Today I received a question from a LinkedIn newbie which reminded me that sometimes I need to get back to basics and answer simple questions that sometimes may be confusing to others. The question I got today, although worded differently, is someone that is worried about sending out invitations to people that were 2nd degree connections, i.e. people that should be 1st degree connections but weren’t. It really comes down to the basic question of who to invite join our LinkedIn networks? While there is no single rule as to who to invite as this depends on your reason why …
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I have had the opportunity to engage with many lawyers recently, both in person as well as online through LinkedIn, and the sudden interest in social media that they seem to have has been surprising to me. I had always envisioned the legal profession as more of an old-school, conservative group of people that would not have an interest in social networking. The interest from them that I have seen clearly shows that LinkedIn, and social networking, are phenomenons that are here to stay. If you are in the legal profession and are already on LinkedIn, you may not be …
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I recently did a Twitter Chat for #smbiz on tips for utilizing LinkedIn for small business. You can find out more about what we discussed here, but since then I have been contacted by small businesses looking for advice on how to utilize LinkedIn. I decided to answer this particular question on my blog because it did not come up on the chat. Furthermore, I have even had a member of my So Cal Sushi LinkedIn Group recently add a similar tip of this blog post to the Discussion Board there (which you can access if you are a member), …
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I just got asked this from an old friend from elementary school (!), who I have been able to keep in better touch with thanks to Social Media, Facebook in particular. He, like many others, wonders what the real value in LinkedIn Recommendations are when there are a lot of ”if your rub my back, I’ll rub yours,” recommendations on LinkedIn, which, in my friend’s words, “somewhat limits the credibility of the action”. Another way of looking at LinkedIn Recommendations is what my old boss once told me. ”You know when someone is looking for a new job when they …
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I received this question yesterday from an engineer who plans to start evangelizing LinkedIn to an engineering community who may not have the same view of Social Media like I do. As part of this person’s LinkedIn Objective, he wants to create his own brand of being the Pioneer of Connecting Engineers on LinkedIn. I think this is a great idea, as every professional should be on LinkedIn, and it brings up a good question as to how an open networking or LION tag can help in doing so. But what about the idea of a selective LinkedIn LION?
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This is a question geared more towards those that are not yet familiar enough with the platform of tweets. I could, and will, write a whole different series of blog posts on Twitter.com, but there is one point (and one advertisement) I would like to make in this post about what excites me most about Twitter that LinkedIn lacks: immediacy. Tomorrow, Tuesday April 21 at 20:00 EDT, I will be on my first Twitter realtime chat discussing and answering questions on using LinkedIn for small businesses for one hour. This is being hosted by John Sternal, and Steven Burda and …
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This question may sound confusing, but since there are now more than 260,000 (!) LinkedIn Groups, maybe there is one that is actually officially affiliated with the site that could be an interesting one to join to learn more about LinkedIn? I am happy to report that there is at least one official LinkedIn Group that exists. The catch is that you may (read below for more details) have to be a Group Manager to join, but if you are, I highly recommend that you join the LinkedIn Groups Product Forum. This is an amazing Group where both internal employees …
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I embarked on this blog beginning with the mechanics of LinkedIn, but I find myself responding more and more to questions regarding social media in general, how to effectively utilize social networking sites for certain purposes, and finally how to monetize all of this. I have big plans for this blog to evolve into a broader forum and gateway for understanding social media, and I will be launching this new website when I announce plans for the new book that I am writing. Stay tuned for more! As I write this the buzz continues around social media, and the membership …
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I had dinner last night with a publicly elected official from a large American city. I was impressed with his understanding of Social Media, and he had already created and implemented a strategy to utilize Facebook for political purposes. But what about LinkedIn? LinkedIn is still seen as being a boring, static medium when compared, as it often is, to Twitter and Facebook. This is because LinkedIn is pretty much a closed world, with only a few LinkedIn applications available that you can use to make your profile more interactive. What a lot of people are missing is the interactivity …
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LinkedIn recently updated their blog with a post entitled 5 Ways to Get More from Your LinkedIn Groups. But, as with information that LinkedIn is beginning to religiously blog and tweet about, I find it is too little and too late. After all, I was first in providing LinkedIn advice for College Students before the LinkedIn introduction of their Grads Group (at least to my knowledge, if I am incorrect in the timing please correct me!), and I find the best practices information that has recently provided on Groups can be further enriched by this blog. After all, this blog …
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