Category Archives: LinkedIn Strategy

LinkedIn Tip: Planning makes perfect

May 2, 2012 by ,

LinkedIn Tips and AdviceHaving hesitated for a while about adding a LinkedIn tip which has the word “Planning” in the title – it does seem to scare people – I’ve decided to finally take the plunge, although I haven’t quite plucked up the courage to add one with “Strategy” in just yet. 🙂

However, planning is hugely important because, like all of the social media channels, LinkedIn is essentially a tool for you to use in the way that best suits your needs. I am constantly reminded of this when I see people advise newly joined members of LinkedIn to first of all get their profile up to date. Hugely important I agree … but a close second after first deciding why you want to be on LinkedIn and what you want to get from the time you’ll be spending on it.

It’s therefore key to work out from the start what (more…)

Article Categories: LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn Strategy, LinkedIn Tips, Using LinkedIn
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Get your Business Card contacts onto LinkedIn

February 17, 2012 by ,

LinkedIn Business CardI seem to accumulate piles of them. Many sit sadly on my desk or in drawers gathering dust, unused yet only occasionally unwanted. Finally, when I do manage to file them, they are replaced by a new set after the next show, exhibition or networking event, often to suffer the same fate. I go through the ordeal of organising events and contact this company for digital printing services, and every single time, despite getting really good designs on the cards, the cards still accumulate dust.

I’ve always known that I really ought to get more organised and productive with them, perhaps sorting and filing them by level of interest or speciality or even by event.
The trouble is that it would be impossible to manually keep in contact and up to date with what they are doing even for a consummately organised networker – and I’m really not one of those.

So, to be brutally honest, in the vast majority of cases they are stored away for a rainy day only to be forgotten about or, when I do think “Yes, I remember talking to someone who did that!”, all too often I find the details are no longer accurate anyway.

No longer the case. LinkedIn to the rescue. (more…)

Article Categories: B2B Advice for LinkedIn, LinkedIn Strategy, Networking supercharged
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LinkedIn Tip: Get your Current Roles in Order

November 21, 2011 by ,

LinkedIn current roles - how to reorder themMost of us wear more than one hat in business and on LinkedIn, we reflect this by having a number of “Current” roles on our profile. This might also include membership of business organisations, networking groups, non exec positions etc. or we may simply be using it as part of our LinkedIn Profile optimisation and hence splitting out the roles we have to help push us towards the top of the search results in LinkedIn.

Whatever our reasons, we almost certainly have one which we particularly want to be known for and which should appear at the top and then a preferred order for the others to appear. Previously on LinkedIn, we could only change that order by ‘playing’ with the start dates, as the roles were ordered purely on the basis of the start date for each role.

That is no longer the case.
(more…)

Article Categories: LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn Site Changes, LinkedIn Strategy, LinkedIn Tips
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Quality versus quantity in your LinkedIn network

August 30, 2011 by ,

Quantity versus QualityThere’s long been an (often) animated debate as to the “right” way to approach networking and particularly to building your network.

In the red corner: there are advocates of a quality based approach where you only connect with people you either know well or who are directly relevant to you and what you do;

In the blue corner: over here, the watchword is ‘quantity’ and so the aim is to connect with all and sundry and rely on the idea of serendipity, that’s to say that these people are bound to know someone (who knows someone) who will be interested in what you do or offer.

LinkedIn of course supports both approaches and seemingly takes no sides in this.

However, there is a caveat to this because of the way that LinkedIn structures and displays its search results, which may influence your thoughts on this. This is particularly relevant if you are looking at this as a (new) business development tool (more…)

Article Categories: B2B Advice for LinkedIn, LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn Strategy, Using LinkedIn
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Using LinkedIn to listen

July 28, 2011 by ,

Listen on LinkedInA lot of what people do on LinkedIn is talk – they share their own information (or other people’s), publicise what they are doing, demonstrate their expertise etc. And that’s great, because LinkedIn has a number of great tools which allow you to do just that and, hopefully, you will have chosen topics that your network wants to hear about.

However, there’s the other side of networking … and of business … and that is listening. LinkedIn is also really good at that too. So, as you might imagine, there are also a number of different tools and places on LinkedIn which provide great ways for you to do just that.

Why listen?

Listening is really important – the much touted adage of (more…)

Article Categories: Groups on LinkedIn, LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn Strategy, LinkedIn Tips, Using LinkedIn
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What is Openlink on LinkedIn? Now Open Profile …

June 24, 2011 by ,

Openlink - LinkedIn Openlink NetworkYou may have seen a much smaller version of the symbol to the right on some people’s profiles next to their name and, generally, next to a Premium account symbol too. While it’s not that obvious, what it signifies is that the member is part of the OpenLink network on LinkedIn.

{As from May 2014, LinkedIn appears to have renamed Openlink as Open Profile (that’s Open Profile as 2 words it seems) which is actually a sensible move, I would suggest, as Open Profile would appear to better communicate the real benefits of the function … as you will hopefully discover below}

OpenLink (now Open Profile) is something that is available exclusively to Premium account holders and indeed, in my opinion, is a key benefit of these paid for business accounts. Essentially, it lets people who are members to find and get in contact with other professionals who are interested in meeting new people. It also opens up the ability for anyone to contact you and makes certain that anyone can see your full details in the search results, whether the searcher is part of your network or not. Let me explain …

(more…)

Article Categories: Businesses using LinkedIn, LinkedIn Strategy, Networking supercharged, Using LinkedIn
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