I am always amazed of the people I meet at networking events or social media conferences that are heavy on Twitter or Facebook but light on LinkedIn. Or others that are on LinkedIn but are not really on LinkedIn. In other words, after realizing the potential value of LinkedIn, what’s next? I have become good friends with Bradley Will, the role model who is empowering young entrepreneurs, and we have a similar goal of helping others better utilize social media. My blog post for today I actually wrote for his demographic, the Gen Y entrepreneurs who have been intimated by …
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If you received an introduction request or an Inmail on LinkedIn and you were not allowed to act upon it, wouldn’t you be angry? The picture to the right is from the actual screen that a LinkedIn user saw the other day. Does it surprise you that your LinkedIn account could potentially be restricted? Let’s take a different perspective. The other day, I received an interesting email forwarded to me from a friend: “I am relatively new to Linkedin and I did not know they put a ceiling on it [= number of connections]. At what point do they cut …
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Come on, I don’t really want you to write me one, but there has been unprecedented chatter about LinkedIn recommendations in blogging circles these days. And I want to put everything in perspective to confirm whether or not LinkedIn recommendations really have value. It was Jeremiah Owyang who started the debate. Jeremiah is a renowned web strategist, but he is also one of the early adopters and biggest fans of LinkedIn. If you check out the archives of his blog, you will see some gems of articles about utilizing LinkedIn for social networking and tips for job hunting. I consider Jeremiah …
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I signed up for Facebook several years after I joined LinkedIn. In fact, I even joined Twitter six months before becoming a Facebook member. A year ago you could of said that a Gen X guy on Facebook was not the norm. But now that there are as many Facebook users aged 25 to 54 as there are those that are aged 18 to 24, I would consider my demographic fairly average these days. So you can imagine how surprised I was when I uploaded my LinkedIn contacts to Facebook and found an acceptance rate of only 10 to 15% …
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Today’s blog post has been contributed by Breanne Cooley, the editor of my upcoming book “Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn.” “How’s the job search going?” “Network, network, network!” “Hang in there!” Those are the words every frustrated job seeker hears over and over from their friends and family. In fact, those were the words I kept hearing for these past few months during my own job search in San Francisco. Though the support is, of course, much appreciated, I couldn’t help but think to myself: “How the heck do I ‘network’ when everyone else is busy with their …
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With many newbies on Twitter these days, the etiquette of the social networking site is constantly changing. On the one hand, there is more social media marketing (= more spam) going on; at the same time, more people are understanding the potential for Windmill Networking on Twitter and are reaching out and creating meaningful conversations with others virtually. However, regardless of how long you’ve been on Twitter, you have probably noticed that you are getting more automated Direct Messages (DMs) from your new followers. And I believe it is coming from both the spammers as well as the newbies. Let …
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Today’s blog post is influenced by an article I read from the comments made by LinkedIn at the Social Recruiting Summit. Let me further expand the argument for the case of LinkedIn. Like many others who have learned to embrace LinkedIn, I did so when I was in transition. I realized that I had not been digging my well before I was thirsty, and I vowed to not only build up a larger network, but also to both stay in better touch with that network as well as provide more value to those in my network. As I mentioned in …
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There are many resources on the web for finding people to follow on Twitter. Just do a search for any particular type of person you want to follow (student entrepreneurs? job seeker advice? etc.) and chances are you will find a list. But why none for LinkedIn? Well, just as I have been the first to write on other things LinkedIn-related, I think it is important to introduce people on LinkedIn that I think you should invite and/or connect up with. These people are either LIONs or “Super Connectors”, people with lots of connections that are open to receiving new …
read moreToday’s blog post is one that I created for Bradley Will, a self-proclaimed “gnarly entrepreneur” who is also the leading voice for empowering a new generation of young entrepreneurs. If you haven’t read his blog you need to check it out. The blog post that I did itself you should read on Bradley’s site here. But I wanted to give you some background about the post because it explains two important things about Windmill Networking (which will be detailed further in my book to be published in August).
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After networking with several great people over the last several days, which have in essence been conversations that seem more like a veritable cross-breeding of ideas, I believe that more and more people are starting to see the potential value of meeting new people on LinkedIn. Now, just because you are open to doing this does not mean that you necessarily need to become a LinkedIn Open Networker, or LinkedIn LION. There are many methods to the madness of connecting with new people. My method for connecting with new people is using the vehicle of the LION brand. You can …
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