May 24, 2010 170 Comments

Use LinkedIn Effectively

LinkedIn is the de facto online social network for business types. The thing is, lots of people are “on there” but aren’t necessarily using it to the fullest. There are books out there about it, like I’m on LinkedIn–Now What??? (amazon affiliate link) and LinkedWorking: Generating Success on LinkedIn the Worlds Largest Professional Networking Website (amazon affiliate link). Some of what I’m about to say complements these books’ advice. Some of what I say is counter to the books, and/or might be against LinkedIn’s requested best practices. But here are the ways I’m using LinkedIn right now, and why I think it’s effective.

Status Update

I had no idea that people still used the status update in LinkedIn. Here’s what NOT to do: link Twitter to it. People don’t really want to read “@dogguy – Lol me too” on LinkedIn. Instead, craft business updates for business people over there. I’ve actually received two leads from status updates alone, so that’s already paid for itself as a tactic.

Link in Your Blog and Slideshare

At the very least, import your blog and your SlideShare accounts in there. And for extra bonus material, make one of the slideshare decks that you share something that’s both useful content and a lead generator for your business. I’ve found lots of value in that (six leads so far from a slide deck I uploaded a month ago or so).

Join Some Groups

Don’t immediately make a group. Join a few. There are some great groups in there. I’ve enjoyed them because it means I can connect with people in a forum area before linking to them. I also find myself hearing what’s on people’s minds so that I can adjust my own offerings and strategies accordingly. Finally, I can always offer some help. I’m spending maybe an hour in groups every three days. If I added more time to it, I might get more from it.

Answer Questions

We all kind of know this one, right? If you sit around inside questions and answer ones that relate to your business, you can get some business. You might also ask questions in such a way that your company/product/whatever is the answer to the question. I mean, people see through that quite often, but you’re always welcome to try.

Connect Frequently

This is where LinkedIn wishes I’d shut up. I have a different view than they do on connecting. I’ll connect with anyone. I don’t see much in the way of negativity to connecting via the service. I think that by my connecting with people, I’m opening up potential networks so that people can see and reach out to more like-minded people. I do sometimes turn down connection forwarding requests, because I have some very high profile connections who might not feel the way I do, but for the most part, I can’t see anything wrong with making the offer.

But Recommend Only People You Can Vouch For

Here’s the gold of LinkedIn. The reputation engine inside the referral system is where I think LinkedIn’s biggest untapped value hides. I only write recommendations for people that I can vouch for in a professional way. Sometimes, I’ve given recommendations for the perceived character of someone, but I don’t do that any more. Why? Because if I recommend someone and they’re not really worth it, then MY reputation drags down a bit, too, and I sure don’t need help doing that.

Here’s a great post with a LinkedIn Tip from my friend Mike Damphousse from GreenLeads.

Schedule Some Time

Go in there and look around for about 20-30 minutes every week to start. See what you see. Are there opportunities in there? Download your contacts as a spreadsheet and pore through them every now and again. See someone you should connect with? See someone you haven’t talked with in a while? Drop them a line. That’s the real meat of this. You can do lots once you get into a few really simple habits. But it requires you to schedule the time and go through with it.

Invite People

If you want to risk it a bit, invite people to join you on LinkedIn. Here, I’ll invite you to Connect with Me (use: linkedin @ chrisbrogan . com for my email). So far, that really hasn’t hurt me. I hope you have the same results.

And once you’re in THERE, is there somewhere you want to invite people that’s off-site? Now you’re thinking.

A Few Other Resources

Chris Brogan: Use LinkedIn Effectively.

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Marcelo Di Franco

Great post, Chris. I'm so glad to see that I'm already doing most of your suggestions! I'll send you an invite to connect. Best,

-Marcelo.
http://blog.goinglobal.com Olga Garcia

Thank you for writing out these points. Sometimes the most basic engagement principles online seem 'too basic' and therefore there is massive confusion on the best ways to utilize the social media tools. Your clear delineation provides people with an actionable way to make the most of their networks. This is especially useful for the young adults and students looking to work abroad that I write for on our blog. I am adding this to our LinkedIn group as well!

Thanks!

Olga

http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

All I do is basic, Olga. No one needs fancy when Basic delivers. : )

http://www.therextras.com Barbara

“I’ll connect with anyone.” I just tried to link to you, but cannot without at least an email address. ?

Thanks for affirming my decisions to not connect twitter & to join a few groups (not start a group).

http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

Use: linkedin @ chrisbrogan . com : )

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http://twitter.com/heidithorne Heidi Thorne

Agree about joining groups… but not so many. I'm probably going to be doing some housecleaning in this department on my LI profile. You should only be in groups in which you are active or actively following.

The problem I have with groups is that often there is little discussion going on (except for the Chicago Bears group I'm in). If you're evaluating for active groups, check out the discussions. Have tried posting questions and get totally off the wall responses. I have more meaningful discourse in <140 characters on Twitter.

Speaking of Twitter, I note that you discourage a Twitter feed to LI. I agree with in in that tweets can often be taken out of context, be cryptic, etc. What LI doesn't understand is that a tweet is NOT a status update. Whatever possessed LI to make it that way?

Yet there are tweets I do wish to share with my LI colleagues since most of them are not on Twitter or Facebook. So what I do it use the function in HootSuite to selectively tweet those that are relevant to my LI network.

Thanks for your usual helpful insight!
http://twitter.com/be3d Ian Greenleigh

Chris-

Here's an excellent way to use LinkedIn Answers for blog content:

Once you have a general idea for a new post (especially one that offers an opinion on something), ask related questions via LI Answers. So, for instance, when I was writing a post about if there is truly a “social media capital”, I asked people to give their take. I clarified the question (as a kind of disclaimer) to include the fact that I was going to re-post select answers to my blog. I got a ton of responses, and the best answers actually challenged the idea of a physical capital of social media.

I basically re-posted the best asnwers, responded and expanded on them, and then provided my take. It was one of my better posts, and this is the great part: After I notified everyone that they “made the cut”, they were all happy about it, sharing the post across their networks.

Less work, more diverse input, better circulation = big win.
http://twitter.com/SarmiChirps Joe Sarmiento

Chris, nice article. I posted it to my FB page. The Status Update has been something I've used a lot and it's led to a lot of meetings when I say I'm headed to such and such conference. Just added my Partner Deck to my profile via Slideshare. Thanks
http://twitter.com/davidpaull David Paull

In addition to the solid advice above I have also benefited from *selectively* using InMail as part of my Business account on LinkedIn. I stress *selectively* because InMail essentially allows you to bypass not having someone's email address and reach out to them anyway. Extremely powerful if used for good, not evil. But for me it has always led to a reply and further communication outside of LinkedIn.

http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

I’ve barely used it, but you’re right. It can be just what folks need.

http://www.nds-gear.co.uk/dsi-cards/acekard-2i Acekard

I find that the biggest problem with LinkedIn is that they continuously make more and more of the website's functions subscriber only. This in turn is turning off casual users who don't want to pay a lot of money to access the entire site.
http://www.retirepreneur.com Donna Kastner/Retirepreneur

One comment about groups – free version of LinkedIn allows you to join as many as 50 groups… sounds daunting, but stick with me for a minute. Like the previous brilliant post about “printers joining groups of printers” – I join groups of people who fit my buyer profile. Advanced searches capture not only 2nd and 3rd degree contacts, but members of shared groups. Recently, I asked a 2nd degree contact (who knows me) if he might be open to make an introduction to somebody in a shared group. He did – which resulted in a F2F discovery meeting – and now an opportunity. Gotta love it!
http://www.ourchurch.com Paul Steinbrueck

Chris, you mentioned you received 2 leads from status updates and 6 leads from a slideshare deck you connected with LinkedIn. Can you explain and/or give an example of a status update and slideshare deck that's designed for lead generation?
http://www.ourchurch.com Paul Steinbrueck

Chris, you mentioned you received 2 leads from status updates and 6 leads from a slideshare deck you connected with LinkedIn. Can you explain and/or give an example of a status update and slideshare deck that's designed for lead generation?
Sally

I thought I was 'using' linkedin quite well (not to it's fullest but at least quite well). I've helped people based purely through meeting 'at' a group on linkedin; I've been headhunted; I've been approached with business offers; etc., so I kind think I'm doing okay.

However, the paragraph on 'schedule some time' really hit me as that is something I could do more of. I'll also remove the update link to twitter (somehow???), you make a very good point, which is quite obvious when you think about it ;-) Thanks for the post Chris
http://twitter.com/damphoux Mike Damphousse

Controlling your twitter posts back to LinkedIn can be done by setting it to only to post when #in is used in your tweets. It's under the twitter “edit” link in your profile. Select option: “Share only tweets that contain #in”

Regarding the Follow Company feature. Use it. Use it. Use it. I have Company Follows set for my competitors, my clients, and my serious prospects. I can see their news, new hires, recent departures – my favorite – when one of my client's leaves, they are my best word of mouth marketers. I immediately put them in the Green Leads alumni club.

I can't hit post without mentioning the LinkedIn Poll feature. Free or paid, you can easily conduct a targeted poll and receive timely results. I prefer the paid results, as it is random, targeted, and unbiased. Here's an example of how I used a poll to create content for a blog article on the current use of Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing http://www.green-leads.com/b2b-blog/bid/19217/I…

http://www.linkedin.com/in/MarceloDiFranco Marcelo Di Franco

@Mike,
To me, the best way to manage your Twitter/LinkedIn updates, is through external applications.
The one I’m using is TweetDeck. It allows you to control different social netowrks profiles, including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Foursquare, and choose in which of them post your update.
You can add as many accounts as you have in any of these networks (for example, I have two different twitter accounts: personal & business). You can also schedule your post, updates or tweets.

Another good source for posting in LinkedIn groups is AddThis. Besides allowing you to easily share anything you are reading online (it connects with almost all social networks); when sharing on LinekdIn, you can choose in what group you want to post the article.

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http://cnewmark.com Craig Newmark

Chris, I don't use it well, probably should learn how to.
http://www.associateblogger.com aBlogger

Thanks Chris I am a big fan of Linkedin actually, in some ways I like it better than facebook. Probablly because I am more active on it. For people in a local market or others trying to extend their reach globally Linkedin is the best social platform out there, if only everyone followed your pointers.

You can connect with me on linkedin here: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/robanderson5

Cheers,

Rob
http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

There's a lot to look into, but the first thing is to realize that it's every bit a social network these days, and not just a place to stuff a resume. I mean, not like you need a place for a resume, but you COULD use it for connecting and finding new network leads for your Gov projects, for instance.
http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

I totally love it, Mike. You're part of why I got back into using LinkedIn, so thanks for your additional thoughts.
http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

Well sure. The status update was something that was a direct lead generator for my business. I mentioned a potential opportunity that related to what I sold, and people contacted me offline to inquire.

The slide deck was about using lead generation for social media, and I got six different queries for my professional speaking services. One bought. So that one little slide deck was worth quite a lot of money for me. : )

http://www.ourchurch.com Paul Steinbrueck

Thanks Chris! I appreciate the clarification & examples!

http://wadeonbirmingham.com Wade Kwon

Chris, thanks for good advice. I re-added my blog to my profile, as well as my Slideshare (which now means I need to add some more presentations to Slideshare).

A few more things:

1. Like Heidi, I share selected BUSINESS-RELATED tweets to my LinkedIn profile. It works great at generating new discussion.

2. RESUME TIP. If people do a good job at beefing up their LinkedIn profiles to serve as their virtual resume, they can use this shortcut: The small “Download as PDF” button creates a nicely formatted resume automatically. Example: Here's Chris' profile in PDF form: http://bit.ly/bnw529

3. For the past 3 months, I've contacted 3 people a day from my LinkedIn contacts to network, simply saying hello and asking what they're working on. A great way to determine who's really connecting and who's simply on their own.

4. My main guideline for LinkedIn (and also Facebook): If we haven't met in person, I won't accept your LinkedIn invite yet. I treat my LinkedIn connections like gold, so I'm very careful who gets in to my “private club.”

You also gave me a great idea to try on my LinkedIn profile tomorrow. If it works, I'll share it here.
Batman

Ok, in the spirit of inviting people, I'll ask you all the look for the All Around Neat Guy on LI, and invite me as a friend. If you say you've found me here at Chris' site, I'll connect with you…
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http://wadeonbirmingham.com Wade Kwon

I just wanted to add that thanks to Chris' idea to use SlideShare on my LinkedIn, I now have a custom video greeting to those visiting my profile:

http://itswa.de/wade-LI

(I'm not crazy about the auto-play, but I do love having a profile that greets you.)
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http://www.memorybits.co.uk/ memory stick

This is the real meat of this. Much can be done when you get some really simple way. But it requires time to plan and go through it.
http://www.gamesbackup.co.uk/ r4 sdhc

I had read this whole article and it is really interesting to know about this. I didn't know much about LinkedIn, it is very informative to know. I think for people in a local market or others trying to extend their reach globally Linkedin is the best social platform out there. Very nice tips described here.
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http://www.facebook.com/Isragr Israel García Rodríguez

Never thought about tracking the feed from google alerts! I use a lot LinkedIn and it's gonna be really useful. Thanks Chris
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joezeigler

Great post. However, I disagree with you on a couple of points, at least in the context of how they relate to my brand and business. I am a freelance marcom writer, working mostly on a project basis, and my target is local. The Chris Brogan brand is broader in scope, and national.

First, I have found linking my status update to Twitter to be very valuable. My clients and contacts – the vast majority of whom are not active on Twitter – often comment about seeing what I am up to based on my LinkedIn status updates. For me, status updates have prompted dialog and projects from LinkedIn connections whom I haven't worked with in years. My regular status updates through Twitter help me retain top-of-mind awareness with clients, prospects and colleagues.

Second, I am more inclined to manage a more targeted list of connections. Again, I understand the motivation for the Chris Brogan brand to open these doors wide; with a national (global?) focus, you are substantially increasing the likelihood of identifying speaking and consulting opportunities. For my brand, 95% of my business opportunities come from local contacts, and there are enough projects in the local market to keep me happily busy.

So, I agree with your recommendations for using LinkedIn for a Chris Brogan-type brand. However, I might tweak those recommendations based on other brand and business strategies.
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http://twitter.com/TrishulDevaiah Trishul Devaiah

Good one !
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Vincos

Very useful thanks. I think you could be interested in my new research about The State of Linkedin around the world http://www.vincos.it/the-state-of-linkedin/
reggy27

Hey Chris nice blog on how to use linkedIn, I use similar methods that you teach and had some great results connecting with people. By the way nice blog, what WP theme is it my friend?
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http://www.yuregininsesi.com yuregininsesi

Thank you for writing out these points. Sometimes the most basic engagement principles online seem 'too basic' and therefore there is massive confusion on the best ways to utilize the social media tools. Your clear delineation provides people with an actionable way to make the most of their networks. This is especially useful for the young adults and students looking to work abroad that I write for on our blog