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?

While everyone knows that Facebook is the default choice for any business-to-consumer (B2C) social media marketing, what social media channels are important for businesses hoping to engage with other businesses (B2B)?  How can these types of businesses use social media to engage with their potential clients, gain mindshare and be perceived as a thought leader in their industry, and increase potential clients visiting their website?  Here are the six that I would recommend to most businesses.  Note that, in order to create a sound social media strategy, you should not limit yourself to these 6 B2B social media channels and should also make sure that each site is appropriate for your particular industry.  Creating a social media strategy is about strategic relevance and focus, not comprehensiveness.

1) Your Website & Blog

What most people forget is that social media does not exist in a corporate vacuum and it is only an extension of your marketing, not a replacement.  You will still be doing email marketing as well as other types of traditional marketing, although I do know some start-ups who are putting their marketing budgets solely into social media.  Regardless, you need to lead people somewhere from the conversations in social media to acquaint them with your business and start engaging in a conversation that will hopefully lead to a conversion in the future.  This is why your website is even more important with the advent of social media, and you need to make sure that your website is “social media optimized” to lead others to your social media profiles as well as to help others share your information throughout their social media channels.  Finally, another important part of social media is sharing content, and creating a blog is the best way to achieve this.  Make sure your blog is active and website optimized before engaging in social media.  So before you get active on the other sites listed below, get your own house in order.

2) LinkedIn – Your Hub for B2B Social Media Marketing

If there is one site where decision makers at your potential customers are it is LinkedIn.  Need I say more?  And if you signed up for LinkedIn and nothing happened, make sure you check out the book I wrote to help all professionals maximize your LinkedIn presence.  You can also read my previous blog post on how to get more leads from your LinkedIn presence by avoiding the mistakes that a lot of small businesses make.  Don’t wait for LinkedIn to happen…make it happen!

3) Twitter – The Potential Viral Spread of Tweets Cannot Be Ignored

There are enough business leaders and decision makers from virtually any industry on Twitter to warrant its attention.  Twitter membership is now 50% greater than LinkedIn.  Add in the facts that a Twitter Profile is now almost becoming a default part of a LinkedIn Profile as well as understanding the viral way in which tweets on Twitter get spread and you soon start to see the potential of utilizing Twitter as part of a B2B social media marketing strategy.  I am currently working on my 2nd book which will help you and your business maximize your Twitter presence, but until that’s published, check out my Twitter case study of how NOT to use Twitter.  Stay tuned for more good Twitter blog posts for business in the near future!  And remember, Twitter is not just about tweeting…it’s about engaging, striking up and joining conversations, and respecting others.  But if you engage wisely, Twitter may lead your next customer your way.

4) StumbleUpon – Traffic Generating Community

Part of utilizing social media is to help your company and website to get found.  If you are a consumer brand this is easier to do, but niche B2B businesses can be challenged just to drive any traffic to their website.  StumbleUpon is actually a lesser known social bookmarking site, but because of its algorithm and 10+ million users who like to “stumble” or navigate through several sites at at time, some studies have shown that StumbleUpon actually attracts more traffic to your website than any other social media site outside of Facebook.  My personal experience with StumbleUpon has been the same, even surpassing Facebook.  It is important to note, however, that StumbleUpon should not be used just for SEO and it is a social networking platform in its own.  In addition, because you will need to be sharing content as part of your social media strategy, think of StumbleUpon as your company’s content recommendation engine.  You may not find your Fortune 500 customers on StumbleUpon yet, but I do see an increase in small businesses joining the platform…and there are other compelling reasons listed above that should convince you of SU’s value.  Once you get set up on StumbleUpon, make sure to subscribe to my stumbles for recommend reads on social media strategy.

5) SlideShare – Present Your Business to the World

My newest fave is SlideShare, which in essence is a site of professionals and businesses uploading their PowerPoint presentations.  SlideShare in itself is one of the top 1,000 most visited sites on the Internet according to Compete.com, and it’s traffic is equivalent to more famous sites such as the social bookmarking site Delicious.com.  SlideShare is significant for businesses because this is where other businesses are putting up their presentations, so just as you Google the Internet for information, many businesses and decision makers are coming straight to SlideShare to look for relevant information to help them solve their business problems.  Business usage of SlideShare is increasing to the point where SlideShare rolled out advertising services to allow businesses to get more views of their presentations as well as generate actual lead data from views.  Start with your corporate presentation and then upload your marketing presentations and see what happens.  You may be in for a pleasant surprise!

6) Business Exchange – Network with Industry Leaders and Become the Thought Leader

Business Exchange is literally the Business Week of Social Networking.  What I like about it is that it is similar to LinkedIn in terms of demographic but it gives you the ability to network with and share/learn information with/from other professionals in pre-defined categories and industries.  For instance, for the topic of social media alone there are actually categories covering analytics, branding, business failures and successes, design, social media in the workplace, social media innovation, job hunting, marketing, operations, privacy, training, and social media vs. old media.  Find your industry’s category(s), start sharing information that would interest decision makers in your industry, and build out relationships as you would on LinkedIn.  And, once again, after you sign up please follow me on Business Exchange for the latest in social media strategy.

B2B social media marketing is like anything else social media-related: new tools, old rules.  Business has always been social.  You just need to find where your audience is and get used to a new paradigm where you professionally network with others and try to gain mindshare in a virtual, online world.  That is, in a nutshell, B2B social media marketing.

Any other sites that you would recommend to add to this list?  Please chime in!

And if you’re confused with all of the choices out there and unsure as to how to go about strategizing for your company’s specific B2B social media marketing needs, contact Windmills Marketing for a free initial consultation.

There is no doubt that the current recession continues to have an impact on the growth of social media.  Job seekers are now looking for networking opportunities by embracing social media and joining and then becoming active on sites like LinkedIn as part of their job search strategy.  This make sense because social media is also where recruiters may find you and where companies may perform background checks on you and your personality.  Don’t you want to put your best food forward in your job search and show off your talents to the best of your ability since everybody’s watching?

Unfortunately, I don’t see enough of this happening.  Just like many Internet marketers, who only see social media as another “channel” to start broadcasting their advertisements and self-promoting messages, I see some job seekers doing the same thing by blasting the message that they are unemployed in their LinkedIn profile name and status update or mass sending of their resumes to everyone in their network.  The most important concept behind social media is about sharing, and job seekers can also share their experiences with others and actually start contributing and providing value to the community. In doing so, not only will your expertise be publicly displayed for all of those recruiters to see and help establish a stronger personal brand, effective networking with other professionals can now be done on a scale that reaches far beyond your own network.

Here’s another way to look at it: You can’t force recruiters and companies to look at your LinkedIn profile, but you can use social media in becoming more active in a pool of talent so that you can stand out.  You have to be “productively active”—share your knowledge, expertise and experience to the world and don’t boil the ocean with your resumes.

Here’s how to use social media as part of your job search strategy:

Start Blogging

Blogging is the best way to share your expertise the world, and your blog posts now become things that you can share through social media.  You need to build out the business of company YOU, and a completely customizable blog can now become your “company” website instead of your static LinkedIn profile.  Because you’re sharing knowledge and experience for all to learn by, you are not broadcasting nor blatantly self-promoting.  More people will start visiting your social media profiles because they are interested in you for your ideas.  They will start to seek you out!

Still not convinced?  Here are 7 more reasons why you should start blogging, and here’s advice on what you should blog about if you are looking for a job.

Get Active on LinkedIn Answers

Providing one answer a day in your category of expertise is all it takes to share your knowledge with those who need it most.  Find your category, “own” it, and make it  a part of your daily routine.  You never know what may come out of it!  Here’s some etiquette advice on utilizing LinkedIn Answers.

Contribute to LinkedIn Groups

Join LinkedIn Groups for your industry and profession, engage in discussion, and share your expertise for all to see.  Just by spending a few minutes a day looking for relevant discussions to participate on and engaging in them, you are displaying your expertise for a lot of people to see and truly Windmill Networking.  Here’s some additional advice on what LinkedIn Groups are and their value, which LinkedIn Groups to join and the etiquette of LinkedIn Group participation.

Upload Your Work to SlideShare

SlideShare is quickly becoming the preferred destination for professionals to seek out information that is in a PowerPoint or presentation format.  If you’ve done professional presentations, all you need to do is upload them for everyone to see.  If you have expertise to share, all you need to do is create a PowerPoint and now it’s there for the world to see.  There are many stories of small businesses who have found business from SlideShare…it wouldn’t surprise me to hear of a job seeker who landed because they utilized SlideShare as part of their job search strategy.

I will be honest that I am still a relatively newbie at SlideShare, but I plan to start uploading presentations in the near future.  Please follow me on SlideShare to get my updates!

Create a You Tube Channel

Social media provides a lot of opportunities to learn because many companies and professionals are sharing lots of information.  Many people prefer the video format over a written one, so why not take out that Flip Camera or your iPhone 4 and take a video of yourself speaking about your experiences and sharing your expertise?  If you have a chance to speak at an association or meeting, bring your video camera to capture yourself and upload highlights of it to YouTube.  By creating a YouTube channel and simply favoriting the videos that you recommend to others in your industry or profession, you are curating content and displaying your expertise.  Become the “channel,” literally, on YouTube!  Here are 5 more reasons why every professional should have a YouTube channel.

By doing any or all of the above, not only will you have reached many more people as part of your job search than through your traditional broadcasting of your message, people will also see you as a person with expertise, not someone who is merely using social media as part of their job search.  This social media strategy for your job search is bound to lead to greater opportunities and attract more people who respect your knowledge and will be there to help you on your journey.

Any additional advice or experience in using social media as part of your job search strategy?  Please share!

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.

It has been a few weeks now since LinkedIn released their new “Follow Company” feature.  Rather than be brash and predict what would happen with the appearance of this new feature, I always like to look at things with a little historical perspective and try to understand how professionals can truly leverage these new LinkedIn features.

As you are most likely aware of by now, just as you follow someone on Twitter to subscribe to their tweets in your news feed, LinkedIn now allows you to not only get “Company Updates” on your LinkedIn home page but also receive notifications of Company Activity in the convenience of your cozy email inbox.  While getting an update on New Hires, Recent Departures, and New Job Opportunities might seem strange for a professional networking site like LinkedIn, it does allow LinkedIn to offer more “value” to its core customers: companies who utilize LinkedIn to recruit employees as well as job seekers in transition.

That being said, the new Follow Company feature, while simple in functionality, offers a lot of value in different ways to the following 6 types of professionals:

1. Job Seekers

• It doesn’t take much imagination to see why job seekers should be all over LinkedIn’s new Follow Company feature: by following companies you can automatically get notified when there are new job openings.  This happens through receiving an email notification of your Company Updates as well as the updates appearing on your Home Page.
• Even if there isn’t an opening appropriate for you, if you spot someone leaving the company it may be a good excuse to try to contact the hiring manager to see if a replacement has been found.
• See a target company start to hire for a previously unknown division?  There may be hidden jobs for you there.
• See a lot of people leaving the same firm at the same time?  That may not be a good sign.
• While some say by just the mere act of following a company that they might notice you, companies do not get notified when they have a new follower.  Furthermore, with thousands of people following big companies, you may not stick out.  On the other hand, if there was a lesser-known local company with zero or few followers, you may just get noticed…
• While it doesn’t appear on your Profile, if someone in your network starts following a company and you catch sight of it in your Company Updates or in your connection’s “Activity” part of their profile, you may find out about new companies to follow or add to your target list.
• Since you can see the other Followers of the business that you are interested, you can also size up your competition.

As you can see, you can interpret a lot about a company just by looking at these details, which LinkedIn has always made available on the Companies page.  With the new Follow Company feature, you can see all of this information in chronological order in the convenient location of the “Activity” tab of each company.  It has never been easier to glean this much detailed information about a company’s HR moves in the history of the Internet.  Job seekers should be taking full advantage of this opportunity.

2. Hiring Managers

Hiring managers should always be interested in building a pipeline of talent that they can reach into when they need to expand or replace.  They may have found a new source for their talent: those that are following their company.  Unfortunately, unless it is available in a paid version, there is no way to search through Followers to find certain people from a certain discipline or who live in a certain city.  But if someone is following your company, you have all of the excuse in the world to reach out to that person to strike up a conversation.  What if your firm is not well known but your competitor has a lot of followers?  Why not search through their followers for ideas of potential people to contact?  These people may be interested in your industry and have just not had a chance to hear your story!

3. Recruiters

Recruiters should love the convenience that following Companies provides you.  You want to know which talent are leaving companies as well as what types of positions companies are hiring for?  Where companies are looking for their employees?  By following LinkedIn Companies that are on your target list, or by following your competitors, you get a very good snapshot as to the hiring trends in a certain company.  Ever try to get into a company and had no luck?  Perhaps that new hire is someone that you know and all you need is to get back in touch with them.  This information has always been available by digging through LinkedIn: LinkedIn has now made it extremely convenient for recruiters to keep tabs on now.

4. Sales & Business Development Professionals

A lot of information can be gleaned for sales and business development professionals by following companies in their target territories.  Did the decision maker that never wanted to give you time leave your prime customer and be replaced by someone you have a good relationship with?  Did your Champion get promoted to an Executive position?  Is that your Ally who jumped ship and went to a competitor in your territory, giving you a chance to penetrate a new account?  Is your target customer starting to hire for a new division with a product name that is appropriate for you to sell into?  Sales and business development is relationship-centric, and now following companies gives you up-to-date information to make it easier for you to discover valuable business intelligence about the people within a company.

5. Marketing Professionals

While people on LinkedIn who follow companies may not be the brand advocates of those who “fan” Facebook Pages, they could be a new source of brand advocates to cultivate, a new group to reach into for ideas or support.  Time will tell if the followers are just job seekers or if they truly “like” the business, but there is no reason why you can’t go out and contact these followers.

6. Professional Networking

The relationship between LinkedIn’s new Follow Company feature and professional networking?  Simple: just as you want to connect with people who have similar interests, perhaps you might be able to find a connection with someone who follows the same company you do.  This could be especially relevant if it is a lesser-known firm with fewer followers.  Give it a try and windmill network!

There is one catch to all of this that you should be aware of: With the exception of the new Job posting announcements and the people following companies, all of the information about recent hirings or departures is based on user-generated content.  In other words, the timing of all of this is dependent on that person actually updating their profile with their new information.  If you leave an old company or join a new one, you may not update your LinkedIn Profile for several weeks…

What other types of LinkedIn users can benefit from LinkedIn’s new feature?

Related articles by Zemanta

• LinkedIn Adds the Ability to Follow Companies (hubspot.com)
• LinkedIn Gives Users the Ability to Follow Companies (mashable.com)

What is #JobChat?  JobChat was created by Perri Gorman (@BeTheButterfly) and Neal Schaffer (@NealSchaffer) to serve the need of professionals and job seekers looking for advice on professional networking as well as how professionals can better utilize social media as part of their career management, personal branding and job search. Perri and Neal bring a unique combination of contrasting yet similar skills to the table to host the live chat sessions on Twitter: Perri is a former financial services recruiter and Neal a former technology sales and business development executive who also played the role of a hiring manager. Both are currently social media consultants helping both professionals and businesses on their strategies and implementation of marketing activities through social media channels. Perri is organizer of the Hong Kong Twestival and is known in Hong Kong for her Twitter workshops. Neal is the author of the award-winning and best-selling book on LinkedIn, “Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn.” The two bring a wealth of diverse and rich experiences to the table to help facilitate real-time conversations through Twitter to help answer questions and generate discussions between professionals, including job seeker participants and thought leaders in the world of recruitment, personal branding, job seeking, and social media.

Part of what I preach about Windmill Networking is Paying It Forward to others in the belief that something, some piece of very trivial information or experience to you could be a godsend to others.  It is also about connecting with others and helping them because you never know when you may be able to help each other out in the future.  Even though my business takes me down the road of working more with businesses and helping them utilize social media, I always try to find time to help others in transition through blogging and speaking to local churches, groups and associations.  How can I help more people in transition that want to use social media as part of their job search strategy?

Meet Perri Gorman, also known as Be The Butterfly on Twitter.  I met her over Twitter, the way I have met many incredible people that have enriched my life, and although she was living in Hong Kong at the time we had a chance to meet recently in Orange County, California.  We realized that we both had similar views on the importance of social media in our lives and set out to collaborate to do something that would provide value to people on a global basis.  Our answer: #JobChat!

Perri is not only extremely active on the social media scene on Twitter and blogging, she is also the organizer of the Hong Kong Twestival as well as the creator of many Twitter workshops for professionals.  She is also a former recruiter, so she can see things from the recruiting side.  I bring a lot of experience of using sites like LinkedIn and blogging and speaking about social media as a strategic tool for your job search.  Why don’t we come together and offer a weekly chat on Twitter to help as many people as we can with their job search?  And so #JobChat was born!

If you are unfamiliar with Twitter and #s (called “hashtags”), by placing “#JobChat” somewhere in a tweet, it will be trackable by those searching for #JobChat.  So long as we are all on Twitter at the same time and include “#JobChat” in all of our tweets, an open and global chat room has been formed!  If you haven’t started using Twitter, please read my post on getting started on Twitter.  If you’re already on Twitter and have never joined a #Chat, do not fear!  It is really easy to do, and I plan to create a video to show you soon.  In the meantime, check out TweetGrid, a service that allows you to create a grid of tweets to follow and also provides a way for you to tweet directly from the site.  If you create a 1×2 grid, placing “@yourname” as a search term on one column and “#JobChat” as the search term on the second column, you will be able to keep track of all public and private conversations.  It’s that simple!

JobChat, hosted by Perri Gorman and Neal Schaffer, will be held every Tuesday from 5 to 6 P.M. PST or 8 to 9 P.M. EST.  The first JobChat will be held on Tuesday, June 22 in coordination with the Gravity Summit Social Media for Executives summit at UCLA.  If you’d like to be a special guest on a future #JobChat, please contact Neal or Perri on Twitter.  If you have any questions that you’d like us to cover on future #JobChats, please list them in the comments below!  If you are a career expert, recruiter, or have other advice for job seekers, I hope that you will also join us and help in the conversation.  We want to make JobChat as inclusive as possible for everyone to share their expertise and help as many as possible!

Looking forward to seeing you on #JobChat!

While many social media marketers concentrate on Twitter and Facebook, a lot of Business-to-Business (B2B) Business Development professionals already know that LinkedIn is the preferred place to prospect for new business in social media.  With an executive from every Fortune 500 company represented and an average household income of over $100,000, LinkedIn is a perfect place to prospect for decision makers in the industries you want to sell into as well as a prime destination to make alliances with other businesses and professionals that can help grow your business.

I recently had a conversation with a good friend who was having some challenges prospecting in social media, and this is the advice I gave him in using LinkedIn to prospect for new business.  Note: LinkedIn is a social networking platform of trusted relationships that can work against you if you just use it to look up people and simply cold-call them.  Engaging with the community as I suggest below will give you better mileage and start the cycle of inbound marketing bringing leads to you.1) Grow Your LinkedIn Connections

LinkedIn is a database and you need to makes sure that your connections are sufficient enough to keep you to be able to find and be found by others.  Watch my video for advice on how many LinkedIn connections you should have if you are not sure you have enough.

As a professional, your network is your greatest asset and just through the art of connecting you may find new business.  This success story video eloquently illustrates the potential of finding $1 million of new business in 15 minutes on LinkedIn:

The more connections you have, the easier it will be for you to not only directly message others but also reach out for referrals.  Don’t be shy…connect!

2) Communicate and Network with Your Connections

Your network is built into your LinkedIn connectivity.  Are you utilizing your pre-existing network to help you with your prospecting?  Are you following Network Updates of your connections looking for data points to keep in touch with your network and see if they might be able to help you with your prospecting?  You have a network and LinkedIn provides you with the infrastructure.  There is no reason why you should not be reaching out to your network to both help them and ask for help from them.  Social networking 101 LinkedIn style.

3) Engage in Groups

Sure, Groups allow you the potential to directly message someone in the same group regardless of your connection status.  But it’s not about being a member of Groups: It is about actually engaging with others in Discussions, posting News that show off your expertise, and reading industry-specific News that you find that add to your business intelligence.  Posting News helps your inbound marketing, Discussions may help you find prospecting opportunities as well as help you get found by others looking for your products or services.

4) Provide Expertise in Answers

You are able to field any question that your customer asks you about your product, company, technology, or industry.  Are you listening to what your business prospects are asking on Answers?  Tune in, or you’re missing out on potential opportunities.  And should you start contributing answers, it will only help establish your company’s and your brand as an expert, which should naturally bring more leads your way.  Who wouldn’t want to contact an industry expert for a consultation?

5) Events for Business Intelligence & Prospecting Opportunities

I continue to evangelize Events as a prime source for business intelligence. If you are going away on a business trip, you should not miss the chance to prospect by creating a LinkedIn Event.  But if you are looking for local networking opportunities or events in which your business prospects may be attending, all of that information is potentially within the Events database.  All you need to do is search and discover.

There are many other creative things you can do to find and grow your business on LinkedIn, but the above represents 5 ways to get started prospecting for new business.  Any others that you would add to the list?  Please share!

If you’ve followed my Windmill Networking blog for awhile or read my LinkedIn book, you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of the LinkedIn Events Application.  Seriously.  I wrote an April Fools’s post back in 2009 complaining why Events wasn’t considered an application with a blog post rhetorically entitled, “What are LinkedIn Applications?”  I was the first one to ask “What Happened to LinkedIn Events?” when they mysteriously disappeared for a day in October of 2009.  So you can say that I have a personal relationship with Events, and when all of the “social media gurus” talk about Facebook Events, Eventbrite, and Plancast, which are all also great platforms for events, I still think they misunderstand or under appreciate the potential for using the LinkedIn Events application.

I’ve been traveling a lot the last few weeks, speaking on social media as well as attending award ceremonies for my social media book.  As I am an avid Windmill Networker, meaning that I see the value of social networking to be of networking outside of my present network, I am always open to connecting with others on LinkedIn.  There is value in plugging our windmills into the grid that is social media and virtually connecting.  But the deep value and trust that comes out of relationships are when they are developed offline in the real world.  That is why, whenever I travel outside of my native Orange County, California, I try to create a LinkedIn Event and use it as an avenue to not only bring together people that I am connected to on LinkedIn but have never met, but also an opportunity to meet new people that may have similar interests.

Through the advice that I present below, I have been able to meet with between 10 and 30 people apiece at networking events that I created in Portland, Oregon, Jacksonville, Florida, and New York City in the past few weeks…and I had never previously met any of these people!  Once you meet new people at a networking events, there are countless opportunities to learn from others, share information, help others, and maybe find a new business partner or even get a new lead either directly or indirectly from your new contact.  Rather than spending time in your hotel room by yourself, it is a way to enrich your professional life and make new friends.  You never know when your connecting with that person will help you or them out in the future.

So the next time you are on a business trip, follow this procedure to create a way for people to meet you through the LinkedIn Events Application and Windmill Network!

1. You first need to create a LinkedIn Event. This is not difficult to do, and step-by-step instructions of how to do so are in my LinkedIn book.  The important things that you need to prepare are a title (“networking event” makes sense), a description which should want to bring people out to meet and network, and you need to find a location.  I do this by going to Google Maps, figuring out both where I plan to be on business as well as where my hotel is, and then find an ideal area which makes logistical sense for the time that I plan to hold the event (late afternoons/early evenings seem to be the best time).  I then go to Yelp and find a location that has a bar/large party atmosphere located in the ideal area.  You can find these by using “large party restaurant” or “large group restaurant” in the search terms so that you can be assured that there won’t be an issue if a lot of people come!  Check out the reviews and take your pick of location.
2. After creating the LinkedIn Event, inform your network. As a LinkedIn Open Networker or LION, I have acquired a lot of LinkedIn connections over time.  When I did a search through my contacts of connections living in Portland, Oregon, I found that I already had more than 130 connections living there that I had never met!  Obviously the larger your network, the more connections you are bound to have in any given city.  Using the InBox feature, send out a blast with a link to the LinkedIn Event to your connections.  You can add 50 connections to the same message for efficiency’s sake.  If your network is smaller…
3. Invite those who are members of similar LinkedIn Groups. You joined a Group for a reason: you want to obtain or share information with others that have a similar interest.  Why not do an Advanced People Search using a keyword (I used “social media”) and look for people in Groups that you belong to that you may want to meet up with?  If you are a member of the same Group, chances are you will be able to send them a LinkedIn Message regardless of your connectivity status.  Go for it, contact them, but be clear as to why you want to meet with them in the first place.  And, remember, it is a pain, but every Message to a common Group member that you are not connected to must be done separately, one-by-one…
4. Send out a reminder to those that RSVP to your LinkedIn Event. This is something that I originally did not do, and I regret not doing it because I think that attendance to my networking events could have been greater had I sent out a friendly reminder to all of those that RSVPed “Attending” and “Interested” on the Event page a few days before the event.
5. Prepare for the LinkedIn Event by checking out the Profiles of those that RSVPed. Better yet, print out their profiles for airplane reading!
6. Enjoy your time with new friends!  You’re Windmill Networking!

You never know how one of these events turn out until you try it yourself.  My event in Portland was particularly interesting, as I met one of the Twitter Rockstars of Portland, @Thubten, someone who is famous in not only the social media circles of Portland but also Denver!  That led to another discussion where I learned a great deal about the LinkedIn Rockstar, Mike O’Neil!  See this video for the details…and should you create your own Event based on this advice, please tell us how it went by commenting below!

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!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Blog to tweet to buzz to face to blog to tweet… (sciencetext.com)
• LaterBro – schedule facebook and twitter updates (twi5.com)
• LinkedIn Beefs Up Its Twitter Integration [PICS] (mashable.com)
• Diluting LinkedIn with Twitter (toddrjordan.com)
• Do Your Updates Define or Refine Your Brand? (socialmediatoday.com)

Almost a year ago I wrote about my favorite LinkedIn pet peeves, which spurned a great list of 25 LinkedIn etiquette tips that arose from a discussion on the LinkedIn Executive Suite Group.  As I tend to spend more time on Twitter than LinkedIn these days, I think it’s time to focus on that social networking platform and talk about what drives me, and others, crazy about what users are doing on it.

Just as with LinkedIn, Twitter has its own unique sets of functionalities which creates the potential for different types of behavior.  With Twitter, the root of most of my pet peeves stems from the fact that there is a lot that you can automate on the platform.  Want to auto-followback those who follow you?  There’s an application for that.  Automatically send a Direct Message to your new Followers?  No problem!  Want to schedule the same tweet to repeat itself every 24 hours?  Can do!  I am all for automation if it allows me to spend more time on creating content and interacting with others.  But on the flip side, social interaction cannot be automated!

To create this post, I actually shot a video of a regular meeting that I have with two other social media bloggers here in Orange County, California discussing this topic.  These two gentlemen are on my blogroll, but you should also be checking out their blogs as they come both highly recommended: Tim Tyrell-Smith and his Tim’s Strategy blog on Career Management and Kevin Liebl‘s blog on Leadership.  I hope to post future videos from our chats, and we are open to chatting about what you want to hear, so please comment as you wish!

As you can see from our conversation, automation seems to be the root of all evil.  If I had to list my 10 favorite Twitter pet peeves, they would be:

1. Only self-promoted tweets…using Twitter as a broadcasting channel.
2. Automated Direct Messages
3. Self-promoting Direct Messages
4. No profile photo…who are you?
5. Putting more than one location in your profile…where are you?
6. Using a brand name for your Twitter handle.  How can you claim to be who you are?
7. Only tweeting automated RSS feeds…using Twitter as a broadcasting channel.
8. @Reply spam…I block these tweeps and report for spam every time.
9. Following way too many people in comparison to the number of followers you have.
10. Too many quotes.  Do that many people really enjoy all of those quotes from famous people?

What are your favorite Twitter pet peeves?