LinkedIn Training With Dan Sherman - LinkedIn Book & Articles

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With more than 120 million users, LinkedIn is the most popular social network for professionals as well as one of the top social networks overall. On LinkedIn, you can find more customers, locate referral partners, contact a mentor, raise your visibility, and so much more.
In these next two posts, I will be sharing Powerful Ideas to achieve more success on LinkedIn. Many people don't know about these strategies. In today's post, I will go over the first ten ways to get more from LinkedIn.

1. Claim your vanity URL. Make your profile look more professional and easier to share by claiming your LinkedIn vanity URL. Instead of a URL with a million confusing numbers at the end, it will provide you with great branding. For example, my public profile URL is http://www.linkedin.com/in/linkedinspeaker. Got to Profile > Edit Profile and in the information box click edit by your public profile; then click "customize your public profile URL" down on the right-hand side.

2. Make your blog/website links customer focused. Instead of using the default "My Website"-type anchor text links in your LinkedIn profile, you can change the anchor text to make those links more appealing to people who view your profile. So if you want to increase clicks on the website links you can display on your profile, change the link's anchor text to something more value oriented than the standard options LinkedIn provides. For example, if you want to include a link to your blog, rather than choosing LinkedIn's standard "Blog" anchor text, customize it to include keywords that indicate what your blog is about to offer value, such as "Free Marketing Tips." Each profile can display up to 3 website links like this, and they can be customized by editing your profile, clicking edit on your website links, and selecting "Other" in the drop-down menu to customize the anchor text.

3. Search engine optimize your profile. You can also optimize your profile to get found by people searching LinkedIn for key terms with which you want to be associated. Add these keywords to various sections of your profile such as your headline or summary.

4. Take advantage of "Saved Searches." LinkedIn allows you to create up to 3 saved searches in the free account. After conducting a search, clicking the “Save This Search” option allows you to save a search and easily run it again later. You can also choose to receive weekly or monthly reminders via email once new members in the network match your saved search criteria. Just click on the “Saved Searches” tab on the Advanced Search options page and select one of your saved searches to run again.

5. Track what people are saying. Signal is a helpful page on LinkedIn that allows you to track what people are saying about any topic you want to track. It follows people's updates and gives you the results in real time. Go to News > Signal and enter your search.

6. Use applications. Browse the Application Directory, and consider adding the SlideShare application or linking your blog to showcase your presentations and blog articles on your profile. The Events application is also a great way to see what events your connections are attending and find other popular industry events to attend.

7. Use OpenLink to send messages to people to whom you're not connected. LinkedIn only allows you to send messages to people with which you share a first degree connection, but did you know some people let you send them messages anyway, even if you're not connected? The ability to be part of the OpenLink network is only available to premium account holders, but it allows them to be available for messaging by any other LinkedIn member if they choose to be. OpenLink members will appear with an icon that looks like a small ring of dots next to their name in search results and on their profile.

8. Check in on "Network Updates." Found on your LinkedIn homepage, Network Updates are kind of like your Facebook news feed. Check these periodically for a quick snapshot of what your connections are up to and sharing.

9. Be identifiable. Find out who's checking out your profile by allowing others to see who you are if you view theirs. When you click the information under "Who's Viewed My Profile" on your profile page, you'll be able to view users who have looked at your profile, stats on your profile's number of views, and its appearances in search recently.

10. Export connections. Want to transfer your LinkedIn connections to another contact management system? LinkedIn enables you to easily export your connections. Just click on Contacts > My Connections and then scroll down and click "Export Connections." You have the option of either exporting as a .CSV or .VCF file.

10 More Powerful Ideas for Succeeding On LinkedIn

In the last post, we talked about the fact that LinkedIn has over 120 million members, making it the largest professional networking site. With an average household income over $100K, the users of LinkedIn are the movers and shakers you want to get to know and who have the money to buy what you are selling.
Here are the next 10 tips in this series.

1. Easily find email contacts on LinkedIn. Speaking of connections, the LinkedIn Companion for Firefox is a great plug-in that helps you identify the LinkedIn profiles of people who are emailing you. It also enables you to easily access other LinkedIn features via your browser.

2. Leverage the power of LinkedIn Groups. Did you know that if you're a member of the same group as another user, you can bypass the need to be a first degree connection in order to message them? In addition, group members are also able to view the profiles of other members of the same group without being connected. You can be a member of 50 groups, so join more groups to enable more messaging and profile viewership capabilities.

3. Take advantage of advanced search options. LinkedIn's Advanced Search feature provides a much richer search experience. For example, say you want to find out if you're connected to anyone that works at a specific company. Type the company name in the company field in Advanced Search, then sort the results by "Relationship" to see if you have any first or second degree connections to any employees.

4. Link your Twitter account to LinkedIn. Share your LinkedIn status updates on Twitter, and vice versa. Just go to Profile > Edit Profile and look for the Twitter account section to add your personal Twitter handle.

5. Quickly turn your LinkedIn profile into a resume. LinkedIn enables you to turn your profile into a resume-friendly format in seconds with its Resume Builder tool. Just choose a resume template, edit it, and export it as a PDF that you can print, email, and share.

6. Add a video to your Company Page. Make your Company Page more interactive by adding video. To do so, visit your Company Page as a page admin, click your Products tab and, under the "Admin Tools" drop-down menu, click "Add a product or service." This enables you to create a new entry that features your video. You can also add a video to any existing product/service pages you've set up previously. Currently, LinkedIn only supports videos that have been uploaded to YouTube.

7. Rearrange your profile. LinkedIn enables you to reorder the sections of your profile in any way you prefer. Go to Profile > Edit Profile and hover your mouse over the title of each section. Your mouse will turn into a four-arrowed icon, at which point you can click then drag and drop to another position on your profile.

8. Extend the life of your questions. After a week, the opportunity closes for your network to answer questions that are posed in the Answers feature of LinkedIn. To extend the life of the questions you ask and enable more time for users to provide answers, go to More > Answers > My Q&A. Click on the question you'd like to revive, and click "re-open this question to answers," which will open it up again for 7 more days.

9. Share questions or your answers to others' questions. Besides the ability to ask questions, LinkedIn Answers also offers a great opportunity for users to share their expertise and thought leadership as well as link to content they've created that helps to answer others' questions. Have you provided a helpful answer to another's question lately? When you're on the question's page, click "Share This" beneath the question. You then have the option to share the question via LinkedIn message with up to 200 of your connections, bookmark it on Delicious, or grab the permalink to share in other ways. I use this to update my status when I want to share a great question.

10. Use LinkedIn Today to keep track of industry news. LinkedIn Today is an awesome feature that provides you with the most popular stories that are shared on LinkedIn. Use it to stay on top of news occurring about marketing, the internet, computer software, etc. You can also sign up for email summary notifications of LinkedIn Today news.

We can always use more clients, yet picking up the phone and making cold calls is about as enjoyable as a tax audit. Fortunately with LinkedIn, cold calls can be a thing of the past. There are so many different ways to prospect for business with LinkedIn; in this article, I want to highlight several of my favorite techniques which all involve the "Companies" section.

This strategy revolves around finding out who you know who works close to the decision maker you are trying to reach. By creating a relationship with them, you can infiltrate that department and get an introduction to the person who is in a position to buy from you.

Click on "Companies" along the top tool bar. From the "Companies" home page, you can type in the name of the company you are targeting. Let's say I wanted to sell to the grocer Publix; I type in Publix and I find out there are 118 employees in my network. They are all second level, meaning I need an introduction to them. So I find the person who works in the department I am targeting, click on their name, and I see all my first level connections that are "shared connections." I find a first level connection I know well, and I send an introduction request through them to the person I want to meet.

So what I get is a warm introduction rather than a cold call. It's much more effective reaching someone this way, and it allows me to begin building rapport with a person in the area I'm hoping to sell into.

LinkedIn provides you with tons of "intelligence" on the company pages you can use as ice-breakers and reasons to contact your target. Along the right hand side of their company page I see "Publix mentioned in the news." I can scour that section for nuggets I can use when I begin building rapport with employees. Anytime something changes at a company, it can create new pains or needs you can address with your product or service.

I also see the "Publix Activity on LinkedIn" section, where there are personnel updates for the company. If you see a new executive has been hired, that may be your chance to become a new product or service provider. Whenever a new exec comes on board, they always take the "new broom" approach and bring in new suppliers. If you see a new hire, click on their name, see how you are connected, and request an introduction through your network.

Finally, you can have all the company changes sent to you by simply clicking on the blue "Follow Company" button on their page. Once you are following the company, you can click on the "Follow" button, select "Settings" and tell LinkedIn whether you want daily or weekly updates sent to you whenever new employees, leave, join, or are promoted; when jobs open; or when the company updates its profile.

So you see, the "Companies" section is where you can 1) find and target anyone you wish to connect with, 2) identify windows of opportunities, and 3) where you will get the inside scoop you need to create relevant discussions with your intended clients. Try it out today, and begin making sales and building your business the most effective and efficient way possible today...LinkedIn.

10 LinkedIn Power User Strategies

With 130 million members, LinkedIn is the third largest social networking site. It's perfect for achieving your professional goals, no matter if you are looking for clients, partners, job opportunities, advisors, or investors. Here are ten ways that power users get the most out of the world's largest professional network.

1. Boost your LinkedIn profile SEO
To get better ranking make sure to insert relevant keywords in your headline, in your job title (past and present) in your summary and your specialties. Use keywords such as industry, location, company names (if that’s allowed) and even names of people. Bring it down to a micro level with versions of software and specific skills.

2. Use searches to find anyone on LinkedIn
On LinkedIn, you can only see the people that are three degrees away from you or members of the same group. One of the secrets on LinkedIn is that you are able to see every public profile via search engines such as Google. LinkedIn makes sure these profiles are indexed in Google as they want to be the first search results for people’s names.
You can use this by entering a Boolean search string searching every LinkedIn user. This typically renders quite a lot of results so throw in more keywords in the search to narrow it down to a nice shortlist.

3. Advertise for free on LinkedIn
Anyone can advertise on LinkedIn but some might balk at the high ad prices. One way of doing it for free is of course your status update; another way is to post it into groups. These are in theory good ways but the trouble is that most people see those updates as ads and tend to ignore them.
One more creative way is to use a SlideShare or the Google app where you put your presentation on your profile and share it with your network. This will actually get clicks and if it’s done well it could go viral.

4. Take advantage of the events section
The events section is one of the most underutilized sections of LinkedIn. We all attend events and so do your customers. Search for these events on LinkedIn and you’ll be able to see who is coming so that you can plan your conversations way ahead of the event. The attendee list is sometimes a great place for identifying buyers. If ten people are attending a LinkedIn meetup I would expect a few of them to be interested in some training.

Whether it’s your breakfast briefing on new regulations or networking drinks you are hosting – be sure to list these in the LinkedIn Events section. When you list an event, your entire network gets notified. You can then share it again to anyone in your network by LinkedIn messages. Every time someone clicks ‘attending’ or ‘interested’ – their networks get notified as well. Events is one of the best places to build up some buzz around your company.

5. Categorize connections and send group emails
Another underutilized feature of LinkedIn is the ability to tag people. This means you can categorize your connections according to company, position, location, where you met or whatever you choose.
When doing some sales calls, you can tag everyone you speak to. When your next sales session comes up you’ll have an instant shortlist and you are able to send a group email to everyone in that category to get it out quickly.

6. Connect with people in Groups
Another secret on LinkedIn is that Groups normally allow you to contact and connect with anyone directly on LinkedIn. Sometimes you find a perfect prospect but have no way of contacting them. What you can do is see what groups they are a member of and join one of these. From there you can either invite the person to your network directly or you can look them up in the group and send a message.

7. Be open to connecting with many people
LinkedIn is all about connections and the more you have the better visibility your profile will have and more people you will be able to search for. But it’s also about quality connections. It’s worth identifying the so called ‘super connectors’ in your field and start connecting with them – if they have 1,000 relevant connections that will save you a lot of work.
In general, connect with business contacts of all levels. Juniors become seniors within companies; they move companies and remember you.

8. Integrate Twitter and LinkedIn
If you tweet, or if your company tweets, you might want to integrate Twitter and LinkedIn. This is done through an application called Tweets. It’s fairly straightforward to install but the important thing here are the settings.

We have all seen users with more than ten updates on LinkedIn per day and these updates typically come from Twitter and probably do more harm to your brand than anything else. What you want to do is this: To share tweets on LinkedIn use the hashtag #in inside Twitter. This allows you to selectively share on LinkedIn as opposed to blanketing your network with conversational updates.

9. Take advantage of Recommendations
The recommendation engine on LinkedIn is one of the keys to LinkedIn’s success. Whereas you used to get recommendations on a website, these recommendations are fully transparent and people can click their way through to scrutinize who wrote the recommendation.
Given that people check out recommenders, try to focus on quality recommendations from C-level executives, former bosses, satisfied clients, and well-known colleagues.

10. Hide people from your homefeed
Whether someone is plugging their own services every day or tweeting on LinkedIn too much, you can easily hide these people from your home feed. Just go to the right of their update and there is a little grey text reading “Hide” – click that and you won’t see this person on your feed again. You can un-hide them later if you so please.

If someone is even more annoying, you can remove them as a connection altogether on the My Contacts page and click ‘remove connections’. They will not be notified that you have deleted them from your network.

Summary
Make the most out of LinkedIn and you will find all the opportunities you are seeking. Please get in touch with me about one-on-one LinkedIn training, or my LinkedIn seminars and webinars.

10 More LinkedIn Power User Strategies

In the last post we talked about power user strategies...how to go beyond the basics and get the most out of LinkedIn, the world's largest professional networking site. In this article we will go more deeply into power user strategies so that you can get the most out of LinkedIn.

1. Find a job on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the place where you can find professionals on social media. Yes, Facebook can be great for graduates and Twitter for media but LinkedIn reaches people who haven’t got time for lots of social networks. A lawyer, banker or accountant will check their LinkedIn profile periodically but very seldom would they even have a Twitter account. So from a mere reach perspective LinkedIn is your best bet.
This means most recruiters and HR departments are using LinkedIn to find candidates already. So you can actually be found via one of their searches, or you can actively network your way to opportunities within companies. And you can of course have a look at the Jobs section to make it really easy on yourself.

2. Scan what people are saying about a company or topic
A little known feature of LinkedIn is what’s called LinkedIn Signal. It’s basically a search tool for status updates on LinkedIn. You can search for your company name, your field or location or even a combination of them all. LinkedIn will tell you who is talking about the keyword, including people up to 3 degrees away from you. Signal is located under 'News' in the main toolbar.

3. Stand out over your competitors
How do you stand out? By being useful to your network and by sharing interesting and valuable information; and by not selling your products and services all the time. Your network probably knows what you do and they are likely to let you know when they have a referral for you, so it’s better to get mindshare – creating daily awareness and staying visible.

4. Create a good daily LinkedIn routine
Most active LinkedIn users have a LinkedIn browser window open all day but they mainly use LinkedIn as a database. I would make a habit of sharing an interesting piece of content every day, checking out the events section for relevant networking events, engaging with other users in Groups and generally keeping an eye on the homefeed to keep my finger on the pulse. This only takes a few minutes every day. I would also answer questions every day in your field.

5. Run a successful group on LinkedIn
There are over a million groups on LinkedIn, many of these were set up by recruiters. If you look at what makes a group successful it’s all about creating a strong community. One idea is that when it’s set up, make it ‘exclusive’ in some way – graphic designers in Denver for example. This just makes more of them want to join. Assign a team to run the group and to seed conversation, moderate discussions and share interesting content.

The number one gripe people have with groups is that they get too much spam emails so make sure you vet all members, only send relevant email updates and do not tolerate any blatant promotions from members.

6. Use your company page to attract customers
The LinkedIn company page is your company’s number one branding tool on LinkedIn. There are lots of things you can do here such as write up a description of the company, add contact details, insert your Twitter feed, link your blog posts to the page, add your products and services, ask for company recommendations and check out the visitor statistics. Prospects are likely to check out your company page so make sure it represents your brand fully.

7. Include the essentials on your profile
There are four essentials on an individual’s LinkedIn profile; they are your picture, headline, summary and keywords.

Your picture should look professional and reflect your brand. People like dealing with faces as opposed to just text – studies show you get 30% more clicks in search results when you have a picture.
The headline (along with your name and picture) is what comes up in search results and based on this the user will decide whether to click on you or the competitor. Make sure the headline talks about what you do and not who you are. 'Logistics expert' works better than Owner, ABC Company.
Your summary is where people go to see what you are all about and what your track record in the industry is. If you get someone to take time to check this out you will want to add contact details at the end and not leave them hanging.

Finally, you have to get the right keywords on your profile or you will not come up in any searches. Yes, you might come up in searches for your name but let’s face it if someone already knows your name you already have a foot in the door. It’s better to come up in the search for "logistics" or "graphic design."

8. Connect with people outside of your network
There are lots of ways of connecting with people outside of your network. You can join the same group as this person which allows you to connect directly most of the time. You can do an introduction through a common connection. This can take a bit of time but usually works. If you have a premium account you can send an inMail or you can actually buy inMail credits in a free account for $10 each.
The best way to connect is actually outside of LinkedIn. Set up a call and pick up the phone and call the person, or if you don’t have the number you can probably guess the email address and try that. It’s all about being creative and just because you found someone on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you have to approach them through LinkedIn.

9. Upgrade your account when you are ready
This depends on how you are using LinkedIn. Many people don’t use inMails, Profile organizer or require additional search results. If you do pay for an account make sure you make the most of it. I have the premium account and I find it's worth it.

10. Use applications to attract business
You can use SlideShare to share presentations of your company or about specials or promotions you have on at the moment. You can use the Amazon Reading list to show off your extra-curricular interests. Use TripIt if you travel a lot and actually want people to contact you to have a coffee in various locations. You can use Google Docs to get video on your profile and if you blog you should definitely integrate the Blog Link application. Remember that every time you make any changes to your application, your network gets notified which is usually a good thing.

LinkedIn can help you achieve all your professional goals. If you need assistance, please get in touch with me about my one-on-one training, seminars and webinars.

There are 130 million professionals on LinkedIn today, and chances are some of them are looking to buy exactly what you are offering.

So, how can you make sure you are found by them when they do a LinkedIn search? By optimizing your LinkedIn profile and placing keywords strategically in five different areas of your profile.

I’ll start off by using myself as an example. I want to be known as the LinkedIn Expert. Now, I have close to 18 million people in my network. When I do simple search by entering “LinkedIn Expert” into the search box in the upper right next to “people”, I get 8,765 results for that term and I appear as number two. That’s not bad. As a result, I get media opportunities and consulting work just by people finding me.

Bear in mind that your search would be different. If you searched on “LinkedIn Expert” but I am not in your network, of course I won’t show up. But within my network, I do. Now we’ll cover exactly how you can appear on page one of LinkedIn searches so you become known as the expert, gain credibility and authority status, and get the sale or job or whatever you are seeking.

Here are the five main places you will want to put your keyword for your brand or expertise. Once you make these changes, you should see some instant results in how you appear in LinkedIn searches.

Headline
Let’s say you want to be found for IT Training. You could put: ”I Provide The Most Comprehensive and Affordable IT Training In The State of Nevada”

Just be sure that you include your brand or keyword in the headline, as that is one the key places LinkedIn considers when ranking you in searches.

Current work experience
The second place LinkedIn looks is your current work experience, so make sure your current jobs have your keyword prominently displayed. I have “LinkedIn Expert” in my current jobs, and so that helps me with rankings.

Past work experience
Just like your current jobs, you want your past jobs to have your keyword so LinkedIn moves you up in the rankings. So, maybe you’re thinking that you don’t have a past “job” that had that keyword. Simple: The things you list as “jobs” don’t have to be full time jobs. If you did some consulting, or volunteer work, or anything in which you could put as a “job” on LinkedIn and has that keyword, you are all set.

On my profile, I have as past jobs some short term LinkedIn consulting and speaking work. That enables me to use the term “LinkedIn Expert” and move me up in the rankings.

Summary
Here is where you get to give your commercial for your brand, for You, Inc. Remember to make it value driven and benefit oriented, stating how you help people and how they reach you and hire you. You can also add a little bit about you personally in this section. For example, I have a short section that states what my philosophy on life is. People want to do business with those that they know, so adding some personal thoughts is helpful.

Your summary is where you need to add keywords, i.e. your branding, to make sure you show up high in the search rankings. Don’t “stuff” keywords, work them in so that your summary still reads correctly and flows. You have 2,000 characters to use, and I suggest you use them all.

Specialties
Add your keywords here when you list your specialties, and use the format where you stack them up one by one to make it easy to scan. You add your specialties in the “edit summary” section. Don’t just add a block of words. Some people have begun copy and pasting blocks of words to rank higher and to me it looks totally ridiculous. It is spammy and unprofessional. Yes, you want to rank high in searches, but you also want your profile to be readable and user-friendly.

There you have it. Try adding keywords – the phrases you want to be found for – in those five places today and then test it by searching for your keywords. If you keep on refining your profile, you will find you come up on the first page!

5 Ways To Get Found On LinkedIn