Free updates for book “How to REALLY use LinkedIn”

Time flies when you are having fun! 10 months ago the book “How to REALLY use LinkedIn” was born.

As I wrote in the book: it is always “dangerous” to write a book about a website since it can change overnight.

In the past 10 months the website of LinkedIn indeed has gone through some changes.

During this time I have posted some messages and tips on this blog to keep you up-to-date.

Now these messages are not only brought together in 1 document of 23 pages, but I have also added some extra tips and comments. On top of that you will also receive a LinkedIn Profile Self Assessment and a list with tools that can help you deal with your networking and referral actions in a more effective and efficient way.

You can download all of this at no cost at the website of the book “How to REALLY use LinkedIn” (or in Dutch: via de website van het boek “Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken”)

In the meantime I wish you all the best !

Jan

How To Create an Attractive LinkedIn Profile by Using Video

Many people want to make their LinkedIn Profile stand out.

A good way to do that is using video. Although LinkedIn doesn’t give you the choice to upload your own video to your Profile, there is a work around.

How? By using Google Presentations.

These are the steps to take:

1 ) Make a SHORT video
2 ) Upload it to YouTube
3 ) Go to Google Docs (you might need to create a new account like a Gmail account)
4 ) Choose “Create New” and then “Presentation”
5 ) Choose “Insert” and then “Video”
6 ) Search for the video you just uploaded to YouTube, click on it and press the “Select Video” button
7 ) Log in in LinkedIn and choose “Profile/Edit Profile”
8 ) Scroll down till you see Applications (left hand side) and Press “Add Application”
9 ) Choose “Google Presentation”
10) Select the presentation you have just made

A word of caution regarding the content: always use videos (or slideshows or documents) to share tips and help people. Don’t put any marketing material on your Profile. Get people to like you first by sharing and helping.

This also applies to job seekers. Share in your video some tips regarding your expertise. This will give insights to potential employers on how valuable you can be for them. And it also shows how proactive and creative you are since almost nobody uses video in their LinkedIn Profiles.

To your success !

Jan

Jan Vermeiren is the founder of Networking Coach and author of “How to REALLY use LinkedIn” (in Dutch: “Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken“). Click on the links of the books to get a free light version.

Track The Response To Your Tweets and Status Updates in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo and other Social Media

Status updates and Tweets are a perfect medium to share tips, experiences and useful information with other people from our networks.

Since these updates and Tweets are limited in length, most of us have to refer to a blog post or article on a website and use a tool to shorten these URL’s.

Tools like Bitly (also integrated in Tweetdeck, one of the best tools to deal with Twitter) and TinyURL are used a lot (for more examples see this blog post about URL Shorteners).

While these tools are very handy to save some space, they don’t show you how many people have clicked on them. Of course you can use Google Analytics or another web analytics tool when you point at your own websites.

So I was very happy to recently have discovered another tool that does this. It is called Tr.im. And it is free!

If you are interested in knowing how many people are following your advice and click on the URL’s in your Tweets and status updates, use this tool.

To your success !

Jan

PS: this is just one of the tools that you can use. If you are interested in more tools, read my book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (of in het Nederlands: Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken). Download your FREE light version first to be sure you will be happy with your purchase.

9 Tips To Make New Year’s Receptions and Events a Success

This time of the year people go to many New Year’s receptions.

Many times we hear people complaining that they are never home because of these events and that it doesn’t bring any results either.

These are a few tips to pay attention to:

1) Prepare yourself

• Ask yourself the question: “Why am I going there? Who do I want to meet?” Use LinkedIn and Google or Google Alerts to look up the people who are going to attend. Another conclusion might be that you better go to another event or switch with a colleague.
• If it is mandatory that you are present, but you don’t really want to be there, look for ways how it might still be interesting to you. You might have to go looking into details, but that’s better than not doing it. If you have the attitude of “I don’t want to be here”, people will sense that and avoid talking to you, making it even harder for you.
• Go together with someone else to get through the “20 minute acclimatisation period” and feel more at ease. Also agree UP FRONT to not stay the whole time together. Tell each other what would be an interesting person for you to talk to (a specific name or function/profile) and look for ways how you can introduce each other.

2) At the event

• Have a host(ess) attitude: look for ways how to help other people. You can do this by introducing them to other people, by listening to them and by offering them a drink or snack. Remark: you can easily do this without being the host(ess) yourself. The benefit is that you will feel more at ease and that other people will appreciate you more.
• Be prepared to answer the question “And what do you do?”, but be the first to ask someone else this question. Why? Because you create goodwill with the other person and will discover which examples and stories about yourself (and the organisation you work for) will appeal the most to the other person.
• DON’T SELL! Remember that the power of networking is in the second degree. You need to be able to tell people what you do so they can talk about you to their network. People won’t do that when you sell to them.
• Ask someone who is in sales or is a business owner: “How can I recognize a good prospect for you?“. Ask others: “How can I recognize someone who might be interesting for you?”. Then help them to paint a clear picture for you. If you haven’t done this before, do it and see what the reactions of other people are.

3) After the event

• If you have met someone with whom you want to continue the business relationship, make sure you follow up. The ROA (Return of your Attendance) is in what you do afterward. To make sure you actually do this, make some time in your agenda BEFORE you go to an event.
• But what do I talk/write about? What many people don’t think of is that the follow up starts DURING the conversation. That’s where you find out what you have in common or how you can help someone else. And then it becomes easy to follow up.

Have fun (and success) at your next networking events !

Jan

PS: these are tips from the networking book “Let’s Connect!” and from the CD “Let’s Connect at an event” (in Dutch: netwerk boek “Let’s Connect!” and “Let’s Connect op een evenement“). Download your free light versions!

LinkedIn and General Networking Question: Can I Reconnect With People I Haven’t Seen in Years?

I have many contacts from years ago. Can I still contact them?

Yes, you can always reconnect with them. Don’t feel bad that it is from such a long time ago. They didn’t take action either. They probably have the same hesitation as you do.

Especially this time of the year is a good moment to do that.

When you reconnect with them, always make your message personal. Refer to the time you spent together, the projects you worked on or the time in college. Use the name in your invitation message you were known by the time you knew them. This especially applies to women who now go by the name of their husband.

To your success !

Jan

PS: this is an excerpt from the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (of in het Nederlands: Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken). Make sure you download your FREE light version.

LinkedIn Question: What will happen when I remove a connection on LinkedIn?

A question that is asked in our presentations and training courses a lot is: What will happen when I remove a connection on LinkedIn? Will he be notified?

There are occasions you want to remove some of your contacts. The reasons might be that something happened between you and another person, that you are changing jobs or that you are reorienting yourself and don’t want to be associated with a certain industry anymore. Personally only the first reason would be reason enough for me to remove a connection. In the other cases you might never know who they know or who can help you in your new situation.

Before I show you how to remove a connection, let ‘s start with a question that many people have: “I don’t want to be connected anymore to that person, but I don’t want him to know that because I don’t want to get in trouble with him.”

The answer is: no, the person you remove as a connection won’t be notified.

These are the steps to remove someone:
1. In the left menu, click “Contacts”.
2. In the new page you will see at the top right hand side: “Remove Connections”.
3. Choose the connections you want remove and click the button “Remove connections”.
The connections will not be notified that they have been removed. They will be added to your list of “Imported Contacts” in case you want to re-invite them later.

To your success !

Jan

PS: this is an excerpt from the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (of in het Nederlands: Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken). Make sure you download your FREE light version.

How to Use LinkedIn to Find a New Job explained in 3.12 minutes

I’m very excited to have had the opportunity to team up with the great guys of Instruxion to make a small  movie about “How to use LinkedIn to find a new job” (3.12 minutes, in English).

It’s already for a while on the website of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn, but I haven’t mentioned it here yet.

Also check out the other cool movies they made on the website of Animated Explanations!

Have a great networking day !

Jan

Jan Vermeiren is the founder of Networking Coach and author of “How to REALLY use LinkedIn” (in Dutch: “Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken“). Click on the links of the books to get a free light version.

LinkedIn – Twitter integration: pros and cons

Last month LinkedIn integrated Twitter on the Profile page and on the Home Page.

Before you get too excited (or wonder what to do with it), I want to share some thoughts with you.

Pros of the Twitter integration:

- When someone looks at your Profile and likes it, they immediately can click on your Twitter ID and start following you. This is a benefit because sometimes it is hard to find someone on Twitter (despite the search engine). Why? Not everybody uses their own name or when they do they don’t always use the same picture as on LinkedIn (and then try to figure out which John Smith it is). Of course most of the times it is not so hard to do, but all shortcuts that make our life easier are good.

- You only have to post something once, instead of posting it on Twitter and then go to LinkedIn and post the same message there again. Again it makes our life easier.

Cons of the Twitter integration:

- Some topics people post on Twitter are pretty personal. Not everybody on a professional networking website is interested in them (and sometimes it is better that they don’t know what their connections are posting; that being said: be aware that everything you post online might be found by your professional contacts so always think before you write!)

- Twitter has another pace than LinkedIn. Some people tweet 20 times a day. LinkedIn has a much slower pace and people use it in a different way. This sometimes frustrates younger people who like the speed of Facebook and Twitter more. But remember it is a website for professional networking. And that has another pace, whether you like it or not.

Solution to benefit from the advantages, but avoid the disadvantages:

As I wrote in my book “How to REALLY use LinkedIn” (free light version available in English and Dutch) there are free services that allow you to post to different websites at once (so it is not limited to LinkedIn and Twitter, but also Facebook, Plaxo, MysSpace and many others).

For every message you post, you can tick off/on the websites where you want it to appear, giving you more control and save some time as well.

These are examples of such services:

- Hellotxt.com

- Ping.fm

- Pixelpipe.com

To your (social) networking success !

Jan

Networking Tip: associate with the right people in every category of your life

Last year I wrote about Denis Waitley’s quote that we are a direct reflection of the 5 people we associate with the most.

Let me elaborate a little bit more on this in this post.

I already gave the tip to think about your goals first.

It’s a good idea to think about several aspects of your life.

One of the ways to look at it is following the 7 categories from Carl Van de Velde (from his book “10 stappen naar succes en geluk”):
- Money and Career
- Family and relationships
- Health
- Enjoying and fun
- Material things
- Personal Development
- Contribution to society

Now think about who you could associate with in every category. Someone who can bring you much fun and joy, might not be the right person to associate with when it comes to money and career.

An important remark I want to make is that you don’t necessarily have to meet these people in person. Of course it helps a lot when you are able to spend time with them, but don’t let that hold you back.

For example:

- If you want to take your health to the next level, who do you think are healthy people? Who in your current environment? But also: who is a role model? Maybe it is Jane Fonda. Then buy a DVD from her. In this way you also associate with her.

- If you want to work on personal development, think about a person who inspires you. Maybe it is Anthony Robbins. Then buy a CD from him and listen to it in your car. And listen to it again. This is also a way of associating with someone.

But maybe you don’t know where to start or you can’t think of any role models.

Then tap into the power of your network !

Share your goal and ask them who they think of, who they can recommend and maybe even connect you with.

To your success !

Jan

6 Ways How LinkedIn Groups Can Benefit Event Organizers, Meeting Planners and Association Managers

Many (professional) organisations have a hard time to keep their organisation interesting enough for their members and are also continuously looking to attract new members.

Starting your own LinkedIn Group can both add to the value of the membership and attract more members in many ways:

1. An online presence next to events will help members to keep in touch between meetings.

2. Members who can’t attend many meetings will still be able to contact each other.

3. The LinkedIn Group is an extra platform to help each other and to discuss trends.

4. Some potential members might have never heard of your organisation. They can get in touch with you and become a member of your organisation after finding the LinkedIn Group.

5. It is a good and free alternative to a forum on your own website. Many organisations have a hard time building a successful community because they don’t have a critical mass of people who participate in discussions. As a result people won’t visit the forum anymore, the negative spiral continues and they also hardly ever visit the website anymore. Since people use LinkedIn also to connect with other people and to build their network with other people than the members of your organisation they keep using LinkedIn and once in a while visit the LinkedIn Group.

6. Free membership of the LinkedIn Group might generate interest in a (paid) membership for events.

To your success !

Jan

PS: this is an excerpt from the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (of in het Nederlands: Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken). Make sure you download your FREE light version.