Category Archives: LinkedIn Training

I saw three website – LinkedIn Advent Calendar (Day 5)

Here’s an easy win for you on your Profile.

The Contact Info section has a prime position at the top of the page. It automatically contains a link to your Public Profile – you know the one that can be seen anywhere on the web. (You can personalise the link, BTW!)

And …

Well for many people, there is no ‘and’. That’s the only thing in there, which is a bit of a waste.

What other contact info would be good?

Well, at the very least, give visitors to your Profile a nudge as to where they can find out more.

A link (more…)

Article Categories: Business Development on LinkedIn, LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn Training
Article Tags: , , ,

What is LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index & how to benefit from it

Social Selling Index SSIfor the past few years, we have had access to an online tool called the Social Selling Index which is designed to give a snapshot of where you are in using LinkedIn as part of your sales – your social sales – activities. The details are displayed on your own page with references to how you rank in comparison to others within the same industry and your perceived peer group.

It is also couched with a number of references to LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator account – this is one of the premium account levels and the stream which is designed to help the sales professional to prospect and develop more business using social channels, and LinkedIn in particular.

What is the Social Selling Index?

The Social Selling Index (SSI) was a metric that LinkedIn introduced back in 2015 initially just to those with the upgraded Sales Navigator account but subsequently to all of LinkedIn’s members.

Your SSI is represented as a score out of 100 with 4 different key areas each marked out of a maximum of 25 – these areas represent and try to measure the four pillars of Social Selling according to LinkedIn (ones that I broadly agree with) which are: (more…)

Article Categories: Businesses using LinkedIn, LinkedIn Training, Social Selling
Article Tags: , , , ,

5 Steps to Success on LinkedIn

Using LinkedIn: 5 steps to successThere has been much written about LinkedIn over the years and how it can work for you in business. Given that I have spent the last 10 years training companies and individuals on it, you are likely to expect that I’m going to be positive about what it offers. You’d be right, I’m a fan.

Having said that, I also recognise there is no single way to benefit from it – from job seeking to recruiting, networking to online training, business development to inbound marketing, the potential uses are many and very varied.

There are, however, some key underlying elements that we can all tap into – key steps to success if you like – and what we are going to look at below are some that will prove beneficial to using LinkedIn effectively, whatever your motives are for being on the site.

1. Decide what your current objectives are

LinkedIn is such a potentially wide-ranging tool, that you can use for a whole host of different reasons. Indeed, during your career as you enter different phases, your use will be radically different according to your current needs, situation and role.

Therefore, our first challenge is (more…)

Article Categories: B2B Advice for LinkedIn, Business Development on LinkedIn, LinkedIn Strategy, LinkedIn Tips, LinkedIn Training
Article Tags: , ,

Keeping secure on LinkedIn in 2018

LinkedIn Security & SafetyWith more and more activity happening online, in all of our interactions we have dual issues of both getting seen (and heard) while at the same time also staying safe – luckily there are some security aspects built into the LinkedIn system which may help.

I’m not talking about getting your homepage spam free – that’s a topic I’ve talked about elsewhere – but rather ensuring your access and activity on LinkedIn is as secure as possible. After all, it’s your own personal information, professional information and connections that are all built up in this site.

So, I’m going to encourage you to have a look at 6 areas that I’ve outlined below which will keep you – and your information – that little bit more secure on LinkedIn going forward.

1. Which services have access to your LinkedIn account

In a world where automation and streamlining seem to be pushing us to try to link everything together, we have no doubt allowed certain services to have access to our LinkedIn account to aid that process, Twitter being a prime example. (more…)

Article Categories: Advanced LinkedIn, LinkedIn Tips, LinkedIn Training, Security on LinkedIn, Using LinkedIn
Article Tags: , , , ,

Social Selling mini series: What is social selling really?

socialsellingSocial Selling … hhhmmm, it seems that you can hardly open a business magazine at the moment without someone mentioning this current buzzword of the sales fraternity. The trouble is there seems to be a bit of a difference of opinion as to what it’s all about … or perhaps put a different way, everyone seems to have their own opinion of what Social Selling really is and what it can offer.

At one end of the scale, it is the “holy grail” of business development which means you never have to talk to a prospect or customer again … the sales just fall into your lap! At the other end, it’s “pie in the sky rubbish” which will never deliver any real opportunities let alone concrete sales. The truth, as you might imagine, falls somewhere between these two extremes … exactly where will depend on your own outlook on the sales process and your perception of where the application of LinkedIn can add most value as a sales and business development tool.

And don’t think it doesn’t apply to you because you don’t sell … yes, YOU, you know who you are, shaking your head there. Let’s face it, who amongst us doesn’t have at least one foot (or one toe maybe, if you prefer) in the sales arena?

We all do really, much as we might hate to admit it. As Daniel Pink states (more…)

Article Categories: LinkedIn Search, LinkedIn Training, Social Selling
Article Tags: , , ,

Searching your Connections’ connections on LinkedIn
… with extra oomph!

Searching LinkedIn ConnectionsThere has been a merry old dance this past week with a lot of users who spend a good amount of time on LinkedIn getting rather upset, including myself, as we discovered that the ability to engage in true networking on LinkedIn had taken a bit of a dent.

Essentially, it seemed as though the ability to search through the connections of your 1st level connections had been removed – well, a week later and it’s back again after a bit of “not sure what’s going on” from LinkedIn’s Customer Experience Advocates (Customer Service Reps to you and I).

In case you are unsure what all the fuss is about, the culprit is the little magnifying glass shown below which gives us the opportunity to do a search through the profiles of the connections of an individual connection, perhaps to request a referral of them in the most targeted of ways:

Magnifying glass to search connections on LinkedIn

Anyway, in the interim, myself and a number of others took the time to look at other ways to access this functionality and I have seen posted in a number of places a second suggested route to find these details.

My issue was that it didn’t go far enough because it didn’t allow us to do a full advanced search through our connections’ connections … however, with a little bit of playing, I have found a way to get full advanced search of connections which I believe to be HUGELY beneficial! (more…)

Article Categories: Advanced LinkedIn, B2B Advice for LinkedIn, Businesses using LinkedIn, LinkedIn Training, LinkedIn Updates
Article Tags: , , ,