With all of these LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networker) that are openly accepting invites as well as inviting people that they don’t know, you have to wonder as to what LinkedIn’s policy is on the matter. After all, this goes against the entire premise of LinkedIn that you only connect with people that you know and trust. And this is why there is an “I Don’t Know” response should you decide not to accept an invite from someone that you don’t know. The problem in LinkedIn’s eyes concerning LIONs is their potential to spam people because of the enormous numbers of …
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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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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 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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This will be the fourth and last look at the recent changes made by LinkedIn in the Groups and Inbox functionality. Now that Inbox is positioned, literally, in the top center of your Home Page and as the central location for your online communications on the professional networking site, it raises the question of how do you actually utilize the Inbox. I actually created a question on Answers to ask others how they utilize Inbox in comparison to all of the other email, web, and social media applications that exist. You can see all of the answers here: http://budurl.com/neal6.
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If you are on LinkedIn for a specific objective, start a LinkedIn Group. Period. There is no better way to start your own community and add your own brand to the LinkedIn community. I have already posted information on how to promote your LinkedIn Group, and am working on new material as to why you should have a Group and how to best utilize it, but if you have not started your own LinkedIn Group or have not joined and participated in many of the communities that exist, you may be missing out on one of LinkedIn’s greatest features. It …
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This is going to be the first part of a few blog posts analyzing the new LinkedIn Group functionality as well as changes to the LinkedIn Inbox and the Groups that were enacted last week. There are some LinkedIn Groups that I know that are actually thinking of accelerating activity OFF of LinkedIn and instead creating their own Ning.com platform. The changes are that fundamental that they warrant multiple blog posts.
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On March 19, 2009, without prior notice (at least not to its free members), the entire navigation scheme for the LinkedIn Inbox was changed. If you are on LinkedIn, you will see how simplified the categories for the Inbox on the left-hand navigation bar are now: “Compose Message”, “Received”, “Sent”, and “Archived”. Before, there used to be a category for each type of communication that existed, like “Invitations”, “Group Messages”, etc. So is this a change for the better? And where do I find all of my old categorized mail?
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