LinkedIn: A Practical Guide to Optimizing Networking

LINKEDIN: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO OPTIMIZING NETWORKING

By

Tanzil Al Gazmir

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Tanzil Al Gazmir on Smashwords

LinkedIn: A Practical Guide to Optimizing Networking

Copyright © 2013 by Tanzil Al Gazmir

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

LinkedIn, the LinkedIn logo, the IN logo and InMail are registered trademarks or trademarks of LinkedIn Corporation and its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries.

DISCLAIMER

All the material contained in this book is provided for educational and informational purposes only. No responsibility can be taken for any results or outcomes resulting from the use of this material.

While every attempt has been made to provide information that is both accurate and effective, the author does not assume any responsibility for the accuracy or use/misuse of this information.

*****

LINKEDIN: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO OPTIMIZING NETWORKING

*****

Table of contents

An Introduction

Important notes

Chapter 1: LinkedIn Benefits

Build your personal brand

Search for work

Find business partners, leads, clients, vendors and service providers

Recruitment

Expand your network professionally

Groups give you access to experts

Connecting with your Alumni groups

Benefits for students

Keep in touch with former colleagues

Free access to professional information

Get access to people with good financial health

Advertising

Attract new business by boosting your company’s credibility

Learn a lot from others

Miscellaneous benefits

Chapter 2: LinkedIn Networking Do’s – things you should do

Build your network before you need it

A basic number of Connections

You should have at least 50 connections

Start adding connections to your network

The types of people who can be in your network

Connect to Your Real Friends and Contacts

Meet your connections at events

Send personalized invitations

Connect to contacts from outlook or Gmail

Keep your contact options open

Connection invitation from strangers

Always be connecting

Welcome your new connections

Make yourself visible

Join some active and targeted LinkedIn groups

Join your local LinkedIn groups

Introduce yourself

Active participation

Participate in popular discussions

Dedicate meaningful time regularly

Engagement in communication

LinkedIn activity /engagement time

Create a LinkedIn group

Follow influencers and channels

Connect to industry leaders and spokespeople

Learn from your role model networkers

Ask for an introduction

Take help from mentors and peers

Find a company insider

Optimize your profile

Archive connection invitations

Handle requests efficiently

Read the profile before reaching out

Add value

Become a thought leader

Be a resource

Use the Alumni Tool

Ask your network for help

Turn off activity broadcasts

Recommend others

Verify recommendations

Endorse others and get endorsed

View profiles anonymously

Reply privately

InMail Messages

Composing a group mail

Check LinkedIn messages with importance

Research before responding

Use OpenLink to send messages to people outside your network

Delete the spammers

Use advanced search options

Organize your connections

Who’s Viewed Your Profile

Cross-promote

Save your time

Follow companies

Make sure to add your company

Do not create company profile

Promotion and Job posting

Check out the jobs section

Save Job Searches

Before you quit your job

When looking for a job

Follow companies on LinkedIn

Use data to analyze

Use LinkedIn from your computer

Events

Use LinkedIn plugins

Integrate with RSS feed

Send newsletters

Improve your company page

Networking for college / university students

Network outside LinkedIn too

Play DropIn on LinkedIn

Apps for serious networking and other uses

Create two versions of your profile

Use YouTube.com

Work as a volunteer

Upgrade if you need to

LION stands for LinkedIn Open Networker

Stay within your comfort zone

Measure your achievements

Follow up

Chapter 3: LinkedIn Networking Don’ts – things you should avoid

Avoid adding false colleagues

Do not overdo or over-commit

Recommend someone with the hope of exchange

You are not endorsing people you are connected to

Waiting to start in the last minute or too late to start

Doing unprofessional things

You are not sharing

Sharing in a wrong way

You are not caring

You ignore your team's network

Your connections do not reflect your profession

LinkedIn is different from Facebook or Twitter

Ask for information, not a job, client or contract

Do not ask for contact information

Depending too much on LinkedIn

Spamming

Chapter 4: Success stories – How others benefited from the techniques

LinkedIn research helped Ann to get her a good job in Seattle

Networking with mom

Eric got a job with the help of an alumnus

Evan joined as Advertising Sales Director

Chris Perry found a job on LinkedIn

Nicolette Weinbaum landed an excellent summer internship using LinkedIn ad

LinkedIn referrals helped Sasha Strauss build a company

Steven Shimek found a $250K contract on LinkedIn Answers

Lenny Bourdeau generated a $20K lead using LinkedIn people search

Some one-line success summaries from many sources

Read more success stories

Chapter 5: Failures and complaints

Features do not work

Groups are not effective

I do not receive a single job offer or business offer

Failed to get a job using LinkedIn

LinkedIn is good only for ideal job candidates

Recruiters offer me irrelevant jobs

LinkedIn sells my information

My connections rejected my request for help

Their customer service is terrible

I cannot block a threatening person

Sending me too many emails

LinkedIn is a privacy killer

LinkedIn is boring

LinkedIn endorsement feature is a fail

People are connecting to anyone and everyone

Some of my connections may be stealing my clients

I could not sell on LinkedIn

Users are reciprocating recommendations

My InMail messages failed to generate expected results

I created a group but it failed

People are refusing my connection invitations

Connecting to people only you know is not a good idea

Group administrators get more benefits

Group questions are not authentic

LinkedIn congratulates because I have a top viewed profile but it is meaningless

I heard Linked was hacked

LinkedIn does not care young adults and recent graduates

People who do not work in my company claim it on their profiles

LinkedIn profiles are not trustworthy

Most messages in my inbox are self-serving

I have no idea why no one contacts me or offers me an opportunity

There is no competitive advantage of paying US$15.95 per month

InMail guarantee is not very effective

Chapter 6: Miscellaneous

Browse securely

Customize homepage updates

Check updates from LinkedIn Today

Find employees on LinkedIn

Use LinkedIn as part of your sales process

Chapter 7: Checklist

Networking

An Introduction

If you are interested in networking like a professional, this practical guidebook can help you. This will also show you how to join the right groups and network better. Why is this important? If you follow certain rules, these can result in generating more leads, a better job, new customers, business partner, vendors etc. But if you fail to follow these, you might end in achieving too little, losing connections, turn away your potential employers.

I shall not only tell you the LinkedIn etiquettes but also show you how you can get more benefits from this network.

Before I start this chapter, I want you to watch this video. This video was made by LinkedIn on their 10th anniversary so that you can understand what some of their LinkedIn members aspire to accomplish in the future.

Chapter 1: Profile Optimization and Networking Benefits

In this chapter, I have tried to explain why you should invest time and efforts to optimize your profile and then to network with people to generate opportunities. I have written about many benefits. Every benefit may not be suitable for you. But I hope you will find one or more benefits suitable for you.

Chapter 2: LinkedIn Networking Do’s – things you should do

In this chapter, you will learn a lot of things you need to do to be a successful networker. I tried to cover as many types of users as possible. So, you will find at least some tips that fit your networking requirements.

Chapter 3: LinkedIn Networking Don’ts – things you should avoid

In this chapter, I wanted to warn you about many mistakes so that you do not make the mistakes. These can weaken your networking efforts. I want my valued readers to avoid all the mistakes.

Chapter 4: Success stories – How others benefited from the techniques

In this chapter, you will see how other people became successful using one or more of the same tips I mentioned in this book. Their stories are amazing and very interesting to read. You can also do what they did. All these stories will give you clear idea about exactly what other successful people did.

Chapter 5: Failures and complaints

In this chapter, I tried to cover some complaints from unsuccessful people. The explanations and answers to these complaints reflect my personal view. These are not official LinkedIn answers. I am sure that they can explain better than me.

Chapter 6: Miscellaneous

In this chapter, I placed some information that I found you might need to know. The information may indirectly link to the above chapters.

Chapter 7: Checklist

In this chapter, you will find the core points of this book. You can use the list as a quick guidebook or handbook. You can use this chapter as a quick reminder too.

Chapter 2, Chapter 3 and Chapter 7 are what you need to learn LinkedIn networking. All other chapters are bonus chapters from my other book. That book is "LinkedIn: A Practical Guide to Optimizing Profile, Networking & Profile Views" and is a combination of three books.

Important notes:

A common mistake is – LinkedIn users often forget to change the settings to make their profile public. So, most viewers fail to view their profile if they are not connected to them or not a premium LinkedIn member. Make sure that your profile is public. To make your profile public, go to this page and select Make my public profile visible to everyone option from the right column. Then tick all (or as many as you want) the checkboxes. You will see no save button because once you change something, the change is automatically and immediately saved.

I have added several links. The links are in blue text with underline such as this one –an example profile link. If you want to access the webpage, just click on the link. I strongly recommend you check all the links.

Some information is repeated because I needed to remind that information in several places for several purposes. In some other places, some information has overlapped because you may need to do the same thing to optimize profile, network better and/or increase profile view.

You may have heard of LION. LION means LinkedIn Open Networkers. For your information, it is against LinkedIn policy but I have never heard that LinkedIn has taken any action against these networkers.

Though this book is generic in nature and written for job seekers, businessmen, recruiters etc, some information can be specific for only one or more group.

Backlink: Backlinks, also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links, are incoming links to a website or web page.

URL: A uniform resource locator, abbreviated URL, also known as web address, is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to a resource.

A connection on LinkedIn is a person who is in your connections list. The same person can be a connection of other people’s networks.

Feel free to contact LinkedInhelp centerwhenever you need support. I have experienced their service is very good. They have answered many common questions. But you cancreate a ticketwhen you have a different issue. For example, you may want to create a ticket and send a polite request when LinkedIn restrict your account for sending connection request to unknown people.

If there is spelling, grammatical and any other errors, I hope to fix them in next edition. Please be kind to send me an email if you find any such error. I had limited budget. So, I designed the book cover myself and I could not hire a proof-reader. Please pardon me for the spelling and grammatical mistakes and also if you dislike the cover design.

I have noticed that sometimes I try to view public profiles but LinkedIn hides the main content. It says I need to pay and upgrade to view the full profiles (though these are public profiles). Then I search for that person and click on her name from the search result and can see the full profile. This is often effective if you can connect to a networker who has a large network and she is also in this network. You can try this technique to check if this helps you too.

Anyone can join LinkedIn and create a nice profile. But I do not think you can achieve the most out of this professional network without active networking. Do not worry. Networking on LinkedIn is easy and doable.

Some people will connect to anyone who sends a connection invitation. They are called LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networkers). But most others will connect to only professional people they personally know and may be very selectively some other people who work in the same industry. This second group often rejects connection requests from unknown people. When you finish reading this book, you will understand the advantages and disadvantages of these