LinkedIn, like any other social media channel, is a social networking platform.  This means that people are networking with each other while revealing who they are and what they do.  LinkedIn reminds you to do this when you log in by making sure your profile is 100% complete.  Part of getting to 100% completion is uploading your picture, and here’s all that you need to know about why you should upload your photograph, sizing tips for a successful upload, and what could happen to your photograph if you’re not careful.

That’s right: Your profile photograph could be forcibly removed.  Read on for more details.

LinkedIn Photo Advice #1 – Why Upload a Photo?

There you used to be some debate as to whether or not you should include your photo in your LinkedIn profile.  The advice by some then was that including your photograph could mean that a company might not want to hire you because the fact that they saw what you actually looked like could be used against them in a discriminatory lawsuit.  Everyone who commented on that blog post I link to above said there was absolutely no truth behind that argument, and I have even heard from some employment lawyers that many of their clients pass the task of sourcing talent to an impartial 3rd party, within or outside of their organization, so that there are no potential issues here.

Regardless of the above argument, there are many fundamental reasons why you want to upload a photo to your profile if you haven’t done so already:

–> There are fake profiles on LinkedIn.  A photograph shows that you are for real, and it helps establish your social media credibility.

–> Why would you be on a social networking site and not display who you are?  What are you afraid of?  Not having a photograph means people may have a suspicious view of your profile.  In fact, I list this as the 1st thing in my 10 LinkedIn Profile Mistakes You Want to Avoid post.

–> A photo will help bring your LinkedIn profile to 100% completeness.

–> For your personal branding, a photograph is essential.  And as they say, first impressions mean everything, and often our first impression is a visual one.

LinkedIn Photo Advice #2 – What are LinkedIn’s Photograph Requirements?

This information actually comes straight from the source at Customer Support in Mountain View when I had problems uploading a photograph myself.  Here are the requirements to pay particular attention to:

1. The file type is a JPG, PNG or GIF.

2. The file size is no larger than 4MB.

3. The pixel size is at least 80×80 and no larger than 4000×4000.

If you still have trouble uploading a picture, additional advice indicated trying to use a different browser than what you normally use.

LinkedIn Photo Advice #3 – Why Was My Photograph Removed?

My recent blog post on why your LinkedIn account may be suspended has been getting a lot of view as well as comments from those who suddenly found that they were locked out of their accounts for no reason.  Imagine one day you noticed that your LinkedIn profile was naked, i.e. your profile picture was missing!  I’ve never heard of this happening in Twitter or Facebook, but it does happen on LinkedIn.

First things first: I already mentioned why you don’t want to have a company logo or an irrelevant picture for your profile, so if you are still not using a personal photo, you may want to reconsider your strategy in light of the fact that your photo could be removed and your profile potentially “flagged” by LinkedIn.  Otherwise, you may be asking for trouble.

The next thing that is worth mentioning is that anyone can go to a profile and, regardless of your connection status, and report to the “LI Authorities” that a photograph is either an advertisement (i.e. company logo), copyrighted material, inappropriate content, a misrepresentation, or “other.”  This is probably the mechanism that alerts LinkedIn to “suspicious” photos.

It is worth noting that LinkedIn has a clear Photo Policy in its User Agreement:

LinkedIn provides the opportunity for users to upload a photograph to assist other members in recognizing that person. As a professional networking site, there are guidelines to determine which types of photos are appropriate. We consider a photo appropriate as long as it does not contain content that is copyrighted or unauthorized for public distribution and does not contain offensive content. Additionally, if your photo is not an image of yourself or does not contain an actual photograph, it is considered inappropriate. Your photo has been flagged for inappropriate elements and has been removed from your profile.

Normal users should not have any fear about the photographs that you use, but there are some people who like to use effects, like those you find on the Photo Booth application on a Mac or any picture-editing software, to make a statement about their personal brand.  You see many of these types of profile pictures on other social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.  LinkedIn, however, is holding rigid to its policy of “professional photos.”  Even a gentleman who had an “Obamacon” of himself, the same profile picture that is on his Twitter page, recently had his photograph removed.  I believe that the photograph definitely helps “to assist other members in recognizing that person” as pointed out in LinkedIn’s Photo Policy.  Is it that disturbing that the picture had to be removed?

What do you think?

Why has my LinkedIn account been restricted?

No, that is not a question that I personally asked recently, but one asked by someone in my network.  This is someone who is not a spammer, not even involved in marketing, and generally keeps a low profile on the social networking site.  This person is also not a LinkedIn LION and only has a few hundred connections.  Why was their account restricted?  For being too active!  And if you are not careful, your account may be suspended as well!  Here’s how:

The official response given by LinkedIn on why my friend’s account was suddenly suspended was:

“We have recently noticed a large number of page searches and profile views through your LinkedIn account. We are aware that you may be using an automated or manual process to systematically view LinkedIn web pages.

The information within LinkedIn is provided by our users for usage on the site only. In order to protect user privacy, our User Agreement prohibits using:

1. Automated or manual means to view an excessively high number of profiles or mini-profiles.

2. Automated means to run searches to collect or store data obtained from our site.”

The funny thing is that my friend was not doing any of the above: They were merely taking advantage of the new LinkedIn feature to tag your connections by looking at the different options that existed and making sure that all connections had the proper tags on them.  Sure, it generated a lot of clicks, but it obviously was not even closely related to the activity that this person was accused to have been doing.

Why do I bring this up?

• Anybody who is too “active” and generated a lot of clicks may have their account suspended with no warning.  If you want to do some research on the social networking site, do it over a few day period to spread out the clicks.  As you can see from the case study above, the number of clicks you generate are being monitored and not what specific activity you are doing, so anyone could be considered guilty of this.

• You also want to avoid a suspension of your account for another important reason: it took customer service nearly two weeks to get back to my friend with their initial response.  That’s right, for two weeks my friend was in limbo and couldn’t access their account.  Can you live without access to your account for two weeks?  I’d go crazy!  And the potential opportunity loss for business is an issue that your company may have to face if you are getting business leads from LinkedIn.

• This is a case where LinkedIn was being paranoid and automatically slapping the wrist of an innocent user.  Who knows what could happen to you?  Make sure you get into the habit of backing up your LinkedIn connections for these types of worst case scenarios.

This blog post is an example of an amazing Catch 22: LinkedIn wants us to be active on their site by introducing a lot of new features to us, but when we are too active we get penalized and have to deal with slow response times.  I hope you’ll agree in hoping that LinkedIn can:

1. Create a better way of monitoring usage on their site so as not to penalize innocent people
2. Give a warning before suspending someone’s account
3. Be a little nicer in their communication instead of accusing someone that they are guilty and forcing you to prove your innocence (LinkedIn is an American company, right?)
4. Be a little bit quicker in their response when an account has been suspended.  Two weeks is absurd.  Understanding that it requires money to hire customer support professionals and that priority is placed on paid accounts, at least trying to respond to suspended accounts within 72 hours would be ideal.

And there are apparently other reasons why your account may be suspended.  As I was writing this blog post, one of my blog readers sent me this message:

Neal, I am not sure how you were able to reach customer service at Linkedin. I have sent no less than 3 emails to customer service from my primary email address in the last 72 hours because they have restricted my account based on the number of people who have viewed my profile in the last week. This all occurred because I created a new group that has generated alot of interest and is adding members everyday at a high rate. The one phone number found…for customer service just leads to voice mail. So to my group members it appears that I have just abandoned the group and to others who have sent me email it looks as though I am not responding.

What is going on here?

Is LinkedIn becoming the New Big Brother?  Let’s hope not!

Do you have other personal experiences of being suspended on LinkedIn or know of others who have had their accounts restricted?  Please share your information for all of us to learn by.  Thank you.

I often get asked about whether it makes sense to completely integrate Twitter Tweets with your LinkedIn Status Update, so that every tweet shows up on LinkedIn.  Obviously there is no one correct answer for this as it depends on your objective and LinkedIn Brand.  However, the question brings to mind a greater issue:

How often should you update your social media status on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Your Blog?

Each social media site has its own functionality, demographics, history, and culture.  And you may have one or multiple objectives for using these sites.  I won’t go into detail on how varying objectives may warrant different frequencies in which you update your status on each of the social media channels, but on average I would make the following recommendations:

Twitter

Because there are so many tweets out there (there are more tweets than people now!) and the culture is one that accepts people who tweet a lot (this is explained by the fact that you could tweet a lot and go unnoticed), it is accepted to tweet several times a day.  I tell people, when they start out, to aim for 4 to 5 tweets a day.  I personally aim for 8 to 10, although I rarely achieve this goal.  When I say tweets, I’m talking about sharing some type of relevant and valuable information, not just chit-chat.  I do not preach automating in social media, but if there were one automation tip I recommend, it would be to schedule your tweets in advance with a tool like HootSuite so that they appear spread out throughout the day.

LinkedIn

Before Twitter became as mainstream as it is today, LinkedIn had its own replication of the tweet with its “Status Update.”  A lot of people used to wonder what to use their LinkedIn Status Update for.  Now that LinkedIn is integrated with Twitter, and more LinkedIn members are on Facebook, people get the idea of what they could put on their Linkedin Status Update.  That being said, because LinkedIn doesn’t have the same “Timeline of Tweets” like Twitter or “News Feed” like Facebook, it doesn’t make sense to post more than once a day on LinkedIn.  I personally wouldn’t post anything if I didn’t have anything of value to say that wasn’t aligned with my objective.  Furthermore, if you repeatedly show up multiple times in Network Updates on someone’s Home Page in the same day, it begins to look spammy, that you are trying too hard to “gain mindshare.”  There are other and better ways of doing that on LinkedIn.  And do remember that LinkedIn is also a Professional environment, so some personal tweets and Facebook posting content might not be appropriate here…

Facebook

Facebook is a tough one.  Similar to Twitter, there are so many people on Facebook competing for space on your News Feed that if you don’t post a lot you may not get noticed.  However, I do see a lot of people who only post once a day, and when I have gone over that in the past, I have received word from Facebook friends that I posted too much!  People definitely get most personal on Facebook.  Certainly Twitter is not Facebook, so I personally don’t think that you should be posting every tweet here.  On the other hand, if you have a lot going on, it may make sense to post multiple times in a single day.  If I could compare the frequency of updating your status on Facebook compared with LinkedIn and Twitter, it would look something like this:

LinkedIn Status Updates < Facebook Posts < Twitter Tweets

Blogging

You really need someone to tell you how often to update your blog?  As often as you can, of course!  Seriously speaking, if you are going to blog, I do recommend that you do your best to blog at least one a week.  Consistency is also important, but even if you are not consistent on the days of the week or how many times you post each week, I think you should try to publish one blog post on a weekly basis.  Want to blog more?  You can never blog too often. I dream of having the time to blog on a daily basis…and envy those who do!

On a final note, it is impossible to do all of the above using a tool like Ping.fm or even a client like HootSuite (although they are fantastic products) unless you are really disciplined.  Just as it does not make sense to integrate all of your tweets into your LinkedIn profile, it also doesn’t make sense to overly automate your engagement with others by blasting the same message to all of the various social media platforms simultaneously.  Yes, there may be an occasional post, like a new blog article that you wrote, that it may make sense to post on all platforms at once.  That should be the exception, however, and not the rule.

What do you think?  What are the social media status updates frequency guidelines that you use?  Please comment and share your experiences with us!

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As you get more comfortable with using LinkedIn, the day may come when you start connecting with other professionals that you may not know very well.  I am not referring to becoming a LinkedIn LION or open networker, but connecting with people that you may have had a chance to meet at a networking event and added to your LinkedIn network yet do not personally know very well.  Soon after connecting with this new acquaintance on LinkedIn, you may all of the sudden receive the following type of request:

It was a pleasure meeting you recently at the [Insert Event Name] event!  Hope you’ve been doing well since then.

Today I came across an interesting job opening for a [insert Title] at [insert Company] and noticed that an employee at the company, [Insert Name], is one of your 1st degree connections.  I would love to have the chance to chat with this person about working at the company as well as seeing if they have any advice for the open position.  Would you be comfortable in reaching out to [Insert Name] about my interest in [Company Name].  Thank you so much for your help!

What do you do if you don’t feel comfortable providing a referral for someone you don’t know to a close friend?

My advice would go something like this:

1) First of all, do you want to develop a deeper relationship with this person? If he or she asks for a referral, why not meet again for a face-to-face meeting to get to know this person, and their requests, better?  They may be a good person with good intentions, and having a chance to meet them may shed some light and bring your relationship to a new level.   This may also make you feel more comfortable at referring this person to your friends.

On the other hand, if you still want to keep at arms length, for whatever reason, or you meet this person and still don’t feel comfortable referring them to your friends, I believe you have two choices:

2) Tell them flat out that you do not give referrals to close friends unless you know the person really well.  Period.

3) Pass on the Introduction request to your friend (without cc:ing the person who asked for the referral) and let your friend decide. Tell your friend that a LinkedIn contact that you still don’t know very well would like to be introduced, and let your friend decide what they want to do. If they want to pass on it, at least you have done your job.   And, who knows, maybe they may want to meet this person themselves for whatever their reason may be, you never know.   You may not think that this person has value to them, but they may think differently.

Not that I would recommend the 3) approach in every instance, but one of the key concepts behind Windmill Networking is that sometimes something very trivial to you could be a godsend to someone else in your network.

Obviously, there is no standard golden rule for giving LinkedIn referrals other than never do anything that you are not comfortable with.  If you were in this same situation what would you do?  Please share your thoughts with the world!

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LinkedIn is a very interesting social networking site.  Many users say they only want to connect with people in their closed network, but unless that network is big enough, the benefits of using LinkedIn to find and be found become minimal.  On the other hand, I find many users who don’t care about acquiring LinkedIn connections often talk about how many they have as an indication of how active they are on the site.

So how many LinkedIn connections should you have?

I recently shot a video at a keynote speech on social media in Orange County, California where I unveiled my Windmill Networking calculation of how many connections I recommend you should have as a goal on LinkedIn.  I’ll let you view the video, and the surprised audience reaction, and let you form your own opinion.

Note that the number and partial concept I talk about at the end of the video comes from one of my favorite Seth Godin blog posts, First, Organize 1000.

Everyone’s network size and participation on LinkedIn will be the result of a number of varying factors.  But, if you think about my advice, isn’t it a reasonable goal to meet and potentially link up with 10 to 20 new people each year through networking events?  Even if you’re fresh out of college with few professional connections, I believe the calculation that I propose is reasonable.  And if you’re a true Windmill Networker, you can easily meet 10 to 20 people in a month or even a week!  I have networking events where I meet several people I want to connect with in a single day.

If you could put a calculation as to how many connections one should have a goal for, what would you recommend?  Looking forward to everyone’s input!

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Image via Wikipedia

How often do you look at your LinkedIn Network Statistics?  You can access them directly from navigating over to “Contacts” and then selecting Network Statistics.  Everybody loves to look at these statistics as this is where you start to see the power of your network.  If you were curious as to what the numbers of a LinkedIn power user like myself are, these are the latest statistics for my network:

This post is not about my network, though: It’s about the whole mechanism of these statistics.  I have seen my total numbers drop on occasion.  In fact, I distinctly remember when I had over 20 million users I could contact through an Introduction when LinkedIn had 40+ million users.  Now that LinkedIn has 65 million members, wouldn’t you assume that this total number would grow somewhat in proportion with overall growth of the network?

Look at your network statistics over time and then think about it: Do you believe these network statistics now?  If you don’t believe them, why would LinkedIn be tinkering with these numbers?

It was an email from someone in my network that gave me the inspiration to write this post, so I wanted to point out that these numbers (and the below wording) come directly from someone in my LinkedIn network who provides us some more proof that these numbers are not to be believed:

I have a question that is greatly puzzling me and it is not addressed in your [LinkedIn] book.

I am beginning to question the validity of LI’s networking statistics. At best, the system is broken, at worst it bears no relation to actuality and may be just a lot of fictitious hype. I track my progress daily in Excel and LI’s statistics are not believable.

I’ve observed strange, unexplainable statistics almost daily (a 5,000 drop when it should have increased by say 5000) but the numbers seemed to come back in a day or two. I assumed it was latency – the data base lagged reality. No problem.

On April 10 my stats were: 747 Dir/ 506,00 Level 2 / 16,153,800 Level 3 and 16,655,147.

When I reached 755 contacts, my total suddenly dropped by 2.44 million to 14,213,000.

Even at 910 / 616,300 / 15,648,700 / 16,266,000. This is still down by 375,000 even though I’ve added 153 direct – almost all of whom are big networkers 500+. Even today with 964 direct contacts, my total is still 44,600 lower than on April 10.

Neal, what is going on here? There is no validity tied to the LI Statistics. Have you or your readers experienced this before? Who might I contact to find out what is going on?

I sincerely thank my contact for providing us the data to prove that these numbers may be fictitious.  But why would LI do this and what explains this behavior?  I have a few theories:

1) LinkedIn Network Statistics Calculations are Not Scalable

When I became a power user back in 2008, I remember that after I hit 500 connections the Network Statistics themselves often didn’t appear.  It was almost as if it became impossible for LinkedIn to calculate.  Guess what?  I believe that to be able to calculate all of our connections in realtime, deleting out common 2nd and 3rd degree connections, it would require significant database, network and server resources.  Considering that LI has never been known to be a fast-performing site (although the performance has improved with the new LinkedIn user interface), I do think it really may be impossible to calculate these numbers accurately in realtime all the time.  That being said, the network statistics that are provided are a nice guide as to the potential reach of our networks.  Maybe this is the best way to look at them.

2) Drops in Your Network Statistics Happen When Fake LinkedIn Profiles are Deleted

This is really the only thing that could explain why your network statistics would ever drop.  Yes, there are some people who disconnect from others on LinkedIn, but I don’t think that it happens on a daily basis and at the scale that would affect your statistics.  That being said, there are some fake LinkedIn profiles who amass large networks that, if deleted all at once, could affect your overall statistics.  You’ll have to be the judge as to how often this happens…based on my experience, fake profiles seem to always be lurking on LinkedIn and in Groups, so I sincerely doubt that this sort of mass deletion is happening on a daily basis.

3) Limiting Your Network Reach is Part of LinkedIn Monetizing Its Network

It is interesting that right under your Network Statistics, you should be seeing the same thing that I see:

This is an advertisement, in essence, for LinkedIn to sell you on a paid account with InMail privileges that would allow you to contact any of the 65 million members.  Even at the number of connections that I have, I am still only able to contact through an Introduction less than 1/3 of the total networked population.  But guess what?  Before there was a limitation on how many LinkedIn connections that you can have, I remember these Network Statistics, when they worked, showing that I could be in contact with more than 50% of the entire network.

If my theory is true, limiting the display of your LinkedIn network as shown through the Network Statistics serves the same purpose as limiting the size of your network: If you want to be able to search and/or contact the entire network, LI wants you to buy a paid account.

There is nothing wrong with LinkedIn wanting to monetize its network.  In fact, every LI user would agree that a financially healthy LinkedIn is a good thing and keeps us safely and confidently using the social networking platform.  But perhaps there should be a disclaimer above those Network Statistics that states that it is only an approximate calculation?  Or, if it is accurate, maybe someone from LinkedIn can answer Richard’s question?

More importantly, what do you, the average user of the professional social networking site, think about this?

If you are one of the 400+ million people on Facebook, you have probably already figured out a way to deal with filtering out the many potential notifications that you could be receiving.  Going to the “Account Settings” page under your personal profile leads you to a complex screen like the one pictured below:

If you keep going down the list, you will notice that you have full control over the notifications that you receive from Facebook to your email inbox.  I felt like I was in full control over these emails until I started receiving a certain type of message that started to bother me because I could not control it.  If you have been receiving messages from Facebook that you do not know the origin of, keep reading as you may have the same problem I have: receiving messages from people that you are not friends with and/or groups that you are not part of!

I should first of all point out that, in addition to the above screen, there is another screen in which you can control your Facebook notifications: Privacy Information –> Contact Settings.  In these contact settings there is the following selection that you can make:

If you select “Everyone” for this you are allowing people who find you in search results or visit your profile to send you a message.  I leave this on as I am open to hearing from people that may want to get into contact with me.  But this particular type of spam is not related to this type of general message.

The particular type of Facebook email notification that I have been getting has these characteristics:

• The email title displays that it is sent out by what appears to be the name of a Group that I am not a member of
• The headline at the beginning of the email now shows a person that I do not know sending out a message to all members of what appears to be the Group that I am not a member of
• When I click on the person who sent the email we are not friends
• When I click on the name of the Group it is not the name of a Group but is actually the name of a Facebook Event

And that is where I discovered the spam message loophole: If you create a Facebook Event, in addition to inviting your Facebook friends to the event, you can add email addresses from people that you don’t need to be friends with nor are even on Facebook to send them the notification.  Similar to how people spam you on LinkedIn by joining the same LinkedIn Group that you are in and sending you a message, there are many people on Facebook that are spamming you with Event notifications that you can’t turn off because they are inputting your email address.

In this age of social media there are many ways in which you can obtain someone’s email address.  The real question now is how to report these messages that you do not want to receive anymore.  With LinkedIn, if you receive a message, you can pinpoint the profile and report spam to either LinkedIn and/or the LinkedIn Groups that the person is a member of.  What to do in the case of these FB spam messages?

On the FB Event page itself there is a place to “Report the Event,” but even though there is a “Spam” option the event itself could very well be a legitimate one.

The only remaining option is to select the link to reply to the message and at the top there is a “Report Spam” button.  Once you press it there is no questioning for clarification but it says that the message was reported for spam.

Will Facebook be looking at those messages that you report for spam?  Will it prevent the sender of the message from spamming you again?  Only time will tell…

Have you been receiving similar mysterious spam messages?  Have you received other types of messages in which you can’t stop them from being sent to you?  Please comment and educate us!

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If you looked at 10 different LinkedIn profiles, you might see 10 different ways in which people have entered their details.  For a social networking platform that is trying to standardize the way people depict themselves with their “xxx% profile completeness” status that appears when you edit your profile, the results have been surprisingly across the board.  I am still amazed when I find professionals, and even active job seekers, without “complete” profiles.  Remember, LinkedIn profile completeness is not just about increasing chances that your business will get new leads from LinkedIn or that you will find a job on LinkedIn: As LinkedIn said in a recent marketing email to me entitled “Find top talent faster with free profile matches,” if you post a job on LinkedIn you will receive 24 highly qualified profile matches for free.  The only way you get matched up and potentially completed is by having profile completeness.  So even if you are happily working, don’t you want to make yourself open to new opportunities should they come knocking on your door?  For professionals, whether you are employed or unemployed, the value in having a completely filled out profile is equivalent.

Redefining LinkedIn Profile Completeness

My definition of a completely filled out profile is going to differ from LinkedIn’s definition.  Why?  I base my reasoning based on how people might look for you as well as how your personal branding might be perceived.

1. List Your Full Name

You’d be surprised how many people still use abbreviations instead of displaying their full name.  LinkedIn gives you this option in the name of “privacy,” but if you haven’t figured out in this Era of Social Media, privacy is already dead.  Why would you want to have a presence without revealing yourself?  You are potentially making yourself unattractive to those who may want to contact you.

2. Display Your Photo

I still get asked this question often: Should I display nothing, a logo, or a photo?  There are reasons why some people don’t want to display their photos, but this is a social networking platform.  Not displaying your photo raises more questions than provides answers.  If you were interviewed or had a business opportunity, you would show yourself, right?  So why not display yourself online?

3. Have a Professional Headline That Properly Brands You

The Professional Headline is what shows up under your name and also appears prominently in search results.  The safest bet is just to put your current title and company that you work for.  But put something…and if you are looking for potential opportunities, brand yourself properly here.

4. Have Something Relevant and Timely in Your Status Update

This is something that I would not have included several months ago, but the Status Update is not just about linking your account to Twitter and broadcasting tweets that may be irrelevant to your network.  It’s also not about “gaining mindshare” by blasting your network with your Network Updates.  The Status Update is about showing that you are still relevant in doing whatever you are doing.  Going to an event?  Share it.  Attending a conference?  Share it.  Read something interesting that is relevant to your brand?  Share it.  Use your Status Update to show your relevance….and try to aim for a once-a-week update.  You don’t want someone visiting your profile and see a Status Update that is months old…

5. Display Enough Work Experience…with Details

If you’re only listing your current place of employment, your LinkedIn profile is obviously not complete.  And if you are listing where you worked without any details as to what you did there, your profile is incomplete as well.  Look, your LinkedIn profile doesn’t need to be a resume.  But even a one sentence summary as to what you did is enough to ensure that a potential reader understand that you actually worked at the company and understand the role that you had.  It is obviously to your advantage to list as much details about your experience at each company as possible so that you show up in more search results.

6. Did You Go to School?

I’m still shocked by those who don’t put any education details on their profile.  If you went to an institution of higher learning, display it.  If not, list your high school.  Once again, not showing any education details raises more questions than provides answers and makes your profile incomplete, lessening your chances of getting contacted with potential opportunities.  Displaying where you went to school also allows your ex-classmates to find you…and you never know how you might be able to help each other out.

7. Get Some Recommendations

The LinkedIn “profile completeness” algorithm requires that you receive three recommendations in order to get to 100%.  I don’t think there’s any magic number you need to have a complete profile.  My suggestion: get at least 1 recommendation for every position that you’ve had, preferably from your hiring manager.  College student?  Get a recommendation from your advisor, professor, or even someone in your Career Center.  But get something on your profile in the form of a recommendation that displays your realness.

8. Acquire Some Connections

If you’re on LinkedIn you should be networking.  If you are a professional you have years if not decades of professional experience from which to find potential connections.  The calculation is easy: all things being equal, the older you are the larger your network should naturally be.  If you are an executive and only have 10 or 20 connections, what does that say about you?  Connections are also important so that you can get found in the huge LinkedIn database.  Rule of thumb?  Multiply your age by 10 and that is the minimum number of connections that you should have.

9. Your Professional Summary is Essential

Don’t just register on LinkedIn like you’re entering your resume.  Your Summary, or “Professional Summary,” is your way to introduce yourself to the world.  Once again, why would you want to have a presence on the social networking platform and not introduce yourself?

10. Don’t Forget Your Contact Settings

The final section of your profile is one that is often neglected.  Sure, LinkedIn provides some default bullet points for you to use, but don’t stop there: Use your own words to tell the world why you have established your presence on the site.  If you are open to getting contacted say so.  If you are just on to network with people that you already know and don’t want to be bothered by potential opportunities, say so.  Let the world know what your contact policy is, ideally writing about what your networking objective is.  This will show that you are “real” and will complete out your profile.  For those of you that are happily employed or don’t want your company to be suspicious about your online activities, Contact Settings is a chance for you to set the record straight: Tell the world that you are happily employed but just want to get back in touch with ex-colleagues.  The choice is yours, but neglecting Contact Settings completely is something that you should avoid.  And it goes without saying that you want to make sure that you are not false advertising in your LinkedIn Contact Settings.

Did I miss anything that you think is essential to having a “complete” profile?  Anything you disagree with?  Please do comment!  And if you are looking for more profile advice, see my post on LinkedIn Profile Tips: The 10 Mistakes You Want to Avoid and Why.  You might also want to consider purchasing my LinkedIn book.

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LinkedIn is slowly evolving their functionality to become more like a true Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software package.  While it will be hard for LinkedIn to compete with SalesForce.com, the recent addition of the Profile Organizer as well as the more recent My Connections (also called Connections Beta) have made it significantly easier for businesses and professionals to organize their social networks on LinkedIn.  Have you started using the new LinkedIn Tags feature to start organizing your network?

The Connections Beta feature was added when LinkedIn unveiled their new User Interface.  It can be accessed by navigating to “Contacts” and then “My Connections.”  LinkedIn provided a significant upgrade in functionality by allowing you to filter through your contacts by last name, company, location, industry, and “recent activity.”  Featured prominently above all of these filter options on the lefthand side of your contacts is “Tags.”

You may be surprised to find that LinkedIn has already pre-populated some of your contacts with tags.  All of these tags are coming from one of two sources:

1. People that you recently connected with.  Depending on what you or the invitee chose to explain how you know each other, you’ll find that some of your contacts are already tagged “group members,” “friends,” “partners,” “colleagues,” and “classmates.”
2. People that are easy to associate with you.  If you have a profile which has the same school or company at the same time one of your connections was also present at, they have already been classified as “classmates” or “colleagues.”  Furthermore, while it did not tag all of the people I am connected to, some that were in a same Group were tagged “group members.”

Needless to say that if your connections didn’t fall into one of the above two situations, they were categorized as “untagged.”

Tags should be used to help you navigate through your contacts a lot quicker than you currently can.  Even with the new search filters for Connections Beta, you cannot have a filter that is a combination of location and industry.  The only way to be able to truly filter out your contacts is to create tags that are meaningful for you to be able to filter out various combinations of types of people that you are connected with.  You are allowed to create up to 200 tags, and you can even use multiple tags on a single contact.

Unfortunately, while you can manage tags for each profile on the “Contact Information” of each of your contact’s profile page or in the Connections Beta application itself, there is no way to simultaneously edit tags across multiple profiles.  This means that you’ll need to invest some time at the beginning to correctly tag all those you are connected with.  And if you have more than 50 people that are associated with a specific tag, you can’t use the handy “Send a Message” feature because of the limitation of 50 contacts per InMail.

The biggest problem, though, is that just as with the other categories, you can’t filter through your contacts using more than one tag.  I believe that this is a fatal flaw of this application, something that I hope LinkedIn will improve upon.

The Connections screen has always been a difficult to navigate and performance-wise slow application of LinkedIn.  You can relive the past by selecting “Remove Connections” to refresh your memory of how the old “address book” for your contacts worked.  While definitely a step in the right direction in terms of functionality and performance, the Connections Beta still leaves a lot to be desired to be considered a true CRM tool.

Have you been using the new LinkedIn tags to organize your connections?  What methodology do you use?  Have you found any more benefits or disadvantages other than what I have pointed out above?

I am amazed by how many small businesses do not utilize social media to the maximum.  Think about it: social media, like the internet two decades ago, allows any business to compete with larger, more established entities.  Come on, what are you waiting for?

What further amazes me is how few small businesses maximize their presence on LinkedIn and instead just follow the trend of Facebook and Twitter.  Why would a niche B2B company establish a Facebook Fan Page when their potential customers may not be social on Facebook yet are already used to networking on LinkedIn?  I’m confused.

That’s why, as a social media strategist, I took the approach of first blogging and thereafter writing my first book on LinkedIn, not the other popular sites.  In fact, as I said in my recent speech at Gravity Summit at UCLA, “LinkedIn is Your Hub for B2B Social Media Marketing.”  And I meant it.

Keeping that theme in mind, and combined with a recent experience I had looking for a vendor on LinkedIn, I wanted to share advice with you small business owners of why you’re not getting inbound leads from your presence on the social networking site.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is free consulting, so please heed my advice!

We all know that we are spending more and more time on social media, and thus we are now looking at social media as a huge resource of information.  Going beyond that, when we look for someone to do business with, we also tend to use social media as part of that process.  I personally use LinkedIn over Google whenever I am looking for a new vendor.  Why?  Because at least I know who I am doing business with!  But if you are not displaying yourself on LinkedIn with the utmost in authenticity as a trusted person to do business with, I definitely will NOT do business with you.

This should give you some good background into my thought process.  Let’s move on to the 12 reasons why your small business isn’t getting leads from LinkedIn: (note that this is only advice on your Profile…there is lots more advice that I can provide you if you are interested!)

1 – You’re Not on LinkedIn

How can you, as a small business owner, not even be on the biggest social networking site for professionals?  Even if you are a B2C company, don’t you have partner and vendor relationships with other companies?  Don’t you want to be creating alliances with other businesses? There are many reasons why every B2C company also have a B2B side to them, and this is the reason why there is no excuse for not being on LinkedIn.  You are simply missing out on the potential.

2 – Who are You?

If you don’t have a photo on your profile, you are invisible.  Who wants to do business with the Invisible Man?  Not me!  And not many of your potential customers!

3 – It’s All About LOCATION. LOCATION. LOCATION.

Let me give an example here.  I live in Orange County, California.  I look for service providers close to my zip code.  I only contact those that display “Orange County, California” on their profiles.  Let’s say you live in Los Angeles County but actually have your office in Orange County…which zip code are you using for your LinkedIn Profile?  If you are not using your BUSINESS zip code, you are misrepresenting yourself…and missing out on potential business.  Fix it.  Now.

4 – What Industry are You in?

If I am looking for a bookkeeper, I am searching in the “Accounting” industry.  Perhaps you are a bookkeeper and want to upsell consulting services and choose “Financial Services” or “Management Consultant” for your industry.  You are only going to get the leads that are aligned with your industry, so choose carefully!

5 – Did You Attend School?

It still amazes me how many people skip over this section of their LinkedIn Profile.  Education is another data point that proves that you are “real.”  Especially if you work in an industry where a college degree is important, being skimpy on this section means that potential leads are NOT going to contact you.

6 – What? No Recommendations?!?!?  Really?

Seriously.  You’ve been in business for several years.  You have happy clients that you refer potential customers to.  Yet you don’t have any LinkedIn Recommendations?  You do have clients that would be happy to write them for you, right?  I hope so!  By the way, unless you have 3 Recommendations your profile does not show up as being “100% complete,” so this is another reason why every small business owner should have at least 3 LinkedIn Recommendations!

7 – Why Aren’t You Connected?

I don’t care what your personal policy is: LinkedIn is a database that will help you get found if people are looking for you.  But guess what?  If you don’t have enough connections you aren’t going to be found nearly as often.  Also, as a professional who has a long list of people that you have gone to school with, personally know, done business with, or worked together with, can’t you get your LinkedIn Connections number up to at least 100?  It scares me when I see a small business owner on with only a few connections…are they for real?  Why don’t they have more connections?  It raises too many questions to have an over-limiting policy.  And if you signed up and forgot about it, you might as well delete your profile because an inactive profile is only working against you and is a form of negative advertisement.  Maximize or delete: There is no middle road in social media.  And don’t make me have to pay to contact you by sending you an InMail: You should be paying me for helping you get connected!  Done deal?

9 – It’s All About the Keywords

This is a no-brainer, but let me remind you just in case.  Just as you have a website filled with words to help potential clients find you, you need to do the same on your LinkedIn Profile.  I was shocked by how many small business owners put the absolute bare minimum in their Profile.  Talking about an opportunity loss…  If you don’t have a place for the keywords, your Summary as well as what I write about in 10) are appropriate.

10 – You ARE Experienced, Right?

LinkedIn is giving every small business owner major real estate by allowing you to 1) list the company and title where you currently and previously worked and 2) to write about your experiences with each company.  Why small business owners are not taking advantage of this space to write about their experiences in keyword-rich terms is beyond me.  I am a social media strategist, not a psychiatrist!  And, beyond that, if you say nothing about your experiences, how else do you show off your expertise in your Profile?  And if you don’t show off your expertise, why would I even call you in the first place?  See what I’m getting at?  I hope so…

11 – Don’t You See the Value of LinkedIn Groups?

There are many reasons why small business owners should be all over these Groups.  But even if you don’t participate in them, there are two huge reasons why you should be a member of many groups:

• You need to be where your potential customer is, so find the groups that your potential customer might be in, join them, and ideally actively participate.
• Groups allows potential customers an easy way to contact you: Even if you are not directly connected, the default setting for Group members is that you have the ability to directly message each other.

See my point now?  Even joining 1 of the largest groups as well as 1 of the largest regional groups may be enough to allow tens of thousands of people the opportunity to contact you.

12 – How Do I Contact You?

LinkedIn has a spot at the bottom of your profile for “Contact Settings.”  Most people leave it blank.  If you are a business, and you are listed in the telephone directory, would you only show your name and city?  Exactly!  Why not make it easy for potential clients to contact you?  If you don’t want to show your phone number, a business email address is sufficient.  But write something here, please!

As you can see, optimizing your LinkedIn Profile is not just for the jobseeker.  When you and/or your small business is ready to get serious about social media marketing, make sure you read my LinkedIn Book or contact me to learn more about my social media strategic consultancy services for solo entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Would love to hear your experiences with getting social media leads…have you had people contact you and say they found you on LinkedIn?  Do tell!  If not, how many of the above mistakes are you guilty of?

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