Is your business on LinkedIn? Do you have your company page set up to function as effectively as it could? We asked Viveka von Rosen, author of “LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour Day” to give us a few insider’s tips about how business owners can make LinkedIn work for them. Here’s what she told us:

ShortStack: There are still a lot of people who seem to think LinkedIn is only for job hunting. Can you set them straight? 

Viveka von Rosen: Even though LinkedIn was designed to facilitate business relationships from the Silicon Valley based founders, it was quickly adopted by jobseekers and recruiters. And became known as a job hunting site. But it is so much more than that! Over 225 million business professionals use it to not only source candidates, but find prospects, create partnerships, find vendors, and establish branding every day. As a businessperson, if you’re not using LinkedIn to generate visibility and leads for your business you’re really missing out!

ShortStack: What is the biggest mistake businesses make in regards to their LinkedIn pages?

Viveka von Rosen: The biggest mistake people make is using a personal LinkedIn profile as a company profile. LinkedIn has company pages that you can use to establish your company and your company’s brand on LinkedIn. There are some options available with the Company page that you can’t do with your personal profile.

• You can create targeted updates with statistics.

• You can create targeted products and services pages pointing directly at your niche markets.

• You can create banners with landing pages targeted at a specific audience – for free!

• You can highlight certain employees

• You can upload client testimonial videos

• You can make special offers

All on your company page!

ShortStack: What is the best way to use LinkedIn groups to cultivate both community and leads?

Viveka von Rosen: LinkedIn groups are great for creating relationships because they are one of the few places where you can engage and have a conversation with someone who is not a first level connection. Because groups are formed on common interests, it should be easier to engage with people you don’t yet know. Groups are also a great way to showcase your product and service – but you must make sure not to make sales pitches. Every conversation in a LinkedIn group needs to provide true benefits to the audience in order to generate trust.

If you use LinkedIn as an outbound marketing channel – you’re going to irritate people, alienate people, and maybe even get kicked off LinkedIn. LinkedIn is not for sales pitches! It is highly unlikely that you will sell your product and service just by posting an update. You must use LinkedIn to generate relationships and engage. It is from that engagement that you might make a sale.

 ShortStack: Any secrets for optimizing a profile? How about a business page?

Viveka von Rosen: I like using LinkedIn.com/skills to find LinkedIn relevant keywords – otherwise known as related skills – to optimize my profile. You will want to add these relevant keywords to your professional headline, title fields, summary section, education fields, and interest section. But don’t keyword stuff your profile. Just put the keywords in areas where they are relevant. More on creating a great profile here.

Use the targeting functions on your Company page. Both the targeted updates I mentioned earlier and the targeted products and services pages. Chapter 4 of my book LinkedIn Marketing in our day will take you through that step-by-step. It’s free! (Company pages that is – not my book!)

ShortStack: What is the one LinkedIn feature you think everyone should be using but isn’t?

Viveka von Rosen: I am enamored of the new contacts feature on LinkedIn. You can get it at contacts.LinkedIn.com.  While this new CRM system is not as comprehensive as I wish it was, it’s sure better than what we had before. I don’t have the time and space to go into it, but I wrote a series about it at my website. You can find it here. Let me just tell you it is the best tool LinkedIn has released in a long time! It will allow you to organize, make notes on, engage with, and follow up with your connections in a way that was not possible before! And it’s free!

ShortStack: Who is doing LinkedIn pages right?

Viveka von Rosen: I recommend looking at the company page MLT creative has created. They are a client – but they also did an excellent job! Hubspot has a great company page as does the Social Media Examiner. Take a look and learn :-):

• MLT

• Hubspot

• Social Media Examiner

This past Monday, I had the pleasure of being the passenger on an 11-hour drive back to Indianapolis from our vacation to Virginia and South Carolina. When I could get a signal [Sprint, you really need to up your game in the South], I caught up on some reading.

One click led to another, and I found myself on the ABA Journal’s website, of course! It was bound to happen, even though I had a whole tote bag full of non-work magazines and books at my feet. I guess I’m a news and information junky when I only read one of those magazines the entire 9 days, but read a plethora of general and legal marketing blog posts. I digress….

Over on the ABA Journal’s website, I read a post Do LinkedIn Endorsements Violate Legal Ethics Rules? by ABA Legal Affairs Writer, Rachel M. Zahorsky. She was following up on the blog post Do LinkedIn Endorsements Violate Legal Ethics? written by Robert Ambrogi.

If you aren’t familiar with the LinkedIn Skills & Expertise feature, which was launched in the 4th Quarter of 2012, I wrote about it in Part 1: LinkedIn Skills Endorsements: What’s Going On?, and Part 2: LinkedIn Skills Endorsements: Take Control Of Your Skills, complete with screen shots for my visual readers.

It is easier to dissect the longer-form Recommendations feature on LinkedIn. It has been around a while, and closely mirrors more traditional client testimonials, which are a no-no in some states. That doesn’t mean there is agreement about them, though.

I always spend time in the comments’ sections of blog posts because I enjoy observing the collective wisdom and perspectives of readers.

WHAT DID I FIND?

Opinions are all over the board.

• Whereas one attorney or ruling is certain the new Skills & Expertise recommendations violate ABA Model Rule 7.1, the next will say that isn’t the case.
• Some cite local governing bodies that have found Skills & Expertise recommendations to be unethical, whereas a few have found them to be ethical.
• Some think the discussion is pure drivel, and governing bodies should be focusing on more egregious violations.
• Some wonder how those skills appeared on their Profiles in the first place. [Answer: You put them there. Others can suggest new ones, but you have to approve them for them to appear.]
• Some wonder why seemingly obscure skills are suggested by their LinkedIn connections [see last bullet point].

Let’s talk about the ethical opinions regarding these Skills & Endorsements today, shall we?

In case you have forgotten ABA Model Rule 7.1, it is one of the most important in our legal marketing bible. Here it is:

A lawyer shall not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer’s services. A communication is false or misleading if it contains a material misrepresentation of fact or law, or omits a fact necessary to make the statement considered as a whole not materially misleading.

ABA’S WILL HORNSBY & OTHERS SHARE THEIR OPINIONS

I must preface my opinions by reminding you I am not a lawyer, so my words are not legal opinions. I’m just a mere mortal who was born with a heavy dose of common sense, practicality, a sense of fairness and the desire to do what is right, who then picked up a few business, management, marketing and business development skills along the way.

Onward….

As I mentioned, opinions are all over the board.

Please pay close attention to the use of the terms Expertise, Endorsements & Recommendations below, which are found in two separate features on LinkedIn. The skills listed in your Skills and Expertise section, the newest feature from LinkedIn, which are currently preceded by the words “Most endorsed for,” contain short words or phrases. These words or phrases don’t necessarily link to, endorse or imply specific client representation, but could. For purposes of an ethics discussion, we remember that these recommendations can intersect with LinkedIn’s older, long-form Recommendations feature because they resemble endorsements in some ethics’ opinions. Are you beginning to see why these two sections have people in the legal profession all wound up?

In Bob Ambrogi’s post referenced above, he shares:

“Joshua M. King, general counsel for Avvo, takes a somewhat contrary view. He argues, first, that lawyers cannot be held liable for endorsements posted by third parties, because any ethics restrictions would be preempted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. He further argues that the endorser’s actual familiarity with the lawyer’s skills does not matter, provided the lawyer actually has the skill. He also notes that if someone endorses you for a skill you do not have, it will not appear on your profile unless you allow it to.”

Also from Bob’s post:

“At High Tech Intellectual Property Legal Blog, California lawyer Judith Szepesi takes the position that these endorsements do not violate Model Rule 7.1 because they are not statements by the lawyer about his or her own skills. She adds, however, that under California’s rules, these endorsements may constitute testimonials and require the lawyer’s LinkedIn profile to carry a disclaimer.”

In discussions I had with our legal marketing ethics go-to guy at the ABA, Will Hornsby, in December, 2012, about the new Skills & Expertise section on LinkedIn, he shared the following.

“When a lawyer has control of the content of a social media site, including the ability to block input from others, that content posted by others, as well-meaning as it may be, is imputed to the lawyer. It is as if the lawyer wrote it him or herself. Most states prohibit a lawyer from revealing ‘information about the representation,’ without the client’s informed consent.

If a client posts information about the representation, the lawyer should not have a concern, but if a colleague, another counsel or anyone who is not the client shares information on the lawyer’s social media site, it could breach the lawyer’s obligation to maintain the client’s confidences.

Second, social media sites occasionally use specific words within a template that have particular meaning in the context of legal ethics. The word that stands out in the analysis of LinkedIn’s endorsements is ‘expertise.’ Most states include ethics rules that address the use of ‘specialization’ and its derivatives, e.g. ‘specialty’ and ‘specialize in.’

In some states, lawyers cannot claim to be specialists unless they are certified by a state or independent entity approved by the state. A few states, such as Illinois, expressly prohibit the use of “expert” or “expertise” within this rule.

While most states do not expressly prohibit ‘expertise,’ lawyers should closely check their state rules to assess which words may be used within social media templates in ways that are violations of those rules. Sometimes the use of specific rules can be cured with disclaimers. In other circumstances, there is no opportunity to include this information.

Finally, nearly every state prohibits communications that are false or misleading. However the interpretation of ‘false and misleading’ varies from state to state. Some states prohibit communications that make subjective or ‘unsubstantiated’ comparisons of one lawyer’s services to those of another. An endorsement of a lawyer’s ‘expertise’ may be deemed an ‘unsubstantiated comparison’ in violation of this rule.

Again, most states permit the use of disclaimers in order to avoid misleading representations. However, where the lawyer has no opportunity to provide a disclaimer, the only option may be to remove the endorsement. While the application of the state rules to the use of social media may have harsh consequences, we are faced with a circumstance where the rules are the rules and mandate our compliance or lead to the risk of disciplinary action.”

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Don’t run over and delete everything, or even hide selected Skills [LinkedIn lets you do this] in the Skills & Expertise section of LinkedIn just yet. You can’t get them back at this point, so you need to make sure you mean to do so.
2. New media, digital media, interactive media, social networking or any other term used to describe this relatively new frontier for lawyers is still being interpreted.
3. We must study state ethics rules to try to interpret lawyer activity in these spaces.
4. We need to add the overarching ABA Model Rules to our discussion when deciding how attorneys are to use Social Media.
5. When all else fails, or confounds us because there is conflicting information out there, we should probably pick up the phone, or write an email to those responsible at our state and national bar associations, and any other international governing bodies in all of the areas in which we practice law. I had a very interesting discussion when I did so while researching the new Florida Bar Rules on Social Media a while back for this post about recent changes made by the Florida Bar Association.
6. We can’t research this topic today, and expect the rulings governing Social Media to stand forever, or even for the next 90 days. It’s too new.
7. We have to watch these discussions regularly for developing interpretation and, hopefully, additional understanding of the realistic attorney use of these tools by the governing bodies who are creating these rules. [Perhaps I need to go on a 50-state tour to train all of them!]
8. We have to take an active role in the creation of our own profiles in Social Media, as well as the networking that should be taking place in these spaces, not leaving this to those who are not aware of legal marketing ethics rulings and implications.

Your thoughts?

How are you approaching the Skills & Expertise section on LinkedIn?

What, if anything, have you learned from the jurisdiction in which you or your firm practices regarding the ethical use of allowing these skills to be listed on your LinkedIn profile?

As always, if you need help with any of this, I am always a phone call or email away.

I recently had a person ask to connect from the UK, and then proceeded to tell me they are lonely and looking for a relationship… Really? That takes Relationship Marketing to a whole new level!

Relationships are not only the goal… but it’s the main goal.

How could anyone maintain a relationship without understanding that it’s all about give and take? By the way, that female from the UK is a guy who just wants to take my money!

If you are semi-active on LinkedIn, you have certainly seen people who treat Linkedin as their personal fish barrel for sales. They just keep shooting and you keep swimming. Some users just give up and don’t swim (don’t check in and check out), while others bite (and that’s what keeps them shooting). I will have to assume that if you are reading this you are not one of them (the one’s who keep shooting or the one’s who have given up). Those people will not want YOU to read the following 5 tips.

1. You Are Not a Company, You Have a Name – Please don’t create an account or set your name to ‘My Company ’. People may give your company money, but they do business with people… and other people on LinkedIn hope and expect that you are a person, and not just a faceless brand. LinkedIn offers business pages for your business brand, and you can promote it there! Be yourself, be real, and don’t just be a company!
2. You are not John and Jane Doe – Unless you are a cross dresser, you are John OR Jane. I can understand how some people use Facebook or Twitter as a married couple (or domestic partners), but don’t expect people to refer to you as “You Guys and Gals”. Create a separate account for each of you and we will be more apt to connect (That way, we don’t tell your wife bad guy jokes). Split personalities leads to less interaction and that’s not why you use social media or want to!
3. You Have a Face, Use it – I can’t find your logo at Starbucks. Meaning if I am meeting up with you for the first time, I want to know what you look like. Having a blank image or your logo does you and nobody else any no good. People use it to choose whether to connect with you or not. You are your own personal brand even if you represent another business or brand… treat it that way! P.S. Please get a professional headshot. Your speedo picture from 1970 may be funny to your friends, but not to a potential million dollar client.
4. Post a Description of Your Link – I am not going to click because you said to? Especially when your post says “Greatest Tip Ever” and the link says ”Greatest Tip Ever”. If you can’t tell us why you think we should read it (in your own words), then we probably won’t. Tell us why we should read this article and why it’s important to you and us. You are just one of hundreds, if not thousands of articles we come across in email, blogs and social media every day! Personalize it with your own spin on the concept, even if it’s controversial!
5. It’s Not About You, It’s About Your Audience -Teach or Tell me something PLEASE! If all you want to do is sell what you have, then please call me so I can hang up on you. If you want to edu-tain, or info-tain us then we will pay attention. We are more willing to listen to your message and give you attention if you give us a nugget or a takeaway we can use. Give us a reason to pay attention to you… just shouting at us is going to get the opposite reaction that you are expecting! Even if you didn’t like Cracker Jack… you still eat it for the prize!

The point of this post is we are all part of a bigger picture. The more we can help each other, and help others, the more it gets us to a place where we are relevant and respected. If all you want to do is hawk your wares… I believe there is still flea markets out there. Good luck with your copied DVD’s!

I would love to hear your thoughts and comments?

Many business professionals, sales executives, small & large businesses and thought leaders stake their claim on the LinkedIn platform in hope to strike riches … in other words, they hope to be found for leads, business, sales opportunities, speaking engagements and other connection opportunities. You need to be able to be found in order to springboard your social brand toward leads and sales!

10 Ways To Make Your LinkedIn Profile Work Harder For Your Social Selling Strategy

I want to provide you a quick read to help you make your LinkedIn profile work harder. I’ve provided 10 ways to make it easier for others to find you on LinkedIn. I’ve identified an easy way that you can activate your LinkedIn profile strategy as if it is your personal pay per click campaign.

• Customize Your LinkedIn URL. A custom URL increases your external visibility on search engines. If your name is taken, add your initial to the front of your last name or add your location to the end.

• Customize Your 3 LinkedIn URLs With Anchored Text. Give your readers a better idea of what your sites about and add keywords to optimize Google search.

• Place Keywords In Your Headline. Keywords in your headline will drive internal and external search. Your headline always appears in your Google search results, so make it count!

• Use Keywords In Your Summary. Keywords placed in your summary will help your profile show up in LinkedIn and external search results. Go Google yourself!

• Use Keywords In Your Experience Review. Include keywords in your job title to show up in LinkedIn and Google search results. Include keywords through your experience descriptions to help impact LinkedIn and Google search results.

• Choose The Right Industry Classification. Choose the correct industry to make it easier to be found with internal LinkedIn searches.

• Turn Off All Privacy Features. Eliminate most privacy features in LinkedIn to be found on LinkedIn and have a better chance to be found on Google and other search engines.

• Join 50 Relevant Groups. Industry-relevant keywords will improve your LinkedIn and Google search, including geo-targeted search results.

• Connect Other Sites & Channels. Let people outside of LinkedIn find you by connecting them your other social media sites like Twitter and your blogs.

• Use Your Email Signature. Use your email signature to help people outside of LinkedIn to find and follow you so you can build your network’s reach.

Do you have another LinkedIn profile tip or trick to help your social selling efforts? If so, please comment below! Or, contact me directly at MarketingThink.com or via Twitter @GerryMoran.

LinkedIn & Social Selling Goals

Your personal or business’ social media goals likely center on three areas:

1. Increase the reach of your message

2. Keep your clients engaged with your messaging

3. Convert interest in your messaging into moving closer to a sale

I recommend using these three goals on which to base your LinkedIn success. You cannot sell your sales manager that you are successful purely based on LinkedIn performance numbers. LinkedIn can help you meet your quota by effectively reaching and engaging with customers. Like the Pennsylvania Lottery says, you cannot win if you do not play! So, start to engage on LinkedIn, measure your success metrics and watch your contacts, calls, opportunities and sales increase!

9 Ways To Measure Your Social Selling Success On LinkedIn

1. Size Of Your Social Selling Network. Why does size matter when it comes to your LinkedIn network? Each new connection adds to your 2nd- and 3rd-connection reach, which can be thousands of contacts! You can see from my connections below, that I can reach almost 15 million connections. When you need to be introduced to a client or contact, it can help to know someone who knows someone, and this is where the 2nd- and 3rd-level connections come in. This extended reach number is how you can regularly measure your LinkedIn success! Growing your network will help you increase your influence and visibility in LinkedIn.

2. Number Of New Invitations. When you are selling and using LinkedIn as your digital hub, the more invitations you receive the better off you are. This type of LinkedIn invitation is what I like to call “personal pull marketing”, since people come to you to connect! Keep track of your new invitations to show the health and value of your social brand’s currency. If you get a ‘good number’ of new invitations weekly, then you know that you are growing your influence and potential value from your LinkedIn activities. Keep score of your new invites by going to Your LinkedIn Statistics’ tab and clicking on the ‘New People’ link.

3. Number Of LinkedIn Profile Views. If you’ve ‘prettied up’ your profile, added key words to it, and relevantly take part in conversation then you should be more ‘findable’. However, how do you measure your ROLI (Return On LinkedIn Improvement)? Of course, by noting the amount of people who view and access your profile! If you have a premium account, then you can monitor exactly who checks you out (so you can start to follow them on Twitter and NOT make a phone call or send and email).

4. Appearances In Search. Include key descriptive words in your Headline, Summary, Groups Work Experience/Job Description and Skills & Expertise to better present yourself in LinkedIn search results. By including more relevant key words throughout your profile, your ‘Appearances In Search’ numbers should rise. This change indicates you will likely increase the amount of LinkedIn profile views.

5. Percentage of Target Audience Profile Views. If your mom, brother or recruiter checks you’re your profile, their interest can’t really turn into a sale, right? Instead, pay attention to the amount of prospect views you receive by upgrading your LinkedIn account. You can increase this number by being engaged in LinkedIn Groups, adding your LinkedIn profile to your email signature, your Twitter profile, etc. Also, pay attention to the amount of views you receive before and after a trade show or conference or after an important client call!

6. Social Selling Interaction Level. In addition to cultivating a large-sized network, you need to be interesting and keep them engaged! Remember, it’s not the size of your network. that counts most, it’s what you do with it! In other words, this is your “Am I interesting” metric. Every time you comment in an “open” LinkedIn Group or on your status update you open yourself up for likes and comments. This engagement indicates your content’s relevancy, measured by positive feedback from likes and comments. Interesting comments are a sign of your increasing thought leadership and credibility in your field. If your interaction is boring or not relevant, then you will hear the sound of crickets … Bueuller … Bueller … Bueller?

7. Number of Skill & Expertise Endorsements. LinkedIn eliminated the specialties section in the summary area and replaced it with skills and expertise. These keyword searchable skills will help you rank higher for internal LinkedIn searches, so the more the better. Try to increase your endorsements! More endorsements positively positions you above your competition. So again, more (endorsements) is better!

8. Number Of Recommendations. We all need to have at least 10 recommendations. However, more than 10 is better! Recommendations are a great ‘commercial’ for you. They are a quick way for others to assess your qualities, even if they are always positive. If you do not have enough then get moving and ask for them! Use the built-in function to ask past bosses, current clients and others to endorse you!

9. Key Social Selling Metrics. Your ‘social brand currency’ indicators will help drive your key selling metrics that you can point to in you weekly call reports or in your CRM systems:

1. Number of leads
2. Total number of first contacts
3. Total number of calls generated from making contact
4. Number of opportunities
5. Number of sales

Here are some more social selling blog post that will help you to:

• Continue the social selling conversation after the big event
• Understand the layers of social selling
• Tweet better and sell more
• Cold call Don Draper
• Listen for selling triggers on Flipboard

Do you have another way to measure your social selling success with LinkedIn? If so, please share below! Or contact me directly at MarketingThink.com. You can also Tweet me @GerryMoran.

Remember to pay attention to the size of your LinkedIn social selling network and cultivate it and nurture it. In addition to its size you need to know what to do with it, so work your engagement opportunities in LinkedIn Groups, status updates and overall brand management. Happy social selling!

With more than 200 million users in 200 countries, LinkedIn is one of the fastest growing professional networking sites. With the steady growth of their user base, and to keep up with the traffic demand of their mobile users, the company recently updated their iOS and Android apps. One big change out of this upgrade is the move from HTML5 and back to native apps.

Going native

During a recent chat with VentureBeat, Kiran Prasad, LinkedIn’s senior director for mobile engineering, attributed the decision to widespread memory shortages for their mobile users. Prasad claimed going native was the only way to get the bandwidth they needed for certain functions.

And in an interview with TechCrunch, Prasad said LinkedIn is “seeing that people are engaging a lot more on mobile, and [the company] wanted to make the experience more efficient.”

User advantage

Joff Redfern, head of mobile products for LinkedIn, said new items such as the “like” icon wouldn’t have been possible with HTML5. Redfern also said the company needed to go where their users are, which is their phones.

The goal for LinkedIn’s first major update in two years was to create an engaging stream and more customization for their users. With new personalization options, upgrades to the update stream and a new navigation page, the company is hoping to reach out to the everyday professional.

LinkedIn is not just focused on users in the US. With 64% of their members located outside of the country, they’ve expanded their language offerings to include Dutch and Norwegian for iPhone, and Turkish, Dutch and Norwegian for Android. This makes 15 available languages for both apps.

The future for HTML5

Facebook made news last year when it decided to ditch HTML5 and focus on a native app for the iPhone and iPad. This shocked some, because Facebook had been a strong believer in HTML5 and the power of web-based technology. But it seems the switch to native was a positive one for Facebook. The result was an app that opened faster, scrolled smoother and could handle instant photo uploads.

When asked what was needed for mobile technology to meet the needs of companies like LinkedIn, Prasad said the two things missing from HTML5 were debugging tools and runtime diagnostics.

“Because those two things don’t exist, people are falling back to native,” he said. “It’s not that HTML5 isn’t ready; it’s that the ecosystem doesn’t support it. There are tools, but they’re at the beginning. People are just figuring out the basics.”

The big difference between LinkedIn and Facebook users is that LinkedIn users are business professionals, a totally different and distinctive demographic than the friends and families found on Facebook.Comparing these 2 Social Media properties is like, forgive the feminine analogy, comparing a business suit to a cocktail dress.

By now , I believe that the majority of us have a LinkedIn profile (please say yes!). We talk about our professional-selves and connect with others in our industry. Many people use it to find jobs and employers use it to advertise jobs…and research perspective employees.

According to Forbes, the American business magazine, “LinkedIn is, far and away, the most advantageous social networking tool available to job seekers and business professionals today.” I tend to concur. It is now “a natural” to go on line and research a company via their website, and also search it out on LinkedIn. I don’t need to tell you about the influential and far reaching weight of Facebook. Despite the many differences of Facebook and LinkedIn there are common elements. Just like Facebook, LinkedIn provides yet another opportunity for your business to have a company page. Your company page is an opportunity to talk more about your company and the people who work there. Like Facebook, LinkedIn enables you to add photos and videos as well as case studies of your work…. and best of all engage with the people who follow you. LinkedIn allows you to personify your company, by linking your employees and management profiles to the company page. This assist in building a business reputation and showcasing a culture through personnel that is key in any business evaluation, perspective employees or potential clients. It builds your business community… uniquely yours. If that’s not powerful marketing, I don’t know what is. With an average income of over $100,000 your LinkedIn followers are an excellent resource to drive word of mouth sales.

LinkedIn has a great set of features you will want to take advantage of. You can post status updates, company announcements, product releases or whatever content you wish and link these updates to your Twitter account. You can create a group where you reach out and build your own community, in order to build business reputation. Businesses can also showcase your products and services. And the one feature I think is the most influential is the recommendations you can receive from LinkedIn members. Not only do the recommendations create a positive image the recommendation links to the person’s profile that makes the recommendation and provides instant credibility that can assist any sales process from employment to business to business sales.

Like any good social media tool LinkedIn offers you analytic information. You can view the total company followers, group followers, impressions, new followers in the last 7 days as well as page views, unique visitors, and page clicks over the last 7 days. It shows page views by tab, page visitor demographics, and more. Don’t worry this information can only be viewed by your company page administrator.

With all this audience and information, it’s a wonder why more businesses don’t have a company page and if they do, why they don’t “work” it to its fullest potential. LinkedIn is a powerful marketing and sales tool that just makes business sense.

LinkedIn Groups provide a place for professionals in the same industry or with similar interests to share content, find answers, post and view jobs, make business contacts, and establish themselves as industry experts. I leverage LinkedIn Groups to connect with like minded individuals who can collaborate over new ideas. I have joined 46 different groups, started my own group and actively contribute to most groups. I post to my blog twice a week and if any of my content is applicable to a particular group, I will post a link to the blog post along with a thought-provoking discussion question.

I usually get a few likes or comments per discussion post. However, I posted my article “What Everybody Ought To Know About…The Myth Of Experience“ into the “Future Trends” LinkedIn Group on Sunday April 28th and (to date) it’s generated 32 likes and 101+ comments. The next closest article in the group has only 39 comments.

I do not share these stats to impress you but rather impress upon you how valuable LinkedIn Groups can be for your brand or business.

7 Must-Haves To Grow An Audience Via LinkedIn Groups:

1. Value-Add Content. The content that you share must bring value to your intended audience. If the content falls flat, you’re sunk. Nothing else will matter.
2. Catchy Title. Ensure the title of your discussion is succinct and attention grabbing. My title was: “Is experience irrelevant these days?” And if you choose to add additional details, use it to create more interest. I used: “Before you answer that…consider these trends.”
3. Relevant Content. The content shared must relate to the theme of the group. For example: Don’t post “How To Perfect Your Golf Swing” in the Future Trends group.
4. Concise Content. You will capture more readers if your content is scannable, scrollable, and skim-able. Stay clear of long and heavy content. Shoot for less than 500 words.
5. Engaging Picture. Use the “Attach a link” function when posting a discussion. This will then add the picture associated with your article. Secondly, ensure your profile picture is inviting and it communicates your a pleasant person. A close-up shot of your smiling face is ideal. Remember, these 2 pictures are the billboard of your discussion.
6. Controversial. Content that takes a stance and goes against the grain is naturally going to stir-up more conversation. The haters will hate (just check out some of the comments I got on my discussion). Don’t be afraid to be contrarian. But do not tolerate malicious comments. And encourage people to keep the discussion constructive and productive.
7. Established Group. Make sure the groups you contribute to are active and have a large enough audience to make it worth your time. As a reference, Future Trends has 229,000 members and multiple discussions are posted everyday.

Leverage these must-haves and you will find how truly rewarding it can be when you serve up valuable content that stretches the thinking of the group and creates productive discussion.

Create your epic content and go grow your audience via LinkedIn Groups.

Question: How have you leveraged LinkedIn Groups for increased engagement around your brand or business?

But like everything else in life, there is always a first among equals. And the first and most important social media tool for B2B marketers is LinkedIn marketing. Our team at Fusion Marketing Partners has used LinkedIn to drive business and partnerships for ourselves and our clients. I use LinkedIn myself at least 3-4 days per week and have seen amazing results. In fact, LinkedIn has so many productive uses that I found it tough to narrow the list.

1. Drive Revenue – We owe several of our client relationships (in full or a large part) to their relationship with us on LinkedIn. Jill Konrath (author of SNAP Selling) has done extensive research in this area and reports that top-earning sales reps use LinkedIn far more than their peers.
2. Become Better Known – Assuming you post interesting thoughts/content, some of your musings will be shared or commented upon by your contacts. You might even go viral. This enhanced exposure can only help you when it comes to boosting the levels of marketplace exposure.
3. Establish Brand Authority – The best way to use LinkedIn to establish a brand authority is to consistently post updates that reinforce your area of expertise and differentiation. For example, you can share your blog posts, articles, white papers, etc., plus comment and share others’ updates that are related to your key messages.
4. Keep in Touch – LinkedIn is a great platform to let your business contacts know what you are up to without one-to-one communication. Not that you shouldn’t reach out personally as often as possible, but this is difficult if you have a large number of connections. It is not unusual to hear someone I haven’t talked to in many years tell me that they are following the my progress (and my company’s) on LinkedIn.
5. Stay Top of Mind – I wrote a recent blog post titled Market Awareness Trumps Sales Skills. The premise (reality) is that being known is often more important than sales acumen when it comes to driving revenue. Top of mind awareness (TOMA) is so important that Wikipedia actually has a definition: “The first brand that comes to mind when a customer is asked an unprompted question about a category.” When the user of your product or service is researching or evaluating purchase options, you want to be the company name that pops into his/her mind. This market awareness factor is a big advantage for large companies, and as a smaller firm, you need to keep your name in front of prospects to overcome this challenge. LinkedIn marketing is a great way to accomplish this.

By the way, one of the most prominent and insightful practitioners of social media, and specifically LinkedIn marketing, is Kevin Knebl. If you want to learn from the best, visit Kevin’s website and blog.

LinkedIn is certainly the leading site for networking among professionals. It is constantly upgrading its services.

And after you have connected with someone, you are redirected to “People You May Know”. You watch the parade of photos and backgrounds.

I have viewed thousands of photos over the years. At the risk of offending someone, I would like to give my impressions of those that should be reviewed by their owners.

1. The No Picture: Now, I know that online privacy is important to all of us. But come on people, many of us might know you on sight but not by name. Add your photo to your LinkedIn profile! This just in! No photo can hurt your LinkedIn search results.

2. The Dated Picture: Several years ago, I met a friend for lunch. We both had aged (funny how growing old does that **). Would you believe this 50 year old used their college graduation picture on LinkedIn? I know that age discrimination is alive and well. But update your photo!! We go into shock meeting someone who has aged 20 years in just 5 days from looking at his or her LinkedIn photo.

3. The Action Photo: You are a distant dot doing something athletic or riding something. I guess this works if I want to hire a dot. We ask, “Who was that masked man?” It worked for the Lone Ranger, but use a close up head shot please!!

4. The Trustworthy Photo: The eyes have it. Most of us like to look into someone’s eyes. Seeing the eyes gives you the impression of trustworthiness.

5. The Dark Picture: This photo lacks the proper lighting. There is a human in there I just know it.

6. The Tuxedo Photo: This photo will work if you are looking for a job as a waiter or maître d’. Let’s face it, you are overdressed.

7. The Half Face Photo: Shades of Phantom of the Opera. What does the other half of your face look like? Scary!!

8. The Duo Picture: Yes, there are many LinkedIn photos out there with two people. Do you think that we would like to play the game of “Guess which one of us matches the background?” NO! And leave your family and spouses out as well.

9. The Caricature/Drawn Photo: Only your friends know for sure. But could they hire you? Are you being too clever?

10. The Mug Shot: There is shadow behind your face. Were you finger printed at the time of the photograph?

It’s important that we all “stand out” from the crowd. It’s what personal branding is all about. With the exception of identical twins (triplets etc.), there is no other face that looks exactly like yours in the whole world.

** Groucho Marx said: “Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do us live long enough.”

Thanks littlemoresunshine for the photo via Flickr

As a smart, savvy business owner, you’ve probably been using LinkedIn to market your business for quite some time. You’re on the right track to increasing leads. You might even be among the 43% of marketers who have acquired new customers through LinkedIn this year. If you’re not using LinkedIn’s Groups feature, however, you could be missing out on some big leads. Here are some LinkedIn tips on using the Groups feature to increase traffic and leads to your Company Page.

Getting Started with LinkedIn Groups

There are over one million groups on LinkedIn, covering just about any topic you can think of. Start by joining groups that contain useful information that is applicable to your business. As a group member, you will be able to contribute to discussions or start your own topics within the group. An even better way to generate traffic to your Company Page is to start your own LinkedIn group. Think of a topic that is relevant to your business, and base a group on that. There are over 200 million users in 200 countries on LinkedIn, and 81% of those users are members of at least one group. On top of that, two new users join LinkedIn every second. This means there are plenty of people out there to whom you can appeal. A creative, well-defined theme will attract more members to your group.

Don’t Use Groups for Self-Promotion

Yes, your presence in Groups is meant to help you gain leads, but the feature wasn’t created for the purpose of self-promotion. No one is going to want to join a group that’s full of nothing but advertisement for your company. Instead, the purpose is to post information that group members will find helpful and informative. What you can do is use the information from your Group to promote your business elsewhere. For example, you could distribute press releases when you hit milestones like gaining a certain number of group members on LinkedIn.

Feature Groups on Your Company Page

Featuring groups on your LinkedIn Company Page can be beneficial in several ways. First, it will alert new visitors to the fact that you have a Group with information that might be helpful to them. You don’t have to own a group to feature it on your page, though. A Group member can feature any community that is significant to his or her brand on their Company Page. Featuring groups also allows you to cross-promote your content and draw more followers to your Company Page. Specifically, you can post your status updates directly to your featured Group by sharing it as a new discussion.

Don’t Spam Your Group Members

Be selective about what you post within your Group. Your goal is to inform your Group members and start discussion, not spam them with content that amounts to annoying advertising. The best way to ensure that members stick around and actually read what you provide is to limit posting to a few times a week. However, if you’re posting solid content that really adds value to your Group, feel free to post as many times a week as you want. Keeping up with conversations among Group members is a better way to stay involved than constantly posting new updates. A good way to generate interesting conversation among Group members is to share a piece of news or ask a question you know will garner a lot of views and opinions.

Build Relationships Within Your Group

To really get something out of their discussion, your Group members need to know that they’re interacting with a real person who cares about their contributions. When a new user joins your Group, consider sending them a message welcoming them personally and inviting them to connect to your personal LinkedIn network. Let them know that you are there for them if they require assistance or have any questions or concerns. Once you have some key participants in your LinkedIn Group, invite them to brainstorm with you for new ideas about content. Including your top contributing members makes them feel valued and will hopefully inspire them to stay active in the Group. Also think about doing regular features on members who frequently contribute valuable information to the Group.

Cross-Promote Your Content

A good way to drive more traffic to your Company Page, your website, and your LinkedIn Group is to cross-promote. Post information about and links to your LinkedIn Group on your company’s website. You can also promote your LinkedIn activity on other social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Consider sharing content across your platforms. For instance, create a blog post about specific activity or discussion happening in your LinkedIn Group. Conversely, you can post your blog content in a new Group discussion.

Maintenance is Key

Remaining active within your Group is the number one most important thing you can do to maintain and increase traffic. Make sure you participate in the discussions you start. Don’t post a topic for the day and think you’re finished. If you find that you don’t have the time for maintenance, assign Group upkeep to another person within your company.

If you follow the advice in these seven LinkedIn tips, your Group could potentially grow into one that fellow LinkedIn users look to for advice and guidance. Long-term business relationships can be built through the Groups feature. Once participants see how great you are at what you do, chances are they’ll turn to you when they need the service and or product your business offers.

Image credit: freedigitalphotos.net/emptyglass

You want your profile to be properly dressed, to present the very best image of you. You want its contents to be interesting. And perhaps most importantly, you want the right guests there. After all, a LinkedIn account that’s not linked to the right people can become a pity party. And who wants that?

Facebook is easy. You can connect with your Aunt Bertha, your daughter’s kindergarten teacher, and that one guy who lives down the street whose name you keep forgetting. But you want to be more selective on LinkedIn. Here are some ideas to keep in mind:

1. LinkedIn has its limits. According to LinkedIn, “LinkedIn initially allows all users to send up to 3000 invitations. This limit is an automatic method to prevent accidental abuse and protect both senders and recipients.” Wow! Three thousand is a really big number. But if you’re doing heavy-duty networking over a long period of time, you might approach that limit faster than you had anticipated. And while you can withdraw old invitations that the recipient didn’t respond to, it won’t return them to your balance of available invitations. If you limit your invitations only to trusted professional contacts and to others who welcome connections with new contacts, LinkedIn might raise your limit, but that’s a might. Better to be a little choosy.

2. Your invitation should be personalized. We’ve all had the unsettling experience of getting an invite from someone we just can’t place. Is that the woman I met at the networking brunch last Tuesday? Or is she someone from my accounting department? You don’t want people to feel that way when they get YOUR invite. And you definitely don’t want people to be clicking “I don’t know this person” because if you rack up too many of those, your account gets put on hold for a month. So tell the individual something about yourself or how you are connected IRL. Some suggestions: be transparent about the reasons why you want to connect, remind the person how you met them, or refer to something in their profile.

3. Send a thank you to people who accept your invitation. A sure way to make a good impression is to recognize that your new connection had to take a moment to decide whether or not to connect, and chose to do so. Just like sending a thank you after a job interview shows that you are respectful and cognitive of others’ time and effort, a thank you on LinkedIn shows you are thoughtful and business-like. And that works in reverse, as well. If someone sends YOU an invitation and you accept, again, be sure to say thank you. It’s the beginning of a relationship; you want to start it off right.

Once you’ve got your party started, look outside of your current circles to add to your network by joining groups. I’ve got tips on that topic here.

The more relationships you build, the merrier, right?

Ever since LinkedIn introduced the Skills & Experience section along with the ability to endorse others for their Skills & Experience, it has been a topic that has generated a lot of negative response. LinkedIn group discussions are full of people complaining about the lack of credibility in the endorsements, and how stupid they think the whole feature is. Every time I teach LinkedIn, it is a hot topic of discussion on how should people handle something that on the surface really looks meaningless. After all, how can someone who has never worked with you endorse you for a skill you have on your profile?

There is no doubt that some of the features of Skills and Experience are problematic, including the fact that when you visit someone’s profile, LinkedIn chooses some skills and suggests you endorse the person. The problem here is that most people do not really think this through, and just click to endorse on the suggest skills. When this feature came out, because I saw problems in how people were responding, I wrote a blog on how to strategically and effectively use the feature, including how to endorse people for skills that you really know about. However this doesn’t address the issue of people endorsing you when they do not know you. This brings us back to the question of “How can someone endorse me if they have never worked with me?”

But this question forgets one of the most important facts about career management. Your next job, promotion or opportunity will happen not because of what you know, and not even who you know, but who knows you, and what is their perception of you as a professional and subject matter expert. Therefore a better question would be

“Why don’t more people know more about me and my subject matter expertise?”

Every day, people are finding out that putting your nose to the grind stone, and focusing on your tasks and project just doesn’t work. So what should you be doing that will increase your relevance, and spread your reputation as a professional and trusted authority? Tim Tyrell-Smith gave us some great information on how to become a person of influence in his blog. Engaging in LinkedIn group discussions and blogging in your areas of expertise are especially effective. In addition to leveraging Tim’s advice, the following are critical strategies for maximizing your career opportunities.

1. Continuing Education – The speed of change in today’s economy is faster than ever. As a professional, it is critical that you continuously update your knowledge through both formal and informal education.
2. Professional Associations – Kelly Donovan wrote a great blog on this subject. It is not enough to just belong to these organizations to network, but speak and serve on boards and committees, in a position of visibility where people will see and experience interaction with you as a trusted authority
3. Mentoring – Kelly also wrote a blog on why you need a mentor and how to get one. This is great information, and should be part of every professional’s strategy. At the same time, mentoring and sharing your insights on what you have learned to mentor newer generations not only enhance your reputation, but will positively impact the success of your company.

All of these are career management strategies that are essential if you are serious about having career success. If you implement these strategies into your regular career management, your reputation for your skills and expertise will naturally spread generating greater opportunities for your career. A natural side effect will be an increase of endorsements by people you didn’t work with.

Are you taking these steps to maximize your opportunities, or are you wondering why people might be endorsing you?

If you’re looking for ideas on how best to leverage this new feature, check out how 8 top brands are successfully using their new rich media powers -

1. Showcase employee culture

2. Promote hot jobs

3. Feature employee programs

4. Impart some inspiration (shameless self promotion)

5. Show off new products

 6. Market upcoming events

7. Educate your followers with visual data

8. Share customer stories, especially when there’s chocolate involved

 How will you be using the new rich media functionality on your LinkedIn Company Page? Share with me in the comments below or on Twitter @cheesycons.

So are endorsements useless or valuable?

Obviously, LinkedIn recommendations carry a lot more weight. They are prominently displayed on LinkedIn Profiles pages.  They can demonstrate your professionalism and expertise in the words of someone who has taken the time to open your Profile page, find and click on the correct link, answer some general questions, and then craft a thoughtful recommendation.

An endorsement requires only a simple mouse click. Add to that the fact that LinkedIn displays a suggested list of people you might want to endorse on your own Home page.  (You don’t even have to find the Profile of the person you are endorsing.)   It really could not be easier.  And therein lies the problem.  Because it is so easy, there is a temptation to endorse anyone who shows up at the top of the page for whatever skill is listed.

So are endorsements useless?

Maybe not.  Since endorsements are graphed on your Profile (with the endorser’s image) the graph can be a powerful way to showcase your skills.  The more endorsements for a certain skill, the higher your credibility.

Finally, LinkedIn, at its heart, is a social network, and endorsements can be a way to connect with people – which is the goal of social networks.  A notification of the endorsement is delivered to your email, which opens the door to a conversation – and who knows where than conversation might lead.  While the motive of a person who endorses you may not be obvious, it is a contact. The smart Linkedin User will use that contact to open a door.

Photo by nan palmero.

LinkedIn has always been known as the “business social network.” That reputation was earned based on the extensive hiring and B2B opportunities presented by the website.

But LinkedIn has far more to offer companies. This week alone they’ve taken two major steps towards helping businesses secure this social asset, and better engage their following.

Two-Step Verification

On May 31st, LinkedIn announced a two-step verification to help its users protect their accounts. This new optional feature forces members who opt in to type in a numeric code — sent to their phone — the first time they log in from an unrecognized advice. This authentication system (which you can access now in your LinkedIn settings) means that hackers or anyone else trying to access your account would need your password AND your phone to do so, an extra layer of protection that should help put your boss at ease.

The news comes about one week after Twitter announced its own two-step authentication process in the wake of several high-profile hackings and account takeovers.

Adding Images, Presentations to Updates

On May 30th, only one day earlier, LinkedIn made an announcement of a different kind. Users and business will all soon have the ability to upload images, documents, and presentations to updates they share with their followers. This is a major step for a social network that had lagged behind in terms of visual appeal. Images should mean better click-through on company posts, and a more appealing home page for regular users.

The introduction of this feature comes at the tail end of a very visual month for LinkedIn, which also introduced new opportunities to visually enhance personal profiles earlier in May.

Will you be taking advantage of these new features? Did you know that you can update your LinkedIn pages from HootSuite?

In this post I will cover some ideas on the essentials of your summary, one of the most important areas of your profile, so viewers of your profile can find out who you are in addition to the information you provided in your job title.

Think about your summary as an ‘elevator pitch‘ that you might share at a live networking event.  It’s a short story about you that should be designed to entice a viewer to hang around and decide to learn more about you and if they want to work or connect with you.

Here are seven tips that you can use to make the most out of the 2,000 characters that can be included in your summary.

Tip #1 – Your opening statement: Thank the viewer for taking time out of their schedule to view your profile.  It’s an obvious statement to make yet often overlooked.  You greet a prospective customer who visits your hotel for a site inspection with a ‘Thank you’ or a ‘Welcome to’ so why not follow that logic and include it in your opening statement?

Tip #2 – Grab their attention: After you have welcomed a viewer to your profile the next objective is to grab their attention in a sentence or two that makes them want to continue to read on.  Keep it light but make sure that this area includes your personal side that reflects your individualism and not corporate speak.

Tip #3 – Set the table: This paragraph should give the viewer an idea of what you have done for your clients that will provide an insight into how the viewer my experience the same results if they choose to work or connect with you in the future.

Tip #4 – Unveil your humility: This paragraph may include your humble side.  What makes your professional world go round and how the visitor would feel if they were included in that world.

Tip #5 – Call to action: Always include some sort of call to action before you wrap things up.  This is the proverbial ‘reach out’ that provides the viewer with an invitation to take the next step with you.

Tip #6 – Contact information: Since you took the time to include a call to action then take the time to include how the visitor can get in touch with you.  Include your business email address and, if you choose, your business telephone number.  BTW, when you include your email address it can be used to send you an invitation to connect so you should consider the good and not so good implications.

Tip #7 – Specialties: You should use relevant keyword terms in this area but don’t be afraid to step out of the box with some creative terminology that separates you from your peers.

Here are some additional tips on what others have written about the subject of a LinkedIn Summary.

• How To Pack A Powerful Punch With Your LinkedIn Summary
• How to Distinguish Yourself from Your Company
• LinkedIn’s summary feature allows you to Shine
• 3 Stunningly Good LinkedIn Profile SUMMARIES
• 6 Secrets For A More Powerful LinkedIn Summary

So on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being best, how would you rate your LinkedIn summary?

Pick the best email address.

If you don’t yet have a profile in LinkedIn, it’s easy to get started! Make sure to use a professional email address, either the one associated with your company or a personal email address that sounds professional. Your first and last name on a Gmail account, for example, is a lot better than the goofy email address you created as a joke in college. If you wouldn’t put it on your resume, definitely don’t put it on LinkedIn!

Use keywords to optimize your profile

Whether you’re filling out the information LinkedIn prompts you to complete for the first time, or updating your profile, make sure to use keywords in your job title. Put yourself in the shoes of your clients or prospective clients. What would they type into a search engine like Google (or LinkedIn’s search bar) when they’re looking for someone with your unique set of skills and services? Be specific, and use the words your clients or customers would use—even if they’re different than the words you’d typically use within your industry. There are multiple places to use keywords to optimize your profile on LinkedIn—not just your job title. LinkedIn allows you to write descriptions for all of the jobs you’ve held, and each section (job description, summary, experience) gives you another chance to use industry terms that will show up in Google and LinkedIn’s search feature, so make sure to continue using appropriate keywords. Also, don’t be shy when listing your skills and expertise.

Connect With Contacts, Old And New

LinkedIn is a great place for staying connected with old contacts as well as finding new ones. Use your email address to easily find people you already know. You can also post a link to your LinkedIn profile on other social media, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Get Recommendations, Not Just Endorsements

Recommendations are important! They carry a lot more weight than LinkedIn “endorsements,” which simply specify that you are qualified in a particular skill. The best way to get recommendations is to ask for them, and luckily LinkedIn has a built-in setting for this. If you click on the “profile” link and then on “recommendations” and “ask for recommendations,” LinkedIn will prompt you to ask specific people for them. Be aware that you can choose not to display recommendations if you don’t wish to. Endorsements look like this:

Recommendations actually include a photograph of the person making the recommendation, along with their name, job title and personalized testimonial. These carry far more weight.

Pick Your Best Photo

Your profile picture should be very professional—obviously those spring break photos are out. Pick one where you look the way you would for a job interview. Professional headshots are great, but at the very least, avoid shots that are blurry or candid. It can also be helpful to use the same picture you use on Twitter and Facebook and other social media, for consistency.

Be Aware Of Privacy Settings

LinkedIn has three different privacy settings. Click on your photo at the top right, and you’ll then be able to click on “Privacy and Settings”

Next, click on “Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile.”

There are multiple settings, your name and headline, your title and industry along with your location, and a totally anonymous post. What you select will be what others see when you click on their profile.

However, if you are anonymous, you will be unable to see anyone who has viewed your profile. Entries will look like this.

Allowing others to know when you’ve viewed their profile can help you find even more people to connect with.

Keep Your Profile Active

Joining a relevant group or two can be helpful in positioning yourself as an expert, and answering questions not only showcases your expertise (and helps others) but also keeps your profile active. Your business may consider starting a groups of its own—a way to send a weekly message to clients and prospects Other ways to maintain an active profile includes “liking” relevant links, and posting status updates of your own.

For Job Seekers

Upgrading to a paid account will allow you to post a Job Seeker Badge, which looks like a briefcase next to your name, but there are some free strategies you can use as well. Under the communications section of your profile, select the types of messages you are willing to receive. This will allow you to include what you’d like to be contacted for on LinkedIn

Just make sure that career opportunities is checked off!

Think of LinkedIn as an extension of your professional life. Follow these quick steps to put your best foot forward, and you’ll be well on your way to success using LinkedIn.

Do you have any tips to add for success on LinkedIn? Share in the comments.

What It Got Right

The user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) were vastly improved. It’s very easy to navigate the content and it’s organized in a logical and clean way.

It’s also clear by the top level navigation (Influencer Posts and All Influencers) that LinkedIn is trying to push its original content developed by the thought leaders they’ve invited to contribute. Subscribing to specific topics under the All Channels page is very easy and intuitive, too.

What It Got Wrong

While the UI/UX updates were pleasing and appreciated, the update to the curation algorithm was disappointing. Before the update, LinkedIn Today was full of the best mainstream, niche and original marketing content.

It was so good, in fact, that I abandoned both Twitter and my feed reader as my primary sources of industry news a long time ago. I actually came to work an hour early everyday just to get my daily consumption of LinkedIn Today. Its content varied from high-level strategic advice and guidance to in-the-weeds tactical instruction. Most every article was tweet-worthy.

Apparently, those were the good ol’ days, because now LinkedIn Today is filled with mostly big name mainstream media outlets like ABC News or The New York Times and its own original content. The niche content from sources like business2community.com, socialmediatoday.com, searchenginejournal.com and reelseo.com has vanished.

Not that there’s anything wrong with mainstream media, but its content is mostly thin and high-level. The authors tend to be reporters and not industry practitioners. It simply provides less value.

The amount of content curated by LinkedIn Today has drastically declined, too. In many cases marketing content and news is stale within 24 hours. The channels I subscribe to today are filled with week-old content. I’m lucky to get one new article from one day to the next.

A Marketer’s Plea

I get what the folks over at LinkedIn are trying to accomplish – they strive to be the most trusted and respected online news media outlet in the world. However, it shouldn’t take the elimination of the niche content it used to publish. It also doesn’t need to reduce the amount of content it curates.

I sincerely hope that LinkedIn tweaks its current algorithm to bring back the value it once provided. In the meantime, I don’t anticipate using LinkedIn Today as my morning industry newspaper anymore.

But if all you’re going to do is slap together a resume and add your fraternity brothers as contacts, you will not be harnessing the true power of LinkedIn. That’s why we’ve put together this list of five rarely spoken of tips that can help you to get the most out of this particular social experience.

1. You do not have to personally know every contact you add

This may indeed go against a lot of LinkedIn advice you have heard before that encourages you only to add those people you know outside of social media, either personally or professionally. But the sheer number of people on LinkedIn means that if you limit yourself in that way, you’ll never see the site work its magic for you. That doesn’t mean sending unsolicited messages to tons of strangers. Instead, find people with common interests. One great way to do this is by connection with people who are in the same LinkedIn groups as you are. Which brings us to tip number two.

2. Use LinkedIn Groups

Whether your main focus on LinkedIn is lead generation, professional networking, or competitor research, Groups and the discussions that take place within those groups can be invaluable. But don’t just join one group, find a lot of relevant groups and join them all. You don’t have participate in all of them, but the notifications you receive may prompt you to chime in or just make you think. And remember, if you can’t find the exact group you want, you can always create one yourself. Chances are you aren’t the only one looking for an “Oregon State Dog Walker’s” group or a “Social Media Marketers Who Live on Sailboats” group. (Okay, maybe you are the only one looking for that second one).

3. Lead generation on LinkedIn works

No, it’s true. You can use LinkedIn for more than looking for jobs and connecting with former colleague. If you take advantage of the tools they offer, you can actually generate high quality leads from your LinkedIn presence. Part of this strategy should definitely involve using groups, including those of your own creation. But you can also mine LinkedIn advertising, which is highly targetable, as well as any integration between your other social media efforts and your LinkedIn profile in order to generate leads with genuine interest in what you have to offer.

4. No points for creativity

You should already have an amazing LinkedIn profile, since you know the importance of a complete LinkedIn profile. But one thing you may not have thought of, particularly if you’re the creative marketing type, is that being fancy on your LinkedIn profile, whether you are an individual or a business, can actually be a hindrance. People use LinkedIn search to find profiles and if you use words that are more cute than descriptive, it’s less likely that they will be able to search for you. You want them to find you, right? Be straightforward.

5. You can use LinkedIn offline, too (sort of).

Sure, LinkedIn is a great way to stay in touch with contacts when you’re sitting in front of a computer and you can type in their names, but what about in the real world where you actually meet people? As the saying goes, there’s an app for that. The LinkedIn CardMunch app will turn real business cards into LinkedIn contacts instantly. Get it. Use it. Watch your network grow.

It’s possible that you had heard one of two of these tips before, but putting them all to use is a great first step towards a successful and valuable LinkedIn presence.

There is a new simpler, cleaner and less cluttered interface coming to LinkedIn users all over the world during the next month and I like it! It is taking the similar theme to the mobile interfaces, sleek and elegant and should make it easier to access the key aspects of LinkedIn in similar and consistent ways to the mobile experience.

They have even thought about how we move around the site and semi hidden the menu bar as we scroll for it to reappear as soon as we move the mouse up to it, very slick.

There are some downsides though, for example you cannot access your own company profile as easily and the groups you are a member of are more difficult to readily access, skills has been taken out of the top menu and left inside your profile, you cannot easily view your profile as others see but on balance I have to say it is a positive enhancement to the experience and a great step forward.

According to their blog post they have been quite smart this time around, analysing the data of how people have used the menus, what they have looked at, how often and used this to define the pieces that you value (and they do!) to structure the new interface.

This is what the new LinkedIn navigation bar looks like.

In summary the interface is clean, moved around, more prominence for search, fewer options (at a surface level) and a new drop down menu gives you quick access to your account options, language and settings.

Here’s the video from LinkedIn explaining more.

This is all going to be rolled out globally over the next month, I think it looks good, reserve judgment till I get hands on but what do you think?

LinkedIn is in the process of rolling out LinkedIn Contacts. In addition to several new features that are giving it a new look and feel – if offers enhanced functionality for better managing your relationships and social engagement.

There is no question that all of the major social networks want you to use their service as your social dashboard. However, many social networkers prefer to use an independent tool such as Hootsuite to effectively manage their social networks and build relationships.

One of the challenges is there is a disconnect between public social networking and private means of communication that often lead to sales conversion – namely email. This is where services such as Nimble are leading the way, by bringing social and email into one dashboard

What gets even more interesting is that concurrent with LinkedIn’s rollout of LinkedIn Contacts, Nimble has launched Nimble 3.0, and there are some interesting contrasts and similarities. (More on Nimble in a future article).

For now, here’s how to get the most out of LinkedIn Contacts.

#1 – Import Your Contacts

You have always been able to import your contacts from other sources into LinkedIn. However, now with LinkedIn Contacts there are multiple options for doing this – while also tracking where the source of those contacts. To get started, just go to contacts in your LinkedIn profile, and then settings.

Some of the possible sources for importing contacts into LinkedIn

What is especially useful is the refresh button. So, let’s say you imported your friends from Facebook a month ago, just hit the refresh button to bring in the new ones.

Incidentally, while Facebook does not let you export the email addresses of your friends, there is a workaround using Yahoo Contacts to import your Facebook contacts into LinkedIn. Since Facebook is not prone to sharing, I suggest doing this now to avoid the risk that this capability will be blocked in the future.

Know that you won’t get all of them, because not everyone has an email address publicly linked to their Facebook profile.

#2 – Set Reminders to Connect

It’s easy to make that first connection, but anybody that has ever attended a live networking event knows that often nothing happens after that. In the old days, business cards got pushed into a drawer. Today, connections are made and forgotten days later.

So, a great solution is to use LinkedIn Contacts to set a reminder to follow-up with your connections a few weeks or so later. At the very least, your new connection will be impressed with your organization, and if you can also share some useful information, better yet.

LinkedIn reminders, tags, notes, and conversation history

#3 – Merge Duplicate Contacts

Many people unknowingly or not set up multiple profiles on LinkedIn. As a result, you may find yourself connecting with their abandoned profile because they did not delete it.

Now LinkedIn pulls up what they believe to be all duplicate profiles so that you can merge them. You simply unclick those on the list where the same name is actually two different people. Then just click merge and just like that – you have cleaned up your database

#4 – Tag Your Connections

It appears that LinkedIn automatically assigns a tag such as colleague or friend based upon the respective social graphs or source of the contacts. Regardless, you should be making the effort to accurately tag your connections

This is the true power of a CRM – using tags to create micro-communities. If you do not have a means for targeting your message for a specific community, then you run the risk of having it reduced to spam.

When that happens, your ability to connect with future opportunties is compromised, because you have lost the trust that you may have otherwise earned.

#5 – Note Relevant Information

I have always wondered about the privacy of the notes feature in LinkedIn, and have now confirmed that profile notes are private to you.

So, when you make a connection, jot down important notes for later use – including how your met and any opportunities that may have been discussed. It’s easy to forget, so take the time now, so that when that follow-up reminder pings you later you’ll recall important information.

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman likes to say, “It’s better to be the best connected than the most connected.”

Now LinkedIn is not only giving you the tools to do so, but making them seamless and easy to use for getting more from this platform.

In addition to that, LinkedIn plays well with others. So, while Google and Facebook continue to slug it out on their respective properties, it’s nice to know you can count on LinkedIn as a friendly and neutral partner.

If you are still looking for more from LinkedIn, consider setting up your LinkedIn Business Page.

How about you? How are you using LinkedIn to grow your business?

Research in the US undertaken by LinkedIn in 2012 identified that investors research information about their financial decisions on LinkedIn.

I recently had the opportunity to deliver a workshop for women who are in the Pensions industry about how to use LinkedIn to develop productive and profitable relationships and you can find a summary of the areas I covered below. The workshop was focused on individuals using LinkedIn and therefore we did not go into details of using LinkedIn Company Pages.

1. Define your PURPOSE for using LinkedIn – As with all networks you join, identify your goals and objectives so that you can manage and prioritise how you will engage on LinkedIn and who you will look to connect with.

Your reputation and personal brand is impacted by your online presence. Increasingly people search for us as individuals not just the organisation we work for. LinkedIn is a great platform to use if you have a limited online profile as you can customise what information from your profile is accessible in search results.

If you are in career transition, LinkedIn is a great platform to keep up to speed with news about organisations and the their current vacancies by following Company Pages and participating in Groups.

2. Refer to your company social media and compliance POLICIES – It is especially important if you are in the financial services sector that to ensure that you comply with industry regulations and your company social media policy.

3. Review Your LinkedIn PRIVACY Settings – As with any other social network you join , take the time to review and refine your privacy settings to help you manage the security and online visibility of your data

4.Create a compelling LinkedIn PROFILE – Refine your profile ensuring that you use a professional image not a logo; add the key words that you want to be found for and enhance your profile adding multimedia.

In addition, you can edit your profile URL so that you have a shorter link to promote your profile. You can also add a link to a relevant page on your company website including a call to action to help you attract more traffic to your website.

Enhance your profile with multimedia, for example YouTube videos and SlideShare presentations or documents to your profile – consider how you could use this functionality to attract new business.

5. Take the time to actively PARTICIPATE in LinkedIn – Invite people to join you on LinkedIn using personalised invitations. Keep connected and share relevant updates. Identify LinkedIn Groups to join to support your professional goals.

Build your visibility using Groups and when you join a Group, take the time to review the guidelines posted by the moderator before you start to post updates. You can reply publically or privately to discussion topics. And of course you can consider creating your own Group.

6. Integrate and PROMOTE your profile – Dependent on your company policy, cross promote your LinkedIn profile on your business cards, email footer, your website and social networks.

i also recommended that the delegates in the workshop consider claiming their place in cyberspace – you may want to invest in purchasing your own domain name that you can use throughout your professional life. If you are not ready to develop a personal website you could point your personal domain name to your LinkedIn profile or to a social hub such as About.me.

I hope you found these tips of assistance and of course you can contact me if you have questions about how to make the most of your LinkedIn presence of to learn about the in-house LinkedIn workshops I customise for professional services and financial services clients.

What have you found helps you nurture business relationships on LinkedIn?

You can find the slides from my presentation here.

Six steps to using LinkedIn to develop productive and profitable relationships from Krishna De

At the end of April, LinkedIn rolled out another new feature. (Surprise, surprise! LinkedIn is changing again!) Called LinkedIn Contacts, it’s touted as a new way to combine, access and use your information.

Contacts pulls together contact information from your email accounts, calendars, and address books, as well as messages and important notes. LinkedIn designed it to be a convenient, one-stop hub where you can find all of your communications, see what events happened when, and even be reminded of a contact’s birthday.

Available online and as a stand-alone iPhone app, LinkedIn calls this new feature “a smarter way to stay in touch with your most important relationships.” In many ways it is, but like all new technologies some caution is in order.

Some LinkedIn experts are crazy about LinkedIn Contacts. They love how the feature makes it easier to communicate with large numbers of contacts and reminds us to stay in contact. There is a “Lost Touch” feature, because time goes so fast these days it’s easy to forget just how long it’s been since you’ve communicated with certain folks.

This is the type of information that, back in the days of “Mad Men,” Don Draper’s secretary would have monitored for him. (She would have also gone to the store and bought a diamond necklace for his wife, but I digress.) In fact, LinkedIn calls this feature “a personal assistant” for its users.

Contacts is extremely compatible – with Outlook Mail, Gmail, Google Contacts, Google Calendar; Google Apps Mail, Contacts and Calendar; iPhone Address Book (via the LinkedIn Contacts app); Yahoo! Mail, Contacts and Calendar; Contacts and Calendar; Evernote and TripIt; LinkedIn’s CardMunch service. When any of that information is changed, it will be updated in LinkedIn Contacts as well. Pretty slick.

But, (and you were waiting for the “but,” weren’t you?) not everyone is so keen on the new Contacts feature, and for some good reasons. LinkedIn expert, Jason Alba has concerns. Albeit, he’s got JibberJobber (which I do think is awesome, by the way), a competitor with Contacts.

One particular concern is well worth paying attention to. I’ll discuss this briefly, but you can read more about it here.

To sum it up, we’re all becoming accustomed to having our information floating out there in “The Cloud.” But what if something happens to the cloud service we are using? What if it’s not a technical problem, but the result of policy that says that if you do something that the cloud service (read LinkedIn) doesn’t like, and they can make the information in your little cloud go away? You’ve then lost all of your information! The moral of the story here is always back up your data to a secondary service or hard drive. Take nothing for granted.

Since many of my clients don’t know each and every line of LinkedIn’s terms of service, I’ll still recommend using JibberJobber for a CRM, so they don’t ever have to worry about what happens if their account should get shut down. (Don’t think that can happen? I just wrote about one issue that can result in this here.)

But, with a commonsensical approach, and backing up, LinkedIn Contacts is pretty cool. You should check it out. And I expect to hear from you on my next birthday!