Summary of “How to Get Started With LinkedIn” by Jake Swearingen
More and more business professionals are using social networks to build relationships, meet new contacts, and market themselves. LinkedIn was developed specifically for business, the site doesn’t run the risk of blurring your professional life with your private one; and with more than 25 million users, it serves virtually every industry and profession.
Create a Compelling Profile Before you connect to others, you must first set up a profile page at www.linkedin.com. While your page will detail your work history, don’t assume you can copy and paste your resume and be done with it. Your profile page should reflect your professional interests, passions, and ambitions. The site will walk you through filling in the blanks, but you’ll want to think ahead about two areas:
• Defining Yourself. Directly underneath your name will be a short headline of four or five words. More than anything else in your profile, these words are how people find and define you. Are you seeking to connect mainly with others in your field and industry? Then a simple, explanatory headline like “Senior Project Manager at McDonnell-Douglas” is best. Are you seeking to branch out into other areas? “Leader of High-Performing Aeronautical Engineering Projects” alerts others quickly to the value you would bring to an organization. Regardless of how you phrase your headline, make sure to use keywords that will help others find you. • What You’ve Done, and What You Want to Do. When listing your past job experiences, use verbs as much as possible. Show what you’re passionate about, and what you’ve learned from each job.
Make Sure You Include: • A solid headline with keywords relevant to your industry. • A picture. • How you prefer to be contacted. At the bottom of your profile, you can let people know how you want to be contacted — through LinkedIn, by e-mail, or over the phone. • What you want to be contacted about. At the bottom of your profile, you can select interests like reference requests, consulting offers, or career opportunities.
Make Sure You Don’t Include: • Any contact information you’re not comfortable having your contacts see. Your contact information will be visible only to those you are connected to, but you should decide whether you want that to include things like phone numbers or personal e-mail. • Anything that even begins to stray from the truth. Unlike even a resume, your profile will be seen by a lot of eyes. Did you really lead that project, or did you lead it along with several others? • Anything you wouldn’t want fellow colleagues — current, former, or future — to know. LinkedIn is for professional relationships, and just like at the dinner table, it’s wise to keep politics and religion politely to yourself.
Build Your Network After you’ve created your profile, it’s time to begin to connect to others. LinkedIn will allow you to search for people you know to see if they’re already members. But once you connect to someone, you can also look at the profiles of anyone they know, and in turn anyone those people know. Because of these three degrees of separation, your network can grow exponentially. Fewer than fifty direct contacts can translate to millions of business users. Before you begin connecting, decide who you want to connect to. LinkedIn suggests in its FAQ, “Only invite those you know and trust.”
• How to Not Be Friends. If someone contacts you and you don’t want to form a connection with them, you don’t need to flatly reject them and worry about the attendant awkwardness. When looking at the invitation to connect, simply hit “Archive.” The other person does not receive a message saying their invitation has been rejected, and you don’t have to worry about unwanted invitations clogging up your inbox. Likewise, if you find that an existing contact is blasting you with too much information or making overly aggressive requests for introductions and recommendations, LinkedIn will let you remove that person easily — and without the contact knowing they’re out of your network. If only it were that easy in real life. • Get the Most From Your Connections. There are three main things your network can do for you: answer business-related questions, make recommendations and introductions, and provide company information. Make sure that you focus on helping others when you first join.
o Ask and answer questions. While signed in, you can quickly see a list of open questions that have been asked by anyone in your extended network. Queries can range from advice on turning a website into a business to detailed questions about tax law. Participating in these exchanges is an easy way of gaining trust and building your reputation. Asking questions will prompt informed sources to offer their expert advice (which helps everyone in the network), while providing answers gives you a chance to show off your own expertise to others. o Recommend and introduce colleagues. Recommendations work as a form of currency in a social network. Those who are happy with your work can write a brief description of their experience on your LinkedIn profile. By having a broad range of endorsements attesting to your professional expertise, you show others that you can be trusted. And make sure to recommend those you’ve had good experiences with. Introductions are trickier but also more valuable. This is where your personal judgment needs to come into play. When someone contacts you for an introduction, be sure you understand and approve of what they want before making the handoff. Likewise, make your intentions clear when you are asking for an introduction. o Learn more about your professional network. You can quickly learn a lot about a potential business partner or contact by reading their profile. Unlike, for example, someone’s Google results, everything you find on LinkedIn has been voluntarily placed there by your contact.
Staying Plugged In LinkedIn has a number of plug-ins and add-ons that can make your social networking even more effective. Here are three that you can make a part of your online life: • LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar: Build your network from those you e-mail frequently, manage your network from within Outlook, and see mini LinkedIn profiles for everyone who e-mails you. • Web Browser Toolbar (for Internet Explorer and Firefox): Quickly search LinkedIn for any name you come across while surfing. Read about an interesting person in the Journal? Click on their name and see how closely you’re connected. • LinkedIn E-mail Signature: Create a custom e-mail signature in Outlook, Outlook Express, and Mozilla Thunderbird with a brief version of your LinkedIn profile and a link to your full profile.
Manage Your Social Network You’ll need to continually update and refine your profile and your network. The most obvious way to do this is to add new contacts. Adding new contacts, sometimes from outside your immediate field or industry, is also a subtly persuasive way to sell yourself by letting others see how far your professional sphere extends.
MDLA and LinkedIn – What LinkedIn can do for MDLA members Members of MDLA will be able to join our Midwest Dental Laboratory Association group and use features like participating in Discussions, reading News posts, and view/ post job information. It is also a convenient way to keep up-to-date and linked-in to our dental community.
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