Special Uses For LinkedIn

This is the third article about how people are using LinkedIn to accomplish various goals, including business objectives. Personal branding is another use advocated in Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand, by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson. The authors emphasized the importance of keeping your LinkedIn profile current with any new events in your life, showing your expertise in your particular field.
This information has the effect of drawing people to you from the vast professional network that is LinkedIn. Here you can form relationships with current or past business associates, find contacts you know inside a business where you want a job, or forge some other business relationship. These contacts allow you to ask your peers for advice or generate a wide discussion about some particular subject you are investigating.

Let’s use my own circle of connections to see just how far-reaching LinkedIn can make you. I have been in LinkedIn for less than a year and, until recently, I never tried to increase my contacts. In spite of this my profile shows, with only 12 direct contacts, my total network is over 600,000; I’m writing this on 27th May 2014, and my profile says there have been more than 900 new members in my network in just one day.

Do you see the potential power in LinkedIn?
It is my hope these articles will speed the process of your making useful applications of LinkedIn. When I became a member, I was clueless about how to use anything about the network. There is a lot of information on the Website, but somehow it didn’t make any sense to me. It was evident LinkedIn isn’t just about building connections, but about actually doing business with it. As LinkedIn expands its functions, you can expect to see more reinforcement of this concept. With this in mind, I decided to find out as much as possible about how to use it. There are a number of books available, but there wasn’t one very popular one among the lot. A Google search revealed much better information and these articles are the result. Use this information to add value to your LinkedIn membership; you may even make some money, as well.
Now, consider this special use of LinkedIn. With so many network connections one should expect anything to happen, and this often occurs. You may consider these as “Unpredictable Benefits.” Louis Pasteur once said, “Chance favors the prepared mind." This particular LinkedIn use involves serendipity, an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident, or the kind of luck the happens when someone gets the first job they seek.



This particular event occurred when Member A began a LinkedIn search for a powerful New York advertising executive. The ad man was not a LinkedIn member so A began to look for people who, based on their profile information, might know the ad person. This search found Member B whose profile indicated a possible knowledge of the ad exec. A was interested enough in B’s information to follow-up by visiting and reading B’s blog and Website after which B asked A to link with him. A is not very open with his links and was, at first, reluctant to accept the invitation. However, after reading B’s profile, with the VP and well-known company name, the invitation was accepted and a conversation followed not long after. B turned out to be a well-informed and connected contact, and they had a lot of mutual professional interests. B has given much valuable feedback on some of A’s projects, so the relationship is mutually beneficial, even though it happened by accident.

The steps to remember in this serendipitous relationship are:

1. You are a LinkedIn member and this puts your profile where all can see it.
2. A good profile not only lets LinkedIn members view your good qualities, it also puts it in play with Google searches, as well.
3. Profile links to blogs and Websites tell people a lot more about you, enabling their interest in what you do.
4. Everything in your profile and your blogs should connect in a concise manner, showing your best points without scattering different ideas all over the place.
5. Consider unexpected invitations in light of their potential for meeting your goals. Your plans must be made and followed, but a chance meeting may be your best opportunity so remain flexible.

Scott Allen discusses unexpected LinkedIn results here.

A fairly new gizmo related to LinkedIn is the “Linked in a Box Widget” described here. Most members probably display the regular LinkedIn button on their Websites and blogs. Now here comes this new widget which allows you to display your actual profile details on all your Websites and blogs. This little box expands the reach of your profile far outside the confines of LinkedIn, which is very large by itself. Bren discusses this widget further on this blog.

Most members are interested in increasing those contacts directly connected to them, but what about someone who increased their LinkedIn connections by 167% in 48 hours? He did it by using LinkedIn to contact people in his address books. The main problem with this is what to do about those you don’t know, or don’t know well. Brendon, the member who did this, decided to solve the problem with this message:

Hey, I just let LinkedIn look in my Gmail address book and am sending connection invites to folks that I remember talking with in the past. You made the cut!
If you don’t remember me…well, delete this and I won’t hit you up again.
Be well,
- Brendon

LinkedIn instantly sent all the invitations, and within 48 hours almost 140 new contacts accepted the invitation. In order to use this kind of campaign, you must make the decision that having a lot of contacts is better for your purposes than just having a few with whom you have very close ties. If I have over 600,000 in my network with only 12 contacts, just think of the numbers involved with over 200 members!
To do what this member did, look at the center of your home page. “Build your network” hits you right in the face—you can’t miss it. From there follow the directions for automatically getting a list of all your contacts in every address book you use; go through the list and select those you want to invite. You will be surprised that some of them are already LinkedIn members, which gives you a good excuse to invite them. Read how Brendan did this. Please note Brendan did this in 2007; since then there have been changes in the LinkedIn home page—my description of the method is how you would do it now.

Many home-based entrepreneurs are writers, or they would like to write. Here are some ideas about how writers, freelancers, journalists, and others in the field might use LinkedIn to benefit their careers. Try some of these and see what happens:

1. Even if you don’t have any awards or recognition, you have certainly written articles for Internet article banks, your own Websites, or you have an E-book somewhere; figure some way to list these on your profile so others can see what you do. A good example is David Lidsky, Senior Editor of Fast Company; log in to your account and click the “People” tab, then enter Lidsky’s name and click “Search.” He’s found a way to list everything he’s ever done.

2. One writer thinks you need at least 20 connections to use LinkedIn effectively. He urges writers to first connect with influential people in the journalism business including executives, former coworkers, and present relationships. Concentrate on those who can give advice and otherwise help you do your job.

3. When you become successful, you need to control who gets in touch with you. Use your “Accounts & Settings” tab to do this under “E-mail Settings.”

4. You may find some freelance opportunities by searching the “Writing and Editing” category and sorting by “Degrees away from you.”

5. Use the new search features to find experts or other contacts you need. This tool allows any combination of location, job title, company, keywords, and other information in your sort. Find anyone you want in a hurry (if they are in the network).

6. Get information outside normal Public Relations channels by using LinkedIn’s “Answers” tab. The entire network gets these questions and who knows what their answers will be? You may get an entirely new idea from what they say. There also could be no replies.

7. Using the “Answers” tab you will immediately see current questions open for discussion. The right sidebar has a “Browse” section with numerous categories. Click one and find articles that may no longer be open, but may contain ideas for articles. Use this resource because it can be the source of more articles than you can ever write.

8. It is possible to promote your book on LinkedIn. Look at the individual elements in your profile and see which ones can be manipulated in a way to show your writing to the world. Use your creative abilities to modify “Current,” “Past,” “Website,” and “Summary” sections to include references to your chosen work. The search engines will pick up this text information along with LinkedIn users who may look at your information.

Penelope Trunk discusses these ideas, and some others, in this blog.
Mahesh Grossman, an author himself, outlines several ways authors, in particular, can use LinkedIn. They are:

1. Ask your entire network, through “Answers,” questions about possible content for your book, or about people to interview on a particular subject. You may be surprised at the number of replies you will get. Search through some of the completed questions and you could find your question already has answers, or you may find new ideas.

2. LinkedIn offers the opportunity for introduction to best selling authors. It turns out many of them belong to LinkedIn, and one of your contacts may be able to introduce you.

3. There are hundreds of literary agents in LinkedIn. If you need an introduction to a specific agent, work your way through your contacts to publication editors and others who know the agent you want.

4. If you need publicity you can use your contacts to find the people you need. There are many writers and editors from all major magazines and radio and TV. Work through your network.

5. Do you need people to help market your book or teleseminar, or anything else you have produced? Just ask the network who can help you and see what happens. You will probably get several volunteers.

Mahesh Grossman discusses these ideas further here.
A LinkedIn small business group, “On Startups,” began in April, 2007; it already has almost 32,000 members signifying its tremendous popularity. A few things you can do using this group are:

1. Find others living near you who are also interested in business startups.
2. Locate someone interested in becoming a partner with you.
3. Find people willing to join your new team.
4. Find a startup you can join to see if you like the entrepreneur idea.
5. Locate available financing other than family and friends.
6. Determine the number of small entrepreneurs living near you.

Dharmesh Shah, founder of On Startups says in this blog he thinks the value of the group depends upon the number of passionate people who join. With 32,000 members in a year-and-a-half, he’s well on his way to having a meaningful community.
This is the final group of LinkedIn projects we will discuss. One user found these ideas to be useful, and they should help almost everyone using LinkedIn:

1. You can use LinkedIn to obtain some advantage when going for an interview. If you know the name of your interviewer and can find them on LinkedIn, studying their profile will give you insight into their background and interests, all things that may help you when answering their questions.

2. Market your credibility and build your brand by having many related contacts and by providing expert quality responses to questions in the Answers section.

3. Build your relationships by helping others; they won’t forget and will be willing to do things for you. Respond to recommendation requests, provide introductions, and be prompt when answering any direct e-mails you may receive.

4. Although it may take a little creative action, LinkedIn offers a powerful opportunity to do market research for new products or services. You can ask present or former employees in similar industries and ask potential customers what they think of your new item.

Leo Babauta talks about these resources and many others in this blog.
After reading this article, my hope is you will realize LinkedIn is not only a professional social network; it is first of all a very large source of business opportunities. Use as many LinkedIn resources as you can to promote your financial success. Remember, in all of the three articles on this subject, we have only touched on a few ways to use LinkedIn. Being the creative individual you are, see what other things LinkedIn can do for you. The fourth and final report in this LinkedIn series will discuss various parts of the actual LinkedIn Website.