network. If you want to
prevent anyone from viewing the connections in
your network, you can do the following:
Click on the Account & Settings button.
On the Settings page, under Privacy Settings,
click on the text link for Connections Browse.
Under Connections Browse, select "No, hide
my connections list."
Removing Imported Contacts If you find that
some of your imported contacts are no longer
valid, the easiest way to remove them is by
reloading your most current contact list.
Removal of a Connection from Your List For a
variety of reasons you may find yourself wanting to
remove a connection from your list. This is pretty
simple to do.
Start by going to My Contacts.
Click Remove Connections.
Highlight the Connections to Remove.
Select the Remove Connections Button.
On a side note, if you want to remove a connec-
tion, the removal is neither captured in any alert
nor is the other member notified. Once removed,
they cannot be re-added.
Repairing a Disconnection to a Previous
Connection
You may have disconnected to a prior network
connection for any number of reasons. If you now
want to reconnect with this person, you have two
alternatives. One option is to invite the individual
Chapter 26: Manage Your Connections 117
back to your network, but you'll need to use a
different email address for them. The other alterna-
tive is to have that member send you an invitation
so you can reconnect with them. While this might
not happen too often, it's always good to know how
to "repair" a disconnection.
Good News to Report? Share it with Your
Network
Do you want to share some news with your con-
nections? Just go to your Inbox and select
Compose Message. You'll be able to select who
receives your message.Your connections will
receive a message in their LinkedIn email that
you've sent them a new message.
Section V
Recommendations
and Answers
GOAL: Learn about some of the most
powerful tools that LinkedIn offers to
demonstrate your expertise.
Section V: Recommendations and Answers 119
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27
Manage Your
Recommendations
Recommen-
dations are a
part of
relationship
building,
which can
lead to all
sorts of
things
including new
customers,
business
partners, or
even a new
job.
Everyone likes to be recognized for
their achievements and LinkedIn
provides a function called Recom-
mendations that facilitates just that.
LinkedIn's Recommendation
feature enables people that know
you the best to publicly praise you.
Clearly, adding Recommendations
to your profile should increase the
credibility you want to exude. Also,
without three recommendations,
any LinkedIn profile is not
complete.
People like to do business with
people they know, like and trust and
LinkedIn states that "Users with
recommendations in their profiles
are three times more likely to
receive relevant offers and inquiries
through searches on LinkedIn."
Chapter 27: Manage Your Recommendations 121
There are a variety of ways to ask for recommen-
dations. LinkedIn even provides a template
located on the Request Recommendation page
that allows you to request a recommendation.
When seeking a Recommendation, base your
decision on people who know you the best and
value your work. LinkedIn recommends:
Former managers
Colleagues and co-workers
Customers and clients
Business partners
Recommendations are a part of relationship
building, which can lead to all sorts of things
including new customers, business partners, or
even a new job. Be generous and genuine with
recommending others and also don't be shy about
asking for recommendations in return.
As you receive more and more recommendations,
you may ultimately need to manage them.
Whether you request a recommendation or receive
one that was unsolicited, you will be alerted to
them in the same manner through a LinkedIn email
message. These are always exciting to receive.
Once you approve the recommendation, it will
appear on your Profile. In addition, an alert will go
out to your network telling them that you have just
been recommended.
You have something called a "Received Recom-
mendations Summary Page." From this page, you
will be able to manage all the recommendations
you have received by position and whether you
want them displayed on your profile.
Editing a Recommendation You have complete
control over the recommendations you receive,
meaning that you are able to revise, replace or
withdraw any recommendation.
Moving Recommendation Sometimes the rec-
ommendation you receive may not apply to the
position you feel it is most associated with. If you
want to have it moved to another position, you will
need to contact the sender and have them make
the change on their side, withdraw the original and
resend the revised recommendation. This is
certainly not the most difficult process, but due to
the logistics required, probably not one that you
want to pursue unless you feel very strongly about
it.
Recommendations that Disappear If you
notice that a recommendation has disappeared,
there are two possible reasons. First, the author of
the recommendation may have withdrawn it, as
they have the right to. If not, then the position as-
sociated with the recommendation has been
Chapter 27: Manage Your Recommendations 123
removed and the recommendation is effectively
unassigned. If you re-add the position, you can
reapply the recommendation.
Point to Ponder for those who want to keep their
networks private, you need to keep your recom-
mendations private too. If you allow them to be
seen, you allow those that recommend you to be
seen as well.
To add your tips on Recommendations, please feel
free to go to http://www.LinkToProsper.com/tips.
R u l e
28
Make
Recommendations
Recommen-
dations
provide a lot
of value to
you, the
writer, and to
your friend or
colleague, the
recipient
Recommendations provide a lot of
value to you, the writer, and to your
friend or colleague, the recipient.
By acknowledging someone's great
service, performance or other con-
tributions, you'll create an even
stronger relationship with them. An
added bonus is that your name is
also featured as part of the recom-
mendation, so both parties can gain
visibility.
What's even better is that LinkedIn
has no limit to the number of recom-
mendations you can make. So
consider reviewing your LinkedIn
network and make it a regular
practice to write recommendations
to acknowledge great performance.
Chapter 28: Make Recommendations 125
These will automatically become a part of the re-
cipients' profiles should they accept your recom-
mendations.
It's easy to leave a recommendation for someone.
Click on their profile, then go to the upper right
corner of their page and click the link Recommend
this Person. Follow the instructions and you'll be
on your way.
Things to consider in writing a
Recommendation
Before making your first recommendation, a good
suggestion would be to read others to get a feel for
what to say and what not to say. Whenever you
give a Recommendation, you need to keep in mind
that these are professional, so keep away from
cutesy terms or slang. Some people who struggle
with finding the "right words" will be best served by
getting "inspiration" from words that other people
have used. A second point would be to be as
specific as possible. This makes your Recommen-
dation more credible. After all what is bet-
ter"Johnny is great because he works long
hours," or "Johnny's dedication to the team was
clearly observed in his coming in numerous days
at 4 AM to support the European team before the
rest of the company arrived for work." Lastly,
shorter is betterconciseness and clarity rule
here. Also, follow up with the person you recom-
mended to see how they like it and let them know
you would be willing to edit it if you missed
something important.
Making a Recommendation
There are three ways in which you can create a
recommendation for another registered user. You
can do it from your profile, from their profile or in
response to their request for a recommendation.
The process of providing a recommendation is
pretty consistent across these three methods. Es-
sentially, you name the person to be recommend-
ed, describe the capacity in which you will be doing
the recommendationcolleague (worked at same
company), service provider (you've hired them
before), business partner (you've worked with
them but not as a colleague or service provider) or
student. Then you are ready to write your recom-
mendation.
Withdrawing a Recommendation
Sometimes situations change and you may find
that you are no longer able to provide a recom-
mendation that you once gave. As the author of a
recommendation, you have the ability to withdraw
your recommendation but once you withdraw it, it
is permanently removed. Please note that the
recipient will not be notified. To withdraw, you
Chapter 28: Make Recommendations 127
would need to go to "Manage Your Recommenda-
tions," select the recommendation you want to
remove and click "Withdraw this Recommenda-
tion."
R u l e
29
Ask a Question
Asking
questions on
LinkedIn is
like having
your own
personal
board of
directors
without the
expense!
One of the most relevant and
powerful tools that LinkedIn offers
is the LinkedIn Answers function. In
its most basic form, it provides you
with an instant informal board of
advisors with an almost infinite
knowledge base.
Do you have a question about
something work-related? Are you
working on a project and need to
find resources (people, companies,
sites, blogs, etc.) that might be
helpful? Do you have a question
about a company or industry?
LinkedIn Answers is the place to
go. Are you an expert or do you
want to build up expert status?
Consider perusing the daily
questions posed by others and start
Chapter 29: Ask a Question 129
answering them. This will allow others to benefit
from your knowledge and possibly open up new
networking opportunities.
How to Ask a Question
To access the LinkedIn Answers feature, go to the
navigation bar located in the upper left corner of
the page. Click on Answers and a drop-down box
will appear. To post a question, select Ask a
Question. You'll be taken to another page where
you have several items to complete and selections
to make.
Suggestions
First, write a succinct question. Keep it short and
to the point. No rambling paragraphs or long sen-
tences. If you want more people to read it and
respond, keep your questions highly focused.
Your questions should be knowledge-based, not
about connecting with other people. If you ask a
question that enables someone to share their ex-
pertise, they will do that more freely. However, it is
doubtful they will bother if you are only asking a
question that is looking for them to connect you
with someone else.
Please note that questions that simply ask for in-
troductions etc., usually don't get answered but
they do get flagged. If a question receives several
flags, it is removed and users who have several
flagged questions may lose the right to post any
additional questions.
Once your question is written, you select whether
or not you want people outside your network to see
the question. Unless you have a geographical-
ly-specific question, it's probably better to allow
anyone to respond, as this will probably result in
more responses.
The next section in the asking question process
labeled "Add Details" is optional. If you have more
clarifying details or content to add, this is the place
to do it. Again, try to bullet point your thoughts.
Keep your sentences short and make sure you're
only supplying relevant detail necessary for
someone to best answer your question. You may
want to have a friend or colleague review what
you've written to make sure it's understandable.
Once you've completed this, you are asked to Cat-
egorize Your Question in one of 20+ business cat-
egories. After you select a category, you can
further refine it by selecting a sub-category that
best relates to the topic of your question.
You can then select geography as a further refine-
ment if that is relevant to the information you're
seeking. You can select by country or zip code.
Chapter 29: Ask a Question 131
And, finally, you can categorize your question as to
whether it relates to Recruiting, Promoting Your
Services, or Job Seeking.
One final thoughtcommunicating with people
who have taken the time to answer your question
is a great way to find kindred spirits and potentially
add good, solid connections to your network.
R u l e
30
Answer a Question
Answering
questions
provides a
great avenue
for you to
meet and
connect with
others on
LinkedIn who
share your
business
interests.
Answering questions on LinkedIn is
a fantastic feature that enables you
to demonstrate your knowledge,
enhance your credibility and is yet
another way to connect with oth-
ersboth inside and outside your
network.
How to Answer a Question
Answering a question is just as
straightforward as asking a
question. Again, to access the
LinkedIn Answers feature, go to the
navigation bar located in the upper
left corner of the page. Click on
Answers and a drop-down box will
appear. To answer questions,
select Answer Questions.
Chapter 30: Answer a Question 133
You'll see a list of the most recently asked ques-
tions. You can review the open questions, or you
can select questions from any of 20+ categories of
questions by making a selection from the detailed
menu located on the right side of the page. Again,
you can click on any of these main categories to
further refine your search for questions in a more
detailed sub-category.
To answer a question, click on the question and a
new page will open that displays the full question,
along with any supplemental information that the
author has included. Below the question, you'll
notice two buttonsAnswer and Suggest Expert.
One allows you to respond to the question with
your own answer while the other allows you to
select someone from your network who might be a
helpful resource.
If you click on Answer, you'll find areas to input
your answer, note additional resources and even
post a private message to the person posting the
question. You'll also have the option, once again,
to suggest an expert from your network.
Suggestions
LinkedIn provides the writer of the question the
ability to judge the answers they receive, with the
aptly named titleBest Answer. While it hasn't
been conclusively shown that this offers dramatic
value to your profile, it can be another feather in
your cap that supports the building of your brand.
As with asking questions, take a little time to
answer questions in a way that exhibits your ex-
pertise. Again, LinkedIn is a communication tool,
and if you answer a question posed by someone
you don't know, the first impression you are going
to be offering about your brand is going to be
based on your answer. Thus if the question were,
"How should I create my target customer?" and
one answer were, "I never really bother as I don't
have a problem with it," vs. " I look at age, income,
sex, marital status, geographic location, types of
print media used, etc.," which would be a better
way to express your brand? Clearly the second
allows you to demonstrate your knowledge in a
short yet thoughtful and knowledgeable manner.
Answering questions (along with asking questions)
provides a great avenue for you to meet and
connect with others on LinkedIn who share your
business interests. Many times the author of the
question will reach out to thank you for taking the
time to respond. By doing this, the communication
process between you and the author has started.
Lastly and most importantly, your answers can be
found by Google. Read the entire question before
answering and do your best to respond with the in-
formation that is sought by the individual who
posted the question.
Chapter 30: Answer a Question 135
Section VI
Learning the
"How-To" for
Other LinkedIn
Functions
GOAL: Learn specific tactics and
step-by-step rules for using various
LinkedIn functionalities.
Section VI: Learning the "How-To" for Other LinkedIn Functions 137
R u l e
31
Manage Your
Account
The most
important
thing you
need to
consider is
that your
email
address is
your commu-
nication link
with LinkedIn.
Although email is fairly routine,
there are certain elements with the
use of your email in LinkedIn that
are a fairly important element of
your LinkedIn experience. The
most important thing you need to
consider is that your email address
is your communication link with
LinkedIn. If you currently use your
work email to access LinkedIn, be
aware that if you lose access to that
work account (by exiting the
company) you will lose access to
your LinkedIn communications.
Chapter 31: Manage Your Account 139
Your Primary Email Account
You may consider using a non-work email account
as your communication link to LinkedIn. If you
need to change the primary email address, here's
what you can do:
Click the "Account & Settings" link.
Select Email Address (found under Personal
Information section).
Click the Add Email Address button.
Enter the new email address and click "Add
Email Address."
After this you will receive a confirmation message
with the new email address. Just follow the instruc-
tions to confirm this new email.
Eliminating Multiple Accounts/Closing
Your Account
Many people have set up multiple accounts that
they no longer use. These accounts can become
confusing to people trying to find you, or provide an
incomplete profile, thus hindering your branding
capability. Also, if you opened multiple accounts
and try to add an email address that is already on
one of these accounts, you will receive an error
message during this process.
To eliminate these excess accounts, we suggest
the following steps:
Transfer all your information (profile, connec-
tions etc.) to one account and close the
other(s).
You can close a LinkedIn account online by
logging into the account you wish to close and
then going to the Personal Information section
in Account & Settings and selecting Close
Your Account.
Once an account is closed, you lose access to the
account and any information tied to that.
Transferring Your Contacts
If you have inadvertently set up multiple accounts,
you'll want to move all of your contacts into one
account by transferring them. The process for
transferring is as follows:
Open each "old" account.
Click on My Contacts.
Chapter 31: Manage Your Account 141
At the bottom of My Contacts, click on the link
to Export Connections.
Select Microsoft Outlook (.CSV File), enter the
security image and click Export.
When the pop-up window opens, select Save
to Disk then click on OK.
Log in to your "new" account and click on Add
Connections.
Import your Contacts by following the instruc-
tions on the page.
At this point, all of your Contacts should now be
uploaded.
Your Email Privacy
Are you concerned about who can view your
primary email address? The answer is all of your
direct connections. On the opposite side of privacy,
some people post their email addresses in their
LinkedIn profile.
R u l e
32
Get Serious About
Search
Search,
search,
search
those who
search for
connections
on LinkedIn
are greatly
enhancing
their chances
of success.
Since there are millions of regis-
tered users on LinkedIn, and since
the purpose of LinkedIn is to find
people as well as to be found,
learning how to use the Search
Function is very important.
In LinkedIn there are a few different
types of searches and, in this rule,
we will walk you through them.
Profile Search Functions
Exact Phrases If you are
searching for a specific phrase, you
must enclose the phrase in quotes
(i.e. "Investment Banking")
Excluding an element of a
Phrase If you want to do a search
but want to exclude an element of a
Chapter 32: Get Serious About Search 143
phrase, you must put a minus sign (a.k.a. a dash)
immediately before that term (for example,
-personal banking). In this example, the term
"personal banking" will be excluded.
The "OR" Function If you are searching for one
of two (or more) phrases, you should separate the
phrase with an upper case OR (e.g., Director OR
Manager)
Multiple Phrases If you are searching for two
phrases within a profile, you should separate the
phrase with an upper case AND (e.g., Director
AND Manager). As an FYI, even if you don't
include the AND, the search defaults to it (e.g.,
Director Manager).
Complex Searches Since titles are not standard
across companies, you may want to use similar
phrases with inclusion and exclusion when search-
ing. In these cases, you would use parentheses.
For instance, a search like this, GM OR (VP AND
Europe) would find people who have GM or VP
AND Europe in their profiles.
Keyword Search Functions
Title Search for users with a particular title. If you
check "current titles only," only users who currently
hold that title will be returned.
Company Search for users at a particular
company. Select "current companies only" to find
only people who are currently at that company.
Keywords Enter any keyword.
Industry Searches for users in one or more
primary industries. You can select multiple indus-
tries by holding the Ctrl (PC) or Command (Mac)
buttons.
Location Put in a zip code. This enables you to
search not just that zip code, but the users in the
surrounding metro area as well.
Reference Search Function
This type of search can help you find people in
your network who could be references for prospec-
tive clients, business partners, and employees.
One quick tipif you didn't get many results, try to
search on a less specific company name; for
example, IBM as opposed to International
Business Machines.
Name Search Function
The last of the three main search types is the
Name Search Function. This enables you to
search by Name (Last names only), Company
Chapter 32: Get Serious About Search 145
(search for a particular company) or Location. This
is pretty much duplicated by the main advanced
search page.
R u l e
33
Think About
Upgrading
To upgrade or
not to
upgrade the
question is
power.
By default, once you register on
LinkedIn, you are given a free
Personal Account. If you so
choose, you can upgrade to a paid,
"premium" account called Business
or Business Plus. Essentially what
you pay for is the ability to reach or
be reached by the right people on
LinkedIn.
Your Personal Account (Free)
Since this is the default account,
this is the one that the vast majority
of LinkedIn users have and,
depending on what you want to
achieve, may be the only account
that you need. It enables you to do
everything on LinkedIn like:
Chapter 33: Think About Upgrading 147
Create a strong profile around your brand
Search profiles of other LinkedIn users
Provide links to your websites
Invite people & build your network
Ask and answer questions in LinkedIn
Answers
Join various LinkedIn Groups
Provide and request recommendations
Request up to 5 introductions at a time
In short, you have the ability to create a profes-
sional presence with a strong communication
channel.
Premium Accounts (Paid)
LinkedIn offers a couple of Premium accounts that
they believe offer better communication, more
powerful search tools, and enhanced access to
decision makers and other resources on LinkedIn.
If you think of these accounts in tiers, the first tier
would be the free account and the second tier
would be the Business Account. The latter costs
$19.95 per month or $199.50 per year.
Going one step higher, there is a third tier of
accounts called the Business Plus accounts. This
type of account costs $50 per month or $500 per
year.
Managing Your Account
On almost every page, you will see a text link to
Account & Settings. This is the page that enables
you to manage your account and control the envi-
ronment you create for yourself on LinkedIn.
The "Account" section of this page is your
dashboard to manage your account. This includes
details such as your account type, start date, and
summaries of Introductions and InMails available
to you. In addition, if you are a subscriber, you will
see information pertinent to that including your
subscription end date, your OpenLink membership
status and the number of job credits you have
available.
Chapter 33: Think About Upgrading 149
Account Cancellation
If you want to cancel your premium membership,
you need to go to the customer Service Center,
select Ask Customer Service and submit your
request.
Typically, your LinkedIn Account should be closed
immediately but it can take up to 72 hours for your
public profile to be removed. Any information
residing on the web will continue to reside there
until those sites update their information from
LinkedIn. You may want to contact them if your in-
formation is not removed.
R u l e
34
Manage Your
Settings
Take control
of your
LinkedIn
experience.
In LinkedIn, you manage all of your
Account and Settings from a page
appropriately called, Account &
Settings. The page is split in two,
with the top half of the page
focused on your Account (which
was covered in the previous rule).
The second half or the bottom
portion of the Account & Settings
page provides you insight into your
LinkedIn Settings. These settings
will control your privacy, your
profile, your communication flow,
etc. In short, they control your
LinkedIn experience. The layout of
these settings is fairly straightfor-
ward and is easy to navigate.
Chapter 34: Manage Your Settings 151
Profile Settings
In this section you can control:
What appears in your LinkedIn Profile this
essentially links you to the edit function of your
profile.
Your Photopretty intuitive controls what
you show.
Your Updates which lets you control how you
notify your connections of significant changes
to your LinkedIn profile.
Your Public Profile URL which is the URL
that someone can use to find your Profile.
Manage your Recommendations includes
managing both the ones you've received as
well as the ones you've sent. Links to pages
where you can revise, replace, or withdraw
specific recommendations you've made.
Receiving Messages
In this section, you can control your contacts to set
the kinds of contacts you want to make, let users
know you want to be contacted, and give potential
contacts advice about approaching you, or let
people know that you prefer to be left alone.
Other key elements of this section include
managing your:
Invitations shows status and controls how
you're notified when another user invites you
to connect.
Profile Updates controls how you are
notified of changes to your connections'
profiles. To effectively tap into the benefits of
passive communication, this is important.
Email Updates which allow you to control
what new products and features exist from
LinkedIn.
Contact Settings allows you to set the
types of contact you are interested in.
Personal Information
This section enables you to control how your name
and location are displayed. In addition, you control
displaying your primary email address. You can
change your password here and if necessary,
close your account from this section as well.
Privacy Settings
Under the Privacy settings, you can control the fol-
lowing:
Partner Sites determine how your profile is
displayed on sites that partner with LinkedIn.
Connections Browse allows you to
determine whether or not your connections
can view your connection list.
Profile Views when you visit someone's
profile, you can determine what if anything is
shown to the person you viewed.
Profile & Status Update you control what no-
tifications are made when you make signifi-
cant changes to your profile.
Service Provider Directory this is a listing of
service providers that have received a recom-
mendation.
R u l e
35
Create Your Own
LinkedIn Group
Setting up
groups is fast,
easy and a
great way to
connect with
other
like-minded
LinkedIn
members.
You can create a specialized
community of like-minded folks who
can interact and create even
stronger networks among them-
selves. Not only can you invite folks
from your own network, but you can
also reach out and find others
within the larger LinkedIn network
who might enjoy being a part of
your group. LinkedIn is the perfect
place to feature your group and it's
easy to set up and manage a group.
Starting a Group
If you want to start a new LinkedIn
Group, simply log into your
LinkedIn profile. On the top left
margin look for the "Create a
Group" link and submit your group.
Chapter 35: Create Your Own LinkedIn Group 157
Once you have completed this task, the LinkedIn
customer service department will review your sub-
mission and determine if it is an acceptable group.
One thing to note here is that the submission
should be done by the LinkedIn member who will
be the group's administrator.
When you create a group, you have the option of
adding a logo. When you upload an image, the
system will automatically resize it. Unfortunately,
this can sometimes lead to distortion, thereby
affecting the quality and appearance of your logo.
If you want to create the best logo possible, use an
image editor like SnagIt, Fireworks or Photoshop.
Growing the Group
It's really easy to invite people to join your group.
Simply send them an email that includes a link to
your group. You can set up a list of pre-approved
people who can join your group automatically upon
accepting an invitation. If you want LinkedIn to au-
tomatically check the people on your "request to
join" list against your pre-approved list, then make
sure that the pre-approved file that you upload is
100 rows or less. Keep in mind that you need to
upload these folks in .CSV format. You can add
people to this list whether they are on LinkedIn or
not. For those that want to be part of your group
but aren't currently on LinkedIn, they will be asked
to join LinkedIn. Once they become LinkedIn
members, they are automatically invited to your
group. If someone who is not on your pre-ap-
proved list clicks "accept," then they'll be placed in
a "pending" status until you formally approve their
request.
Group Size
To help manage growing groups, LinkedIn
provides an ability for some extra help by enabling
you to add a "Group Manager." You'll be able to
quickly add or delete managers. If you want to add
a manager, he or she must already be a member
of the group. The person you add will also be able
to manage the group from their own LinkedIn
home page
Keep Your LinkedIn Group Going Even
After You Leave
Sometimes things come up, priorities change, and
you find yourself needing to move on. So what do
you do if you need to leave? LinkedIn makes it
easy for you to transfer ownership to someone
else. Go to your group. Select Manage, Manage
this Group, and then click on Change Owners.
When you change ownership, the person you
transfer it to must also be a member of the group.
Chapter 35: Create Your Own LinkedIn Group 159
R u l e
36
Companies Can
Play Too
On LinkedIn,
the Company
Group allows
for a wide
variety of
activities
such as
confidential
communica-
tion between
group
members and
shared
information
about compa-
ny business.
One of the newest features of
LinkedIn is the Company Group. In
essence this is a LinkedIn profile
solely for a specific Company's em-
ployees. A Company Group is a
private and confidential forum
where co-workers, who have been
invited to join the group and who
have been granted membership in
the Company Group, can communi-
cate, collaborate and stay in touch
with each other. The Company
Group is not open to members of
LinkedIn in general; membership in
a LinkedIn Company Group is by in-
vitation only and all information is
viewable only by group members. A
Company Group operates akin to
an intranet. On LinkedIn, the
Company Group allows for a wide
Chapter 36: Companies Can Play Too 161
variety of activities such as confidential communi-
cation between group members, shared informa-
tion about company business, etc.
Each formed and approved Company Group has
four distinct sections:
Members
Updates
News
Q&A
Members Area This area allows members of the
Company's Group to perform searches and view
profiles for other co-workers who are also
members of the Company's Group.
Updates Section In this section, members of the
Company's Group can communicate with each
other on virtually any topic as well as share infor-
mation on the types of projects they are working
on.
In "News," co-workers can see postings of
Company news as well as provide comments on
the news postings.
Finally, the "Q&A" section has the potential to be a
pretty powerful internal communication tool. In this
section, participants can post and answer
questions from other co-workers, or questions that
may have arisen out of company news.
One of the key issues related to a Company Group
deals with eligibility. Membership in a Company
Group requires a LinkedIn profile with elements
from the company for which the company group
has been created. These elements include:
Your current position being with the employing
company.
Your profile must contain a valid domain name
associated with the Company.
You must have a confirmed work email
address for the Company.
If you have applied for membership in the
Company Group but receive an "Unconfirmed"
status notice it means that a valid email address,
one that is associated with your employing
Company, has not been verified and/or confirmed.
Once you have added a valid email address you
will receive an email for confirmation. In the con-
firming email will be a URL link to follow in order to
confirm ownership of the email address. Once this
process has occurred your status will be changed
Chapter 36: Companies Can Play Too 163
to "Confirmed" for the Company Group. You can
view other members of the group by clicking on the
"Members" tab. Only those individuals listed under
that tab will be able to view questions and answers
posted in the Company Group area.
When a Company Group member leaves the em-
ployment of the sponsoring Company Group, they
are no longer eligible for membership in the group.
This is because membership in a Company Group
is for current employees only. The former employ-
ees' status will be changed once they update their
LinkedIn profile and no longer have the Company
has their current employer. However, should the
former employee not update their LinkedIn profile
in a timely manner, the manager of the Company
Group can "flag" that person's profile to indicate
that they no longer work at the Company and that
person's profile will be immediately removed from
the company group. If the profile was flagged in
error, the individual will have the opportunity to
re-establish their membership by reconfirming
their valid email address.
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Share, Share, Share
The widgets
are coming to
help your
professional
networking
and content
sharing.
Back in the 1970's and 1980's when
we were growing up, a widget was
a generic term for a business
product. However today, in our new
world of social media, the term has
an updated definition. Widgets are
small applications that open up
portals to larger applications.
Across the web, you will find
widgets that provide job searches,
stock quotes, news, counters and
much, much more. Many commer-
cially-oriented websites such as
eBay, Google, The Street.com, to
name but a few, provide their own
widgets.
LinkedIn also provides widgets
aimed at those who want to
enhance their LinkedIn experience
on their blog or website. Here's
Chapter 37: Share, Share, Share 165
what you need to do. Scroll down to the bottom of
any LinkedIn page and click on the Widgets link.
You'll be taken to a page where you can add the
latest productivity enhancements to your site.
Currently there are two Widgets available:
Company Insider This feature allows visitors
to your site to see how they are connected to
companies that you have listed on your
website or blog.
Share on LinkedIn This widget allows
visitors to share your content with their
LinkedIn connections or network.
LinkedIn WidgetCompany Insider
The Company Insider widget will allow users to
see how they are connected to the companies that
you list on your blog or website. It will show them
how many people they know in total and will also
supply them with a few of the names with the
option of clicking on a link to see the complete list.
This widget offers the best of professional network-
ing and you can easily install it in just a few
seconds.
The Company Insider Widget is offered in three
different presentation formats; as a pop-up, inline
with a border, or inline without a border. You can
even place the widget as many times as you want
on a page.
To find this widget, scroll to the bottom of any
LinkedIn page and click on Widgets, then
Company Insider.
LinkedIn WidgetShare on LinkedIn
Share on LinkedIn is the second free widget
offered by LinkedIn. This widget allows users to
share content from your website or blog with their
LinkedIn network. If someone visits your website
or blog where this is installed, they can literally
share your content with hundreds or thousands of
people they have within their own network. This
can be a wonderful way to have your valuable in-
formation easily and quickly transmitted to vast
audiences within someone's professional network.
This widget requires a little more coding expertise
to install, but if you follow the instructions, it should
be rather straightforward.
Like the Company Insider Widget, this is a
wonderful tool to combine professional networking
with information sharinga true Web 2.0 applica-
Chapter 37: Share, Share, Share 167
tion. As with the Company Insider widget, scroll to
the bottom of any LinkedIn page and click on
Widgets, then click on Share on LinkedIn.
R u l e
38
Connect with Your
Existing Tools
LinkedIn
toolbars allow
you to directly
access
LinkedIn and
search from
anywhere.
LinkedIn created a Toolbar that
allows you to easily search the
LinkedIn Network. Not only can you
bookmark interesting profiles for
later followup, but also you can
save various searches. These
quick and convenient toolbars work
with both Internet Explorer (IE) and
Firefox.
The Browser Toolbar
The LinkedIn Browser Toolbar
allow you to directly access
LinkedIn, search from anywhere,
and also get the scoop on inside job
connections. Now you can look up
people instantly no matter where
you are. You can search on their
names, titles and other information
Chapter 38: Connect with Your Existing Tools 169
and you can even save your searches. With
one-click access to LinkedIn, you can easily see
the LinkedIn profiles of everyone sending you web
mail. If you're looking for a job, you'll be able to see
the connections you have in your network at any
hiring company where you're viewing job postings.
One feature that is part of the LinkedIn IE toolbar
is the LinkedIn JobsInsider. Once you have suc-
cessfully installed the LinkedIn IE toolbar, JobsIn-
sider will be fully functional but it will be initially
hidden. It will automatically show you how you are
connected to job opportunities (through your own
network) on various sites including Monster, Ca-
reerBuilder, Hotjobs and more.
LinkedIn also allows the user to bookmark both
LinkedIn profiles as well as LinkedIn searches.
This is easily achieved by clicking the "Bookmark
this profile" link or choosing "Bookmark this profile"
from the Bookmarks menu when viewing profiles.
If for some reason you are unable to view the
Bookmark Button, your toolbar might be partially
hidden by Internet Explorer. If this is the case you
will need to fully expand the toolbar so that the
Bookmark drop-down appears.
Outlook Toolbar
The LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar offers a variety of
features and functions designed to make connec-
tion with others fast and easy. What's even better
is that the toolbar is absolutely free. So if you use
Outlook, consider installing this time-saving, net-
work-connecting tool.
Once you have successfully downloaded the
toolbar, you can quickly upload contacts via the
"Find Contacts Wizard." Please note that only
those contacts in your database with a valid email
address will be imported. In this procedure .CSV;
.TXT and .VCF are supported file formats.
The LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar Dashboard is
designed to keep in touch with your important
contacts. Consider some of these benefits:
Profile updates You'll automatically be
notified when anyone in your network updates
their profile.
Keep up-to-date The Toolbar will also make
sure that your Outlook Address Book includes
the latest contact informationa great time-
saver.
Email magic Sending a lot of emails? The
Dashboard will track your activity and then
make recommendations of other folks to invite
to your network based on email addresses to
which you're sending correspondence.
Chapter 38: Connect with Your Existing Tools 171
Reminder Service Are there contacts you
haven't connected with in a while? Not to
worry. The Dashboard reminder feature will let
you know.
If you've installed the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar you
can easily create contact records by highlighting
the contact information you want to collect and
then clicking "Grab." You can add, change, or
delete information after the record has been
added. To save the new contact to your Outlook
Address Book, click "Save and Close."
Section VII
LinkedInThe
Expanded
Perspective
GOAL: Learn some interesting tidbits
that may help shape your strategic per-
spective for using LinkedIn.
Section VII: LinkedInThe Expanded Perspective 173
R u l e
39
Separate
Professional from
Personal
LinkedIn is
suited for
maintaining
an online
resume of
your
professional
credentials
and for
finding
employers,
employees,
service
providers,
and those
who can
introduce
you.
Social media is about communica-
tion, right? There are hundreds if
not thousands of sites out on the
web (and the number is growing
daily) that fit the criteria for social
media, but at a glance, it is very
difficult to try to figure out which
sites out of this jumble will be the
most effective. Each of us has
received those ubiquitous invita-
tions to participate on this site or
that one but the problem is, you
don't know where to begin and
where to focus your attention.
So it probably makes sense to cat-
egorize these sites based on
function. Thus under the social
media umbrella you will have cate-
gories for video/podcasting sites,
photo sharing sites, social book-
Chapter 39: Separate Professional from Personal 175
marking sites and social networking sites to name
just a few of the major categories. Now if we focus
simply on the social networking category, there are
two main sub-categories of social networksper-
sonal and professionally-oriented. That's not to
say they can't overlap but their primary missions
are distinct. Using that definition, Facebook would
fit under personal and LinkedIn under business.
Facebook is a different kind of tool, but just as
valuable in a different way. For instance:
Facebook shows the "whole" personthe
personal side and some of the professional
side, too.
Through the use of enabling the loading of
multiple pictures, Facebook facilitates addi-
tional interaction with your network.
Facebook currently allows you to add addi-
tional content to your page.
Essentially, Facebook focuses on meeting and
staying in touch with friends and sharing photos,
videos and personal information. It seems suited
for furthering relationships and for getting to know
the "complete you." This is definitely something
that can be fun but can potentially conflict with your
professional ambitions if not used properly. Just
think about this for a second; you post pictures on
your Facebook page of that wild Happy Hour you
went to with all of your friends. Sure your friends
will enjoy seeing these pictures but do you really
want your employer or one of your customers to
see them too?
There is value to both Facebook and LinkedIn.
However, LinkedIn is suited for maintaining an
online resume of your professional credentials and
for finding employers, employees, service provid-
ers, and those who can introduce you. In that
sense, LinkedIn has an "all business" feature set
and look-and-feel that are drastically different from
conventional social-networking sites like
Facebook, or even MySpace. While LinkedIn "is all
about productivity," most of the other social
networks, like Facebook, are about fun.
Not surprisingly, as many of you already know,
LinkedIn has been criticized for not providing
enough of a balance of promoting professional net-
working (also by encouraging face-to-face
meetings) but as well as including information
about personal life (photos, blogs, etc.).
Can Facebook be used to conduct business? The
answer is, absolutely. There are definitely opportu-
nities to create your Facebook experience to be
similar to LinkedIn but make it a little more person-
alized. In addition, there are opportunities for le-
veraging their Apps framework to reach millions.
Still, LinkedIn remains the more staid, busi-
Chapter 39: Separate Professional from Personal 177
ness-oriented site, where people post detailed
work resumes and seek recommendations about
jobs.
Given these subtle differences, don't be surprised
to see more, smaller, niche social networks that
enable users to focus on their particular interests,
careers, hobbies etc.
R u l e
40
It Changes the Way
We Do Things
Forty years
after the
Chicago
Convention,
social media
is altering the
presidential
election by
really giving
power to the
People.
We live under a form of democracy
known as representative democra-
cy, meaning our elected officials
represent us. However, how such
officials are elected can vary enor-
mously. We've all heard the old cli-
chevery vote counts. With social
media today, it gives new credence
to that phrase. Never before has
the common man wielded so much
power with the implication of
impacting the election of arguably
the most powerful man in the world!
Think about this for a second. Forty
years after the Chicago Conven-
tion, social media is altering the
Presidential election by really
giving Power to the People.
Chapter 40: It Changes the Way We Do Things 179
We are at a tipping point in our personal lives and
our nation's history. Due to social media, the power
of choosing the next president is undergoing an
extremely unique change that is going to forever
alter the way Presidential (and all political)
campaigns are run.
What happened? With the convergence of technol-
ogy, increased bandwidth, and the internet, literally
anyone can be a one-man news feed. Whether a
person is a rabble-rouser or an articulate thinker,
the point is anyone can be heard and influence the
masses!
Enter LinkedIn. Both John McCain and Barack
Obama maintain LinkedIn profiles. In what is most
likely playing to their strengths, their profiles mirror
their public personas. For instance, Barack is
thought of like a rock star and his popularity on
LinkedIn as measured by number of connections is
very high with over 20,000, making him one of the
top linked people on LinkedIn. In addition, he
leverages the power of communication through
links to his own LinkedIn group and a link to his
RSS feed.
By contrast, John McCain's profile is literally as he
describes himselfa profile of straight talk. For
instance, his summary is short and to the point, he
has multiple recommendations from people who
have worked with him and attest to his leadership.
In addition, his links are to his other sites including
donating to his presidential campaign.
So, what is the big takeaway here? Take a lesson
from what happened during this historical presi-
dential election. The "traditional campaign" has
been completely altered and the smart candidates
are the ones that have adapted to this. They are le-
veraging all of these new "Web 2.0" communica-
tion tools to get their message out to the masses
without really having to spend much money. The
ability to leverage traditional media to get the can-
didates message out is highly dependent on the
issue du jour. During the 2008 Presidential
election, the economic crisis dominated the head-
lines. Since the national nightly news on TV is only
30 minutes, this crisis severely limited the amount
of coverage the candidates received which limited
their ability to get their messages to the American
public. In fact a lot of what was being communicat-
ed by the candidates, was being communicated by
new media; web videos, blogs, and social
networks. Perhaps even more importantly, the
candidates were able to communicate with people
that their busy campaign schedules simply
wouldn't have previously permitted.
Now it's your turn to do the same thing with social
media and specifically, LinkedIn. Start becoming
more in-tune with what new business tools exist
and how these can be integrated in your strategic
business planning just as the presidential candi-
dates are!
Chapter 40: It Changes the Way We Do Things 181
R u l e
41
Beware of Addictive
Behavior
I'm may be a
LinkedIn
addict, but I
also have the
best-connect
ed network of
anyone I
know.
Disclaimer: This post is meant to be
a light-hearted review of people
spending too much time on
LinkedIn. It is not intended to
address any addictions.
If the first thing you do in the
morning when you hop out of bed is
to log into LinkedIn, then you may
be a Link Addict (LA). If left untreat-
ed, it can lead to sleep deprivation,
marital problems, and possibly
generate no revenue.
10 warning signs
If you think you are suffering from
LA, take the quiz below. Just
answer "true" or "false" to each
statement.
Chapter 41: Beware of Addictive Behavior 183
1. You find yourself accessing LinkedIn, first
thing in the morning, and last thing before
you go to bed at night in addition to sneaking
peeks during the day.
2. You become angry or agitated when your ac-
cess to LinkedIn is slow or prevents you from
connecting.
3. Given the choice of reading a book or spend-
ing time alone, you choose LinkedIn.
4. You check the number of "connections" you
have more than once a day.
5. Your Google searches consist of finding new
material related to LinkedIn.
6. You talk in terms of your friends as first, sec-
ond or third level connections.
7. It makes perfect sense to you to use some-
thing called Answers to ask questions.
8. At family and/or business gatherings, you're
hitting them up to see if they are on LinkedIn
and interested in connecting with you.
9. You would rather spend time on LinkedIn ver-
sus spending time with your wife/family/part-
ner/significant other (well, sometimes this
might be a good thing).
10. The hair on the back of your neck stands up
when someone mentions that Facebook is a
social networking site for business.
If you answer "true" to one or more of these ques-
tions, you may be Linked Addicted.
Now that we have identified characteristics of a
LinkedIn Addict, let's try to put a face with a name.
The first person that comes to mind would be "the
Doc" from the movie Back to the Future, all cra-
zy-eyed and white haired, yelling to Marty about
the De Lorean and the Time Continuum. On the
other side of the spectrum, perhaps we may
envision a young Doogie Howser who may have
progressed from an online diary (early version of
social communication) to immersing himself into
the cutting edge of social media. After all as a
teenage doctor, he sure had an original story to
share.
It has often been said that social media addicts do
not want to miss anything; they are glued to the
services they use 24/7 as they feel they must have
their finger on the pulse and be involved in every-
thing and all conversations. It's almost like the old
days with radio-call in contests. We all sat by the
phones waiting to dial and be "the hundred and
first caller." No, we couldn't dial too soon, but we
had to dial quickly...and to manage this dichotomy,
Chapter 41: Beware of Addictive Behavior 185
we needed to keep our finger on the rotary dialer
(which for you young people, was what we used
before voice activation).
We have populated this book with more informa-
tion, more tips and more techniques for leveraging
LinkedIn. So while we appreciate you reading our
rules, please don't blame us if you become a
Linked Addict!
R u l e
42
These Are Our
Rules, What Are
Yours?
You've read the preceding 41 rules
and now we close with our last rule.
Now it is our turn to break the rules.
You've read our rules, what are
yours? We look forward to continu-
ing to communicate with you. Feel
free to comment on them at:
http://www.LinkToPros-
per.com/24hourSuccess.
Chapter 42: These Are Our Rules, What Are Yours? 187
A p p e n d i x
A
Fast
FactsInteresting
Tidbits about
LinkedIn
With millions of people on LinkedIn,
for those who are trivia inclined or
statistical buffs, LinkedIn is rich in
information. We'll take our stab at
sharing some of it with you.
Fast Facts
Founded: Late 2002
Launched: May 1, 2003
Located: Mountain View, Cali-
fornia
Profitable: Yes
Funded: Yesover $100
million
Appendix A: Fast FactsInteresting Tidbits about LinkedIn 189
Investors: Sequoia Capital (the venture
investors behind Yahoo!, Google and PayPal),
Bain Capital Ventures, Greylock Partners and
Bessemer Ventures
Employees: Over 300
URL: http://www.LinkedIn.com
Key Mgmt: Dan Nye (CEO), Reid Hoffman
(Founder & Chairman of the Board)
LinkedIn's average user is 41 years old and
has a household income of $109,000
All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented on
LinkedIn
As of November 2008, there were over
30,000,000 registered users
Growth is 1,200,000 per month or almost 30
people per minute!
While Facebook is bigger, LinkedIn is now
growing faster. In April 2008, the number of
unique visitors to LinkedIn grew by 361% over
the year-earlier period, while the much larger
Facebook grew by 56%, according to Nielsen
Online. The largest social networking site,
MySpace, by contrast, grew just 3%.
High Profile people who maintain profiles on
LinkedIn include:
Bill Gates
John McCain
Barack Obama
Rudy Guiliani
Hillary Clinton
Ron Paul
T. Boone Pickens
Sir Alan Sugar (The Apprentice UK)
Appendix A: Fast FactsInteresting Tidbits about LinkedIn 191
About 93 percent of questions asked on LinkedIn's
Answers section receive answers and the first
answer to a question normally is posted within an
average of 9.4 hours, according to LinkedIn
spokesperson Krista Canfield.
Challenges
Although the following does not apply directly
to LinkedIn, it is considered part of "Web 2.0."
According to McKinsey & Company, only 21%
of business executives said they are
extremely or very satisfied with their
company's use of Web 2.0 tools. Clearly a
challenge to be addressed.
Criticism for changes and limitations placed
on its users including not showing the actual
number of connections (i.e. LinkedIn only
shows 500+ as opposed to the actual
number), restricting membership to no more
than 50 groups and limiting the total number or
invitations.
A p p e n d i x
B
The Crystal Ball
What Might LinkedIn
do in the Future?
This is probably the $1 billion
question that LinkedIn is answering
internally and boy do we wish we
had a crystal ball to forecast this!
Let's start our analysis for this by
looking at a possible strategic
direction the company may
entertain and progress with our
analysis down to the user level.
Clearly, by raising capital, LinkedIn
is looking to grow and its investors
are looking for a high priced exit
that rewards them for their invest-
ment. With that being said, there
have been rumors that Microsoft is
a natural fit to provide an exit
solution.
Appendix B: The Crystal Ball What Might LinkedIn do in the Future? 193
Three interesting points to ponder:
In the future Microsoft wants to bump up
against Google in paid search, and it needs to
reach the right demographics. Enter LinkedIn
with its millions ofmostly white-collarpro-
fessionals.
Microsoft is planning to battle Google in cloud
computing to keep its Office applications suite
relevant and, once again, it wouldn't hurt to
have millions of professionals (and adults) on
its side.
And perhaps more important is for a defensive
play. If LinkedIn fits so well under Microsoft,
how great would it look under the Google
umbrella?
Business Development
Research & Development LinkedIn is in the
process of opening its site to outside software de-
velopers, something Facebook did to great
fanfare. Through our research, we understand that
LinkedIn has been focusing on a developer
platform. This holds great potential if developed
out in line with LinkedIn's white-collar crowd.
Premium Memberships Think about the "velvet
rope." Back in the 1970's, at Studio 54, everyone
wanted to be on the inside of that rope. The desire
to get on the inside of that rope and achieve
"status" transformed Studio 54 into "the place to be
go and be seen." LinkedIn can do something
similar. If traditional networking can be considered
stale, LinkedIn has an amazing opportunity to
target those users who want status and want to
connect with the business elite. LinkedIn can
transform their Premium memberships from the
bland to status symbols and cater to the business
elite as well as the power user just like American
Express has done with the Amex Black card.
Business Partnerships Back in March 2008,
LinkedIn announced a partnership with Business-
week.com and Capital IQ to tie in their proprietary
data with LinkedIn's Company Profiles. This is just
one of many data tie-ins that could greatly benefit
business partners. Shifting our perspective on
business verticals, what if LinkedIn partnered with
some of the ERP vendors and provided any
number of simple enterprise software features?
While we are not infrastructure experts, we could
sure let our mind wander. It would be an interesting
Appendix B: The Crystal Ball What Might LinkedIn do in the Future? 195
and fun exercise to imagine all the types of
solutions that LinkedIn could provide here. Inter-
estingly, LinkedIn can harvest their own data to fa-
cilitate the development of their business
partnerships as top business people from all of the
Fortune 500, along with other potentially relevant
business partners, are already members of
LinkedIn.
We look forward to watch the development of
LinkedIn and see if it delivers on the promise it
currently has to alter business communications.
A p p e n d i x
C
42 Things You Can
Do with LinkedIn
Early in the book, we asked you
how you were looking to utilize
LinkedIn. To help you answer that,
we have provided a variety of per-
spectives from Executives to Small
Businesses to Job Seekers to func-
tional things you can do. So without
further ado, here are 42 things you
can do with LinkedIn.
1. Answer the question of why
you are on LinkedIn
2. Update and expand your pro-
file
3. (Better yet) Do an extreme
makeover on your profile!
Appendix C: 42 Things You Can Do with LinkedIn 197
4. Create your "3-second elevator pitch"
5. Customize your URL
6. Leverage the power of SEO by filling in your
specialties with effective phrases
7. Write recommendations
8. Ask for recommendations
9. Find an expert
10. Ask and answer questions
11. Ask for an introduction from one of your di-
rect connections to someone they are direct-
ly connected to
12. Educate people on how and why you want to
be contacted
13. Become adept at using the Search Function
14. Join and participate in a couple of relevant
groups
15. Organize a group based around an area of
interest to you
16. Continue to grow your connections and build
a quality network
17. Set up the Outlook Toolbar
18. Leverage the LinkedIn Widgets
Functional Uses:
19. Market your company
20. Use LinkedIn for Market Research
21. Gather business intelligence on your com-
petitors
22. Career Management
23. Job Search
24. Recruiting
25. Keeping in Touch
26. Find Business Partners, Vendors and Clients
27. Revise existing business processes
28. Establishing an introduction that leads to
Meeting Face-to-Face
Three ways for IT professionals to use LinkedIn
with their Internal Customers:
29. Connect with and build relationships within
your company
30. Communicate what you are working to your
users
31. Generate recommendations from your users
builds internal credibility
Three ways Executives can use LinkedIn:
32. Job search (just like everyone else)
33. Research and land board positions
34. Conversely, they can attract key employees,
partners and suppliers
Three ways Small Businesses can leverage the
power of communication:
35. Use the LinkedIn database to understand
more about your prospects and how people
you currently know can assist in connecting
you
36. Notify your contacts of significant news, pros-
pects, closings, sales, opportunities, etc.
37. Stay current on what your business partners,
vendors, former colleagues and potential
new recruits are up to in their professional
lives
Three ways for Job Seekers to leverage LinkedIn:
38. Check out LinkedIn jobs
39. Use LinkedIn to find relevant headhunters to
talk to
40. Use LinkedIn to expand the network of peo-
ple you already know and keep them abreast
of your search
And in closing
41. Play by the rulesdon't abuse, don't invent,
don't circumvent
42. Lastly, regardless of the preceding 41 things,
make time for your wife or significant other.
We won't go into what can happen if you don't
For more information and tips, please remember
that you can always go to
http://www.LinkToProsper.com/24hoursuccess.
A p p e n d i x
D
42 Rules In
ActionProducts &
Services to Help
You
Some of us who read this book may
not have the time to build their
LinkedIn experience to where they
want it to be, while others simply
want just a bit of additional
guidance. We offer a variety of
options to help your success at:
http://www.LinkToProsper.com
This includes our free companion
workbook to these 42 Rules at:
per.com/24hoursuccess
Other products and services are
available for purchase at:
per.com/Products.
Appendix D: 42 Rules In ActionProducts & Services to Help You 203
This includes:
For those who are looking to build success
habits but don't have much time to spend
21 Day Program to LinkedIn Success
Only 15 minutes per day
Your profile is your fundamental cornerstone
for your LinkedIn experience. For those who
want someone to completely redo their profile,
we offer:
The "Extreme Makeover"
Others have a strong profile but simply want
some tips on where it can be fine tuned, and
for that we offer:
A 30 Point Profile Assessment
There are a variety of user types on LinkedIn
and whereas some people like to learn
through books, others are more comfortable
with video instruction. Therefore we offer the
following downloadable Webinars:
LinkedIn-troduction Good starting
point for new users
Get Started Now For those who have
been on LinkedIn for a while but desire a
clearer focus on what they wish to
achieve now
People like to keep their knowledge sharp and
participating in a virtual group coaching, ala a
mini-mastermind, offers flexibility, interactivity
and of course, idea generation. Some
promote Group Think, but our 68 person
groups are called Group Link
Group Link
Appendix D: 42 Rules In ActionProducts & Services to Help You 205
A u t h o r
About the Authors
Chris Muccio is an award-winning
entrepreneur who draws upon insight-
ful experiences from his successful
career in Corporate America to guide
business leaders on the most
effective strategies to uncover profit
and growth opportunities resulting in
rapid and sustainable improvements
Author 207
within their business. His insight on social network-
ing is highly sought after.
David Burns has been the founder of three com-
panies, two of which were in the telecommunica-
tions industry. In these endeavors, he was
instrumental in raising over $15 million in private
equity as well as raising senior debt and working
capital revolvers. David started his career with
Ernst and Young, LLP where he worked on audits
of both public and private companies.
Peggy Murrah is the owner of a highly successful
web design and virtual assistance business,
providing her clients with resources to succeed in
the online world of business. Through her ongoing
networking, she created strong business relation-
ships with entrepreneurs across diverse indus-
tries, and facilitated many mutually beneficial
connections among them.
Your Rul es
Write Your Own Rules
You can write your own 42 Rules
book, and we can help you do itfrom
initial concept, to writing and editing,
to publishing and marketing. If you
have a great idea for a 42 Rules book,
then we want to hear from you.
As you know, the books in the 42
Rules series are practical guidebooks
that focus on a single topic. The books
are written in an easy-to-read format
that condenses the fundamental
elements of the topic into 42 Rules.
They use realistic examples to make
their point and are fun to read.
Two Kinds of 42 Rules Books
42 Rules books are published in two
formats: the single-author book and
the contributed-author book. The sin-
gle-author book is a traditional book
written by one author. The contribut-
ed-author book (like 42 Rules for
Working Moms) is a compilation of
Your Rules 209
Rules, each written by a different contributor,
which support the main topic. If you want to be the
sole author of a book or one of its contributors, we
can help you succeed!
42 Rules Program
A lot of people would like to write a book, but only
a few actually do. Finding a publisher, and distrib-
uting and marketing the book are challenges that
prevent even the most ambitious of authors to ever
get started.
At 42 Rules, we help you focus on and be success-
ful in the writing of your book. Our program con-
centrates on the following tasks so you don't have
to:
Publishing: You receive expert advice and
guidance from the Executive Editor, copy
editors, technical editors, and cover and
layout designers to help you create your book.
Distribution: We distribute your book through
the major book distribution channels, like
Baker & Taylor and Ingram, Amazon.com,
Barnes and Noble, Borders Books, etc.
Marketing: 42 Rules has a full-service
marketing program that includes a customized
Web page for you and your book, email regis-
trations and campaigns, blogs, webcasts,
media kits and more.
Whether you are writing a single-authored book or
a contributed-author book, you will receive
editorial support from 42 Rules Executive Editor,
Laura Lowell, author of 42 Rules of Marketing,
which was rated Top 5 in Business Humor and Top
25 in Business Marketing on Amazon.com
(December 2007), and author and Executive
Editor of 42 Rules for Working Moms.
Accepting Submissions
If you want to be a successful author, we'll provide
you the tools to help make it happen. Start today by
answering the following questions and visit our
website at http://superstarpress.com/ for more in-
formation on submitting your 42 Rules book idea.
Super Star Press is now accepting submissions for
books in the 42 Rules book series. For more infor-
mation, email:
[email protected] or call 408-257-3000.
Your Rules 211
B o o k s
Other Happy About Books
The roadmap for
recruiters using
LinkedIn
This book is a
must-read for
anyone wanting
the inside story on
how to use
LinkedIn to grow
their business
through
collaborative deals
or 'splits.'
Paperback $69.95
eBook $49.95
Books 213
Purchase these books at Happy About
http://happyabout.info/
or at other online and physical bookstores.
Networking Online
Making LinkedIn
Work for you!
This book explains the
benefits of using LinkedIn
and recommends best
practices so that you can
get the most out of it.
Paperback $19.95
eBook $11.95
A Message From Super Star Press
Thank you for your purchase of this 42 Rules Series
book. It is available online at:
http://42rules.com/24_hour_success_with_linkedin/ or at
other online and physical bookstores. To learn more
about contributing to books in the 42 Rules series, check
out http://superstarpress.com.
Please contact us for quantity discounts at
[email protected]
If you want to be informed by email of upcoming books,
please email [email protected].
Books 215

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