LinkedIn For Profit 1-2-3

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Once you have decided to build a Linkedin presence for your business, follow these steps to get things started.

WHAT IS LINKEDIN FOR?

LinkedIn is a professional social networking application that allows you to connect and communicate with colleagues in your business network. Through those connections, there are several interesting things that LinkedIn allows you to do:

1. Access your colleagues’ network.  This allows you to cultivate potential business alliances or generate “warm” sales leads through referrals. If you are networking or job hunting, this is how you find out who knows whom.

2. Access your colleagues’ resumes.  The online resumes tell you not only where they work now, but also the companies / organizations that they used to work for.

3. Create a presence for your business.  Althought you cannot build a business brand on LinkedIn, you CAN build a separate information profile for your company that connects viewers with others on LinkedIn who include your company in their profile.

4. Self promotion.  Since others are using LinkedIn as a source of professional information, be sure your profile is accurate and that you are linked to people with whom you would want to be publically associated. Special note: Although you may get many “connection requests,” it is generally wiser to only accept connections with people you truly know socially or professionally.  Nothing is more embarrassing than being asked for an introduction and having to admit that you don't know the person well enough to have them accept your phone call.

5. News and Event promotion.  You can use LinkedIn to notify people in your own network about news and events that might interest them.

6. Job hunting.  If you own a business, hopefully this will never be necessary, but if you think you will be looking of a job, get started now on developing your network. LinkedIn provides you not only with job openings but with the tools to determine if you have a connection to a particular company.  You migt also find good hires on Linkedin.

HOW TO GET STARTED

Below are step by step instructions mixed with why those actions are important.

1. Create an account.  Go to LinkedIn.com and sign up for an account.

2. Create a personal profile.  This is your online resume so unless you uncheck the “public” box, it is available to the public. It is what people will see about you, so be sure that what you write is an accurate and also a positive representation of yourself. Use strong descriptive verbs to showcase your experience in a positive light. Note your key accomplishments. Be sure your LinkedIn Summary includes all your skills and greatest achievements. If you have more than 3-4 lines of detail, use bullets.

3. Make sure you provide a complete profile.  Your personal interests are important. Be sure to include them. Your hobbies and extracurricular activities provide those reading your profile another means of finding a connection with you. It’s a great non-work conversation topic to help establish a relationship. If you have a list of interests, format them as a list, rather than a paragraph.

4. Spell check.  LinkedIn does not spell check for you. If you are uncertain of your spelling or grammar, check the text in a word processing program and then paste it into LinkedIn.

5. Create your link.  Establish a personal LinkedIn URL (web address) for your Public Profile. Mine is http://linkedin.com/in/biztrek. If you want to lead folks to your LinkedIn profile then post your LinkedIn URL to your email signature, your blog, and other social networking sites.

6. Add your links.  If you have a website and / or blog, include it under the website option. Choose “Other” so you can name the site yourself (rather than My Company or My Blog).

7. Make your profile available.  In the Settings area, provide all of your email addresses to ensure anyone looking to find you on LinkedIn can do so. The emails you provide in Settings will not be publicly available but rather used when others check to see if their contacts are on LinkedIn. Do not post your email address itself on your profile unless you want to receive (lots of) unsolicited messages which bypass the Linkedin protective systems.

8. Upload your contacts.  As stated earlier, only request connections to individuals you know. It is considered bad etiquette to request connections to people who do not know you, yet I am amazed how many people try to do so. I automatically ignore any requests where a personal relationship has not already been established … or I seek to establish the relationship first, and then link with them. Think QUALITY of connections, not quantity! Begin this process by requesting a connection from the people in your contact list who are already LinkedIn users and to whom you want to have a public connection. When you import your contacts, LinkedIn shows you which people are already active. After that, continue the process by inviting your colleagues who are NOT current users of LinkedIn. However, only send the request to folks you think would appreciate the nudge into professional social networking. When sending the invitation, create a personal message for the connection request that is unique to you. If you are new to LinkedIn you can use a message acknowledging your newbie status, such as “I’m just getting started with LinkedIn and I would be honored if you would connect to me.”

9. Keep your Profile up to date.  Your job description and your skills are likely to change over time so be sure your Profile remains accurate.

BEGINNING TO USE LINKEDIN

Once your profile is set up, you can begin using it.  Before establishing a presence for your business, here are some things you should do first.

1. The “Share” question.  This is a place to post your current status or what you are working on. Update it whenever you visit LinkedIn. State truthfully what you are doing or what you are interested in, but try to also make it of interest to those visiting your profile. Since you may not update this status daily, remember that this post may be on your profile for multiple days. After 5 days, LinkedIn will remove your status so that you do not have an old status on your profile. If you do not update your status, your profile will simply not have one.

2. Make a routine of adding your contacts.  You can add contacts one by one by clicking on Contacts and then Add Contacts. However, I highly recommend inviting multiple contacts at one time to reduce your time spent on LinkedIn. I recommend either every 2 weeks or monthly, depending upon how soon you need to develop relationships with individuals you have just met. If you use an address book (i.e. Outlook or Gmail), add people there as you meet them. Then access / upload your address book when you are updating your LinkedIn connections.. Check to see if any new contacts are LinkedIn users and send one mass request to your new contacts. Remember to personalize the invitation. If your request does not seem appropriate for a particular contact, pull them from the mass request and send them a personalized email requesting a connection.

3. Search for other people.  If you don't have an email address for someone, there are still several options available.

a. SEARCH BY NAME. Search in the People Search located in the top right corner. If entering the name provides too many results to comb through, use the Advance search to help you find the right person. Without an email address LinkedIn will ask you to define how you know this person. This is helpful to the person you are contacting. NOTE:  If too many folks reject your request to connect, then LinkedIn will remove this feature from your account.

b. FINDING PEOPLE. If you need to find a contact at a particular company or you need an introduction to a particular individual, search the company name or the individual’s name in the search field in the top right corner. Change the search to Company or People depending upon your particular search. LinkedIn will provide you with potential matches and your connections to those matches.

c. INDIRECT (2nd Level) CONNECTIONS. When you find the person you are looking for, an icon to the right might indicate that the desired connection is only one contact distant from you. LinkedIn has a built-in system for requesting an introduction (Get Introduced Through a Connection) but I do not recommend you use it. Rather, I strongly recommend requesting the introduction offline by sending your contact a personalized email or preferably, calling them with the request for an introduction. The LinkedIn system is impersonal. Once you have made the connections, they can be added to your LinkedIn network.

d. DISTANT CONNECTIONS If the desired connection is two or more contacts distant from you, the process is a bit trickier. Let’s say you want to reach John Doe and, according to LinkedIn, Jane Doe knows John Doe. LinkedIn will tell you who your connector is but will not tell you who Jane Doe’s connection is. In this situation I recommend sending an email to Jane Doe, asking her to check LinkedIn to determine who her connector is and if she thinks that person would be open to a request for an introduction. If she thinks yes, then you can use the LinkedIn system to request the intro or use email to make the request. If her answer is no, search for another contact to reach John Doe. If you use email to make the request, be sure to include your LinkedIn profile URL in the email in case that person forwards your request.

4. Monitor your updates.  If you are in sales and continually searching for warm leads, monitor your update stream for new connections made by your contacts. The stream can be found on your LinkedIn Home page. You can also explore your connection’s current contacts for other potential leads.

BECOMING A POWER USER

Here are some of the ways you can get more personal impact and results from LinkedIn.

1. RECOMMENDATIONS on LinkedIn not only provide a personal commentary about you, they link to the person providing the recommendation, allowing the reader to check up on the person providing the recommendation.

2. DO NOT REQUEST RECOMMENDATIONS. Do not use the Request Recommendation feature. That is generally consider to be bad etiquette and is likely to backfire. If you know someone well enough to ask for a recommendation, do so verbally (or with a personalized email), being careful to state that doing so is completely up to that person. Do not push a request for a recommendation. I have had many people ask me for recommendations when I really do not know them well enough to do so. It puts me in an awkward position because I have to say no, which might jeopardize the budding relationship.

3. GIVE TO GET. You want recommendations? Provide some recommendations. Doing so also puts you on other’s profiles. If you provide a recommendation, be sure it is personalized. If possible include specific examples of the person’s skill set.

4. REFERENCE SEARCH. If you would like a reference from someone who worked with a particular individual, use the Reference Search tool under the People section.

5. WHO’S VIEWED MY PROFILE. This feature tells you how much exposure you have. You can find it on your LinkedIn Home page.

6. ANSWERS (Q&A) LinkedIn calls this feature Answers rather than Questions. This is a helpful way to connect with new, like-minded people. Some folks provide remarks in the Answers feature of LinkedIn as a means of helping establishing themselves as an expert. The Answers can truly be a means of accessing experts. Experts want to be heard, so they watch for questions they can answer. If you want to be regarded as an expert, and you have the time to sort through the non-questions, respond to questions and topics on Answers and Discussions. If you are short on time, I recommend skipping this feature as both functions can be filled with too many self-serving "non-questions".

7. GROUPS. These are essentially affinity groups. Join groups of interest to you, but be careful to make sure you meet the posted criteria (if any). You will be personally invited to some Groups and you will find others on your own by using the Groups Search in the top right of any LinkedIn page. You will quickly learn which groups are active and useful to you. You can change the Settings for each of your groups so as not to clutter your email inbox with messages you are not interested in receiving. Within the particular group choose Settings to adjust your Contact Settings. You can also choose whether or not a particular Group’s icon is publicly displayed on your Profile. Updates and changes within each group will be showcased on your LinkedIn home page.

8. JOB POSTINGS: LinkedIn pays their bills with job posting fees collected. If you are searching for a job, be sure to check out the Job postings on LinkedIn. If you find a position of interest, look at the Posted By to see how close a connection you have with the person who posted the position. If the connection is too distant, enter the company’s name in the Search People to determine if you have a closer connection than the person who posted the position.

ADDING APPLICATIONS

LinkedIn has several applications that can help you more fully utilize LinkedIn. You can find Applications in the top left box of any LinkedIn page. LinkedIn provides simple and clear instructions for each application. In my opinion, the two that really integrate well with LinkedIn are BlogLink and Slideshare.

1. WORDPRESS or BLOGLINK: WordPress or Blog Link can automatically add your most recent blog posts to your LinkedIn Profile. If your blog posts help represent you and your organization, use Blog Link. Blog Link also offers to search your contacts, grab their blogs and serve as a blog feed (i.e. a means of pulling the recent blog posts of your contacts into one location). Unless you honestly do not know which of your contacts blog, I do not recommend using this feature. Most likely you have a good idea of who blogs and can set up a separate feed (either email or something like Google Reader).  Linkedin is not the best place to consolidate the blogs you read.

2. SLIDESHARE or GOOGLE PRESENTATION (IF YOU HAVE A SLIDE PRESENTATION). If you already have a PowerPoint presentation that you would like to highlight on your LinkedIn profile, then your work is mostly done! The presentation is posted in the middle of your profile. If someone was interested enough to check out your profile, they may be interested enough to watch a presentation you offer. If you do not have one yet, you can add it later (whenever it makes sense to do so).

 In addition, you might also want to explore some of the other applications such as Company Buzz, Polls Trip-it and Reading List.

CREATING A BUSINESS PRESENCE

Linkedin offers a tool to create a profile for your business.  Go to the "Companies" area and add create a profile for your business.  You will be able to add a brief description about your business, and your specific specialty areas.  Then add you logo and summary information such as primary contact, location(s), industry, owmership type and status, number of employees, year founded and web site.  Once the record has been created, Linkedin will search its database for other linkedin members who have email addresses associated with your web site domain.  There is not much more functionality than that.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

Here are some additional things to think about.

1. More connections means a higher search result.  By adding connections, you increase the likelihood that people will see your profile first when they’re searching for someone to hire or do business with. In addition to appearing at the top of search results, people would much rather work with people who their friends know and trust.

2. Search engine access.  LinkedIn allows you to make your profile information available for search engines to index. Since LinkedIn profiles receive a fairly high PageRank in Google, this is a good way to influence what people see when they search for you. To do this, create a public profile and select “Full View.” To strengthen the visibility of this page in search engines, use this link in various places on the web. For example, when you comment in a blog, include a link to your profile in your signature.

3. Enhance your visibility.  You can also promote your blog or website to search engines like Google and Yahoo! Your LinkedIn profile allows you to publicize websites. If you’re linking to your personal blog, include your name or descriptive terms in the link, and tada … instant search-engine optimization for your site (to make this work, be sure your public profile setting is set to “Full View”).

4. Use "Archive" rather than "Decline".  If someone contacts you and you don’t want to form a connection with them, you don’t need to flatly reject them and worry about the attendant awkwardness. When looking at the invitation to connect, simply hit “Archive.” The other person does not receive a message saying their invitation has been rejected, and you don’t have to worry about unwanted invitations clogging up your inbox.  Likewise, if you find that an existing contact is blasting you with too much information or making overly aggressive requests for introductions and recommendations, LinkedIn will let you remove that person easily — and without the contact knowing they’re out of your network. If only it were that easy in real life.

FINALLY.  IF YOU FOUND ANY ERRORS HERE

Linkedin periodically changes some of their policies, systems and processes.  If you discover any changes from what is written here, please let us know so we can update this resource page for other readers.  Please use the "Contact BizTrek" link at the bottom of this page.