1. My Linked in Journey
This is a history of my Journey through the Jungle of Linkedin. Like all Networking activities utilising
the Power of Linked in doesn’t just happen.
I am like most people out there. I joined Linked in quite a while ago and created a profile and
literally forgot about it. Of course NOTHING HAPPENED!!!.
Well that was a waste of time was my first thought. I had have had great succsess in the past using
face to face networking and built a whole business using BNI so I fully understood the concepts of
Networking – but Linkedin, I just didn’t get it.
Then one day a business contact that I hadn’t heard from for a long time sent me an invitation to
connect via Linkedin. I clicked on his invite and checked out his profile. Wow was I surprised. He had
over 500 Connections and when I looked at some of these connections I found he was connected to
some serious people. This got me very curious. I got on the phone and picked his brains on Lnkedin.
He told me that he had been having some great success with Linkedin and told me to get off the
fence and start using it. So here I am on the beginning of my Linked in journey. I will share with you
what I did, how I did it and what were the results. Now don’t get me wrong I am not any kind of
Guru of Linked in, I am just an average Joe soap business person who wanted to improve my
business, but by sharing this journey with you I hope you too can get some meaningful results from
Linkedin.
Overview of my Linkedin Strategy
1) Create a Linkedin Snap shot. (Now for some of you this may be of little use if you have never
used Linked in before. If this is the case use the Linkedin help section to get the basics done.
This is very helpful as it will show you how to create your profile and get going) This is to give
you an overall view of where you are and sets your starting benchmark so you monitor your
actions and progress against your Goal Plan later on. Without doing this you cant accurately
quantify your time and efforts and your results.
2) Create a Goal Plan. This will be setting the Goals of what you want to achieve. Be realistic
with you self as achieving these Goals will take time and effort. Make sure you can commit
yourself to the time involved. Regularly monitor your Goals and don’t beat yourself up if you
don’t achieve them. If needs be re set your Goals to be more realistic depending on the
time you need to achieve them.
3) Create an Action Plan. This is a detailed plan of what you are actually going to do to achieve
your Goals. These actions could be, how many connection requests you send a week or how
many comments on discussions you make. In this section you will determine these actions
and monitor what you actually do every week. Remember Linkedin is just like any
Networking activity. Regular consistent action will bring results rather than massive action in
irregular spurts. As an example someone might all of a sudden have run out of business for

2. whatever reason. Suddenly they need to get out and Network like a banshee to try and pull
in some business. This generally doesn’t work as Networking is all about building Trust Like
and Relationships. Its much better to Network on a sustainable and consistent basis. Doing
this should build a pipeline of business over the long term and if there is a dip in business
your relationships are strong enough to actually ask your contacts for help. Linkedin is no
different. Building relationships is key. You can’t just go on Linkedin and sell, it won’t work!
Once you have done the 3 steps above you are well on your way to getting the best out of Linkedin.
Spend some quality time on these steps as they will be your bedrock of your success. Don’t skimp on
any aspect of the process and most of all be Honest with yourself and keep it all achievable within
your time constraints. There are sample plans for each section so print them out and use them.
REMEMBER NO ACTION = NO RESULTS

3. STEP 1 Linkedin Snap Shot
If you have just created your Linkedin account go and read the Help
section on Linkedin and create your profile and you can skip this bit as
you will have nothing to Benchmark yet.
1) Go to your profile and use Edit profile. This will show you all the
information about your profile and what stats you have.
2) Use a spreadsheet and record the following:-
a. Number of Connections
b. Number of Recommendations you have
c. How many websites you have listed and their names
d. The % of your Profile completness
e. Record the data from the “Whos viewed my profile?”section
i. Number of times your profile has been viewed in the last seven days
ii. Number of times you have shown up in the search results.
f. Record the number of activities you have in the activities section (click “See more
activity” to get all your activity)
g. Record how people you have recommended
h. Record how people have recommended you.
i. Number of Groups you are a member of
3) On your spread sheet set up some columns for Now, 1 month, 6 months and 1 year so you
can record your progress. See an example table below. This is my exact numbers when I
started this process.
Metric Benchmark 1 Month 3 Months 6 months
Connections 57
Recommendations 1
Websites 1 (No name)
% Completeness 90%
Profile views 7 (in 7days)
Search Results 14
Recommendations made 2
No of Groups 13
Now we have some definitive numbers we can work with and monitor

4. STEP 2 Goal Setting
Before you launch into this you must be aware that this is a moveable feast. The first time
you do this you are really flying blind because until you then set up your action plan and
start to actually carry out the actions you will not know what time it will take you to do the
actions to achieve your goals. So your first pass is really a wish list. From there you can set
the actions carry them out and then revisit your Goals and tweak them accordingly either up
or down depending on your results. Don’t try and rigidly stick to your first set of goals as
they may not be realistic. On the other hand if you don’t actually do anything with regards
to your actions I give you full liberty to beat yourself up with a big stick!!
NO ACTIONS means NO RESULTS
Here are my first pass at setting my Goals.
1) Increase my Connections to
a. 1 Month 100
b. 3 Months 200
c. 6 Months 400
2) Increase my recommendations to
a. 1 month 5
b. 3 Months 10
c. 6 Months 20
3) Sort out my website Display name and add more websites by creating a Blog
4) Increase my Profile views to;
a. 1 Month 20
b. 3 Months 30
c. 6 months 40

5. 5) Increase my search results to
a. 1 Month 20
b. 3 Months 30
c. 6 months 50
6) Increase the number of recommendations I make to
a. 1 Month 5
b. 3 Months 10
c. 6 Months 20
7) Groups.
a. Look at the groups I am actually a member of and decide weather it is a
suitable group for me
b. If suitable post at least two comments a month ( Ask sensible questions and
engage in discussions where I think I can add value and help people)
c. If Unsuitable then leave the group. At this point I am thinking that this may
be important as I don’t want my e mail in box clogged up with Group updates
that are not relevant to me. I may be wrong so lets see how it goes.
8) Profile
a. Take a serious look at my profile and see what changes I can make to improve
it. Your profile is extremely important as this is the first place people will look
and you need to make a good impression.
b. As above find at least 3 people who have excellent profiles and seem to be
successful with linked in and ask for their opinions on my profile and what
changes I can make.

6. STEP 3 Action Plan

7. This is the tricky bit to start with. First off you have our first pass wish list of Goals. So how
do you put this into action. Well what I have done is commit myself to 1 hour a day to do
the actions. Don’t forget that you can do these actions in Business hours or in your free time
as Linkedin is an online platform so you can do these actions from home. If you think about
it how many hours do you actually spend Face to face Networking? If you go to a Network
meeting that may last two hours on average then you will still have to prepare and travel
there and back . So a two hour meeting could actually be 3 -4 hours of your valuable time.
1) Increase my connections. For this I can use a quick method to get more connections.
You can import your contacts from your online e mail accounts such a gmail or
Yahoo mail or you can import contacts from your Outlook address book. Linked in
will search these contacts and see if they are on Linkedin. If they are on linked in
they can be connected. To import contacts from Outlook you will need to create a
.csv file and import this. The Linkedin help section explains all this just search on
“Importing Contacts”
a. 1 Month to 100
i. I need to get another 43 connections in 1 month to achieve this. Now
I think I can do this, so I will look to generate 2 connections a day on
average. This is 60 connections in a month which gives me some lee
way. Obviously this will not happen every day so some days I will have
to do more and some days less. More importantly I think this is
achievable.
b. 3 Months to 200
i. This is doubling my connections in a 2 month period. Again using the
approach as above I think this is achievable and I am sure that as my
network grows I will get requests from people to connect through the
other activities I will be doing. Lets see what happens
c. 6 Months
i. Just rinse and repeat. I believe that if I keep doing this I can achieve
these numbers.
2) Recommendations. I have kept these numbers low as I want “True and Honest”
recommendations from people I have done business with.
i. 1 Month 5
1. I will actually contact 5 people who I know like me, trust me
and would be willing to give me a recommendation. I thinks
this should be easy.

8. ii. 3 Month and 6 Months
1. I will keep asking for recommendations and try to achive these
Goals.
3) Sort out my Websites.
a. This one is easy. I will edit my profile and display the names of my website.
b. The second part is a little harder. I will install a blog on the back of my
website and start posting interesting articles. I plan to update this on a bi
weekly basis so I don’t create too much work.
4) Increase my profile views
a. This is a consequence of the of all the actions. The more people I connect to
the people will automatically look at my Profile. I will monitor this closely to
see what actions improve this the most
5) Increase my search results
a. To do this I will improve my heading and incorporate my keywords in the
most efficient and user friendly way. The way this works is when someone
searches for a particular keyword phrase Linked looks at your header words
and displays the most relevant results. (I may be wrong but this is what I
understand from my research)
6) Increase the number of recommendations I make
a. I Month to 5
i. I will make a recommendation every time someone provides a good
service to me or helps me out on Linked in. To get to my target I only
have to this just over once per week.
b. Again rinse and repeat this process every month
7) Groups
a. I am going to do some research on groups. From my research Groups are the
best way of growing your network. To this end my actions are:-
b. Rationalise my groups
c. Engage in Groups by
i. Posting 5 comments per week across my groups

9. ii. Starting at least 1 discussion per week
iii. Engage with 1 group leader per week
OK so now I now have the framework of a plan. This is the first pass and I will update
in the next section what actually happens. I will create work plans for myself to keep
me on track and monitor the results. I am fully aware that until I have completed the
actions I do not know the amount of time each action takes so I will probably have
to re visit my Goals and therefore my Action Plan