How to use Linkedin Properly? Three simple steps showing how to
Be Found - because people are looking
Connect - because you can see more and do more
Ask for Help - because everyone wants to help people - no-one wants to be sold at.
10. The younger , more affluent , more influential “ and Harder-to-Find Audience than The Leading Business Sites ” http://advertising.linkedin.com/audience/
59. Kenneth Crutcher - Heather Northey - Sarah Arrow - Nick Parkin - Barbara Saul - William J Martin - Andy Marshall - Jon Stow - Craig VanDevere - Andrew Wilcox - Jeremy Dent - John Cave - Angela Carr - Paul Wilkinson - Francoise Murat - Gemma Went - Robin Brittain - Kirsten Trengove - John Keleher - Jane Leach - John Lohan - Clare Sinclair - Tom Ward - Ben Harris - Keith Cooper - Hamish Taylor - Roy Casey - Richard White - Julian Dobson - Frank Feather - Charlie Profit - Sue Cartun - Derry Long - Dr Richard Norris - Gary King - Ken Grayling - Robert Digings - Freddy Daems - Mark Wing - Sally Church - Jon Barrett - Wendy Dashwood-Quick - Alex Albon - Steven Healey - Selina Noton - Jeremy Jacobs - Nicole Bachmann - Jason Leonard - Jerry Walder - Don Cooke – Andy 72 responses
No need to take notes, you can get access to this presentation online, including via my Linkedin profile if you connect with me.
Why do you have a linkedin account? Like many social tools Linkedin began as a way for people to stay in touch, in this case graduates from US universities. But today your linkedin network is useful to your employer, so many of you may be interested because you’ve been told be interested. Which is good! This is what is known as Social Capital. Your network is yours but you rent it to your employer whist you work for them.
What’s your experience? Audience: Put your hand up if you have a Linkedin Account Put your hand up if you feel you use it. Use it well? You may be one of the many people on linkedin who don’t use it. If you are it may seem that there is something going on, but you’re not part of it.
I’m here to show you 3 simple steps to using linkedin properly.
1 – How to Be found
2 How to Get Connected
3 How to Get Help. But firstly lets answer the obvious question
What is Linkedin? Here is what Linkedin Says to its Advertisers. Data from Summer 2009.
Average Age: 43 Earn over $100k: 75% Graduate or above education: 82% Middle management or above: 52%
Its a HUGE network, but numbers can be distracting. I like it because it is a USEFUL network. Last summer 3m users in the UK (grown from 1m in two years)
Linkedin is not a substitute for your real life network. It won’t take the place of meeting people. It isn’t either/or but Both/And What’s really interesting is here where LinkedIn meets your real life network. This is what it has been designed for – helping you use your real life network better.
So why is a network important? Those of us in business know that the hardest thing is to find people you can trust. Who better to go to for trust than the people you know? Linkedin creates a footprint of trustworthyness and expertise for all its users, including you.
And why are your relationships important? In the US a couple of Professional Services marketers have completed an 18 year study of why people win contracts and published their findings last year. They asked professional services firms about the last contract they won. 89% had a relationship with the client before they were asked to quote. We know relationships are important. Linkedin helps to make, build and use your Social Capital, that is, your relationships. We’ll come back to this later.
So lets begin with the first of our simple steps. I’m not going to be able to show you all the things you can do with Linkedin, but we will be visiting some key places, as shown in the next slide.
Here is my home page on Linkedin, with the menus across the top. Visit this home page by clicking here. Edit your profile using the profile tab You’ll need to become familiar with the settings section. We’ll also be adding connections in step 2 And in step 3 we’ll be also looking at the Answers section, and the Groups section.
Be Found...because real people are looking
How do you find people? If you’re looking for an architect you might look us up in the Yellow Pages. Is this how you get the majority of your business? No, we don’t either. We get work from our real life contacts.
What differentiates you is your network. The people in your network. Your advocates. Golfer A: My architect designed my project but it isn’t viable. Golfer B: Doesn’t happen with my architect Peter Wells. Give him a ring - here’s his number. What does the person do next – call? Not these days. Today they are more likely to do this first:
Notice that we’re talking about an individual here If they have a properly prepared profile on Linkedin, this is what happens next.
Because Linkedin is so big and public profiles are indexed by google, its the best way to be found by google. And google, not linkedin, is where everyone looks. This listing appeared 24 hours after we tweaked his profile – its now right at the top. What happens when someone clicks the link?
This is what you see if you click through. It tells a visitor everything they need to know about Peter. Is this the right Peter Wells? What does he do? How do I get in touch or find out more? Here is how we did it:
The page is optimised for the human enquirer, and for google. The image and descriptions confirm who he is and why you would want to contact him. The strapline under his name gives more information about him You can click through to his websites which are described (not ‘my web’ ‘my blog’ but ‘Barefoot and Gilles Architects’ and ‘GreenGauge homes’) We have made enough of the profile public so non linkedin users can use it too. Key ideas for google: The word Architect used six times but within normal language The links to our websites are edited so as give give google keyword links. We have also edited his public URL to include his name. Where do we do all this on Linkedin? Can show you everythign but here are key places.
Here is the settings page. The main profile editing tools are show on the top left. You might also want to work your way through all the settings on this page to check what you want to happen with all your information, whom you want to see what, and what you want to receive from others. What settings should you choose?
The way people use linkedin can be seen as a spectrum from the completely closed (though nothing on the internet is entirely out of view) to the completely open. Neither extreme is useful – you need to be somewhere inbetween. Choose the approach to openness that works for you. I recommend you begin at the closed end and see how it works, gradually opening up as you begin to understand how it works and see results.
So get your profile right, but then you should
Connect... because you will see more As with your real life network, connecting will bring you to a tipping point where you can start to use the network effectively. Here’s how it works.
When you join Linkedin you are asked to enter your career history – what you do, where you have been and where you want to go. As we’ve seen, this profile helps people find you and know who you are. Get your profile sorted BEFORE you connect to anyone – then they will see what you want them to see.
Linkedin then allows you to say you who you know (enter names or upload email addresses) Linkedin then tells you whom you know, who is already using Linkedin. You will be surprised.
Connect to the people you know and then they can see each other. They find out they have you in common.
And you can see their contacts too.
In fact you can see their contacts contacts – three levels of separation.
Also, because no. 2 is a trusted contact of my trusted contact no.1, I can check him out with confidence, and perhaps be introduced.
He becomes my contact too, and I can see his contacts contacts. This is how we build a network online. It is important to remember that each of these nodes is a professional, known to those who know you.
Here’s my quick guide to how to connect properly on linkedin. Firstly, click on add connections and import your email address book. You can either use hotmail, googlemail or other webmail services, or upload a csv or vcf file. A wide range of formats are supported.
Linkedin will show you a list of all your contacts from your uploaded data. I’ve blurred out the list as this information is confidential. Those who are using linkedin will have this little ‘in’ symbol on the right of their entry. You only want to invite people who are Linkedin Users (don’t become a salesperson for Linkedin!) Linkedin suggests that you tick the box, and a whole group to the right hand box, and then click Invite Selected Contacts. But this will send all of them an automated message, so… I suggest you do something different. Click the person’s blue name and go through to their profile.
Here is this users’ profile. I can see more because he’s already in my network – a 3 rd level contact, so I’ve blanked out the detail. On each users public profile is a link which says ‘Add xxxx to your network’. Click on this link and invite them to connect to you on Linkedin. This way you’ll be able to personalise the message for each one you want to connect to. Mention you’re new to Linkedin, mention why you’re using it now. Why should they connect with you here? When someone accepts your connection you’ll get an email and you can go and visit their full profile. Why connect like this? Because linkedin makes real life connections VISIBLE
With just a handful of your connections on linkedin, you can start to see a lot of people. These are the people that you and your contacts know who are on linkedin. Because they are on Linkedin they are visible to you. This means that you can look people up and find out if someone you know, knows them. Lets just look at the second degree – people your trusted connections know DIRECTLY.
This is a selection my network of connections at the 2 nd level – the people my direct connections know directly. I used Linkedin’s advance search options to search for certain type of professionals in my network, in the UK.
Here is the advanced search module on Linkedin. Its right up on every page and you can choose to search ‘People’.
There are a wide range of fields to search in, some are premium so you have to pay for those, but there really is no need if you have a network of a reasonable size.
So get your network onto linkedin, because you can see more, and do more for them and for yourself.
Now the more entrepreneurial of you might be thinking ‘great, I can call up all of these people and offer my services’. And the more cautious of you might be thinking ‘oh no, people will ring me up and offer their services’. The important thing is that it isn’t the fact you’ve got this information that matters. It is what you do with it that matters.
Because, what you do with information is what forms your reputation. And we are aiming at making our online footprint one of credibility and usefulness. We want to be the ‘go-to person’ for our specialism. Not the ‘avoid’ person.
Remember the golf match. You were referred BECAUSE YOU COULD HELP.
We don’t want to be spammed on the golf course.
So why would we want to get unsolicited sales messages on linkedin?
What is great about linkedin is that you can turn off unsolicited sales messages. By adjusting your settings By hiding updates from over enthusiastic connections By removing unhelpful connections. Turn off the spam. And it follows – don’t send any.
Pushing doesn’t work. We need to use Pull Marketing – that is, Push marketing is when the customer doesn’t want your product or service. Pull marketing is when the customer does want your product or service. Instead of pushing our stuff on people, we’re going to ask them for help, and they will ask us.
We are talking about something much more useful than a sales channel. Linkedin is a tool for networking. And networking is about helping people, and other people helping you. Everyone loves to be asked to help. Everyone hates being sold to.
With this in mind, rather than pushing our stuff on people, we’re going to be there when we are needed, and we’re going to ask for help. Linkedin lets us do both of these things efficiently.
On your Home Page you can see what your contacts are doing. These are all places where they can get in touch with you. Here are some of the ways we can ask for help. Status Updates Answers, and Groups.
Update your status when you’re working on something you need help with. Linkedin notifies your contacts on their home page and via email (if they choose to accept updates this way) Use sparingly - each change is notified. No twitter spam – no sales. Here I am sharing a link to a couple of vacancies we needed to fill. Note you can decide who sees your update.
Within four days the successful applicant’s CV was in my inbox. He’d read about the vacancy on an email newsletter passed to him by a friend. The newsletter was sent out by one of my contacts on linkedin (because she likes to share vacancies as part of her job).
Linkedin allows you to broadcast your business-related questions to both your network and the greater LinkedIn network. The premise is that you will get more high-value responses from the people in your network than more open forums.
Here is a question I asked about a talk I had to give to the RIBA. I was finding it very difficult to understand what the audience was going to be like. I posted the question on my blog, and I also used Answers, making the question public and sent it to a dozen close contacts who might be able to help.
The people who answered my question were amazing. They offered their slide presentations, they shared their best presentation advice, they suggested topics. One of the most interesting things was how Linkedin worked even better than the blog. Here’s how
Remember this? I pointed out that the people on linkedin who you know in real life become more valuable to you. Even better, Linkedin provides a link between the real lives of people you know and you don’t know. One of my contacts on LinkedIn is a friend of mine, whose wife I know because we had our sons together. He read my question on Linkedin and contacted me. Turns out a distant cousin of his worked at the RIBA for ten years. She was able to tell me exactly what the audience was like, and what the people who commissioned me would be concerned about too. I was able to produce a presentation which hit the spot.
The last example I’d like to suggest is Groups, and in particular I suggest you join the Chelmsford Women’s Referral Network group (search for CWRN in ‘Groups’ or click the link) A group acts as a shared community of interest, and for real time events like this, enables people to keep in touch and ask the group for help outside meetings. I’ve set up an ‘Introduce Yourself’ thread with some brief questions for you to answer briefly so we can all get to know you all better. Also I’ll set up a ‘Questions about Linkedin’ thread for you to share your questions, answers, and ideas about using linkedin. Use the group to share links and ask questions about anything that we might be able to help you with. You can edit the settings so you get a daily or weekly email when there is new content.
So here’s your homework – Sort out your profile so you can be found the way you want to be found. Get your contacts onto Linkedin so you can help them better and they you, and Ask for help – via status updates, the Answers section, and by joining the CWRN group.