How often are you in LinkedIn? I'm logged in every day. I have multiple tabs saved as my 'home pages' and LinkedIn is one of them. So I'm prompted to be there every day, checking for messages, invitations and articles and posts of interest. LinkedIn is a great networking tool, if you use it as intended. LinkedIn never intended for us to connect with strangers but with people we knew or had a passing acquaintance with. Of course, these days they make it really easy to connect with strangers by … [Read more...]
Using LinkedIn for your mailing list
I'm amazed at how many people are just adding my contact details to their email lists because I agreed to connect with them at LinkedIn. They don't even ask permission - they just do it. That's a big 'no-no' and should NOT be done. I'm going to share with you some links from others telling the same thing but firstly, I want to encourage you to look at the User Agreement at LinkedIn. Wonder how many people actually read it? Particularly section 8 with the Do's and Don'ts. Let's just look at … [Read more...]
Upscaling your LinkedIn Profile
I've been on LinkedIn now for just over 10 years and have seen a lot of changes during that time. When I joined there were only 14million members worldwide, now I'm connected to more than that at third level connection. In 2012 I received a certificate stating I was in the top 1% most viewed profiles. At that stage there were 200 million members. That meant I was amongst the top 2M people but it still sounded impressive. I had that certificate laminated and show it when doing presentations on … [Read more...]
Strange happenings at LinkedIn
Invitations I never sent. Are you getting acceptances from people for invitations you haven't sent at LinkedIn? I've had the same thing happen. These are for people I do not know personally and would not be in any address contact list that I own. They are genuine in that I can go to LinkedIn and see the acceptance message, but I don't know the people and have never conversed with them via a forum or other means. LinkedIn does have a discussion forum and there have been many people complaining … [Read more...]
Open a LinkedIn account without adding your address book.
I had a colleague email me the other day. He'd been wanting to accept invitations sent to him to connect at LinkedIn, but every time he tried, LinkedIn was wanting to access his Gmail address book before he could go any further. So he would stop and not proceed. It's been a long time since I opened my account at LinkedIn but I know that you don't have to let LI access your address book. Once he sent me a snapshot of what he was getting, I was able to tell him what he could do, to open an … [Read more...]
Linkedin and Google ranking
One of the LinkedIn groups was discussing how you can check your *Google rank for your LinkedIn profile. Why were we checking our ranking? Because the person posting the original message had a theory that we would all be at the same rank for our profiles at LinkedIn. It was soon found that wasn't the case, although the majority at the discussion seemed to have a ranking of 3, there were some with 2 and 4 as well. I hadn't thought to do that before and so thought I'd play the game too. My … [Read more...]
The Faceless Ones in Social Networking
As many of you would know, I'm an active networker, both online and offline. I love connecting with people, learning things, sharing my own knowledge and experience and helping others move forward with their businesses. There are times when I come across people who don't really seem to get what networking is about. For some it's about how much business they can get, but they're missing the other half of the equation - developing relationships and building a list of resources for their own … [Read more...]
Referrals, Testimonials and Professional Ratings
There appears to be a new trend of asking people, via LinkedIn, to give you a testimonial, recommendation or professional rating. Now, that would be OK if the person asking had actually done some work for me, or worked with me on a project, and I had personal experience of their work-style and ability. But, increasingly, I'm getting people asking me who I've never worked with. How could I possibly know what their work ethic is like or how they achieve things? When participating in an online … [Read more...]
Helping clients with Social Media
This was a discussion at a LinkedIn group and below is my response on how I think about helping clients with Social Media. Your comments are most welcome - you may, or may not, agree with me. Then why not let me, and our readers know? "It's hard with social media. It's a networking tool. Networking is about building relationships. It's not about throwing information out there and expecting others to take it up, and not give anything back. It's a two way thing. I happily set up Facebook … [Read more...]
