How To Change The Order Of Applications in Your LinkedIn Profile?

After using LinkedIn for a while, you might want to change the order of the Applications you use.

For example you might want to show your SlideShare presentations first and then your blog, Google Presentation, Box.net, LinkedIn Events and so on.

But how to do that?

There is no option to change the order like for example in Groups.

This is how to do it:
1) Go to More (main menu on top) and click “Get More Applications”. You will get an overview of all available Applications whether you have added them to your Profile or not.
2) Click on an Application you have installed on your Profile.
3) Scroll down to the bottom of the page and tick off “Display on my Profile”. Your data will be stored, but it won’t be visible anymore on your Profile.
4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 for all Applications on your Profile.
5) Click on the Application you want to be the first in your Profile.
6) Tick on the box “Display on my Profile”.
7) Repeat steps 5 and 6 in the order you want the Applications to show up in your Profile.

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates (50 pages in the meanwhile!) of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

LinkedIn Labs – Year in Review

LinkedIn encourages its employees to be creative and think of tools that might enhance LinkedIn or that might benefit its users.

One of the ways they do this is by organizing Hackdays. Some of the projects that are shown on those Hackdays make it to LinkedIn Labs. And some make it even to the actual website.

This is the explanation of what LinkedIn Labs are (from their website):

“LinkedIn Labs hosts a small set of projects and experimental features built by the employees of LinkedIn. We share them here as demonstrations and to solicit feedback, but please remember that they are intended to be low-maintenance experiments, and may be added and removed over time based on popularity and support.”

By now there are already a few interesting “products” available on the LinkedIn Labs website, but not on the main website. As a consequence many people won’t have heard of them or will ever hear of them.

So I thought it was a good idea to put some of these “products” in the picture in the next couple months.

The first one is “Year in Review”.

You might recognize this one since you would normally have gotten an email in the beginning of the year with an overview of (some of the) people in your network who changed careers.

The “Year in Review” tool works the same way. In a (visual) overview of pictures from people from your network you see who has changed positions, organisations or started their own company.

You can access it any time: http://yir.linkedinlabs.com

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates (50 pages in the meanwhile!) of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

LinkedIn Tip: How to Add Your Blog in Your LinkedIn Profile

The last weeks I have been writing about the leverage factor of blogs when combining them with LinkedIn.

As a consequence the question we have received the most recently is: how do I add a blog to my LinkedIn Profile?

There are two Applications you can use: the WordPress application and the Bloglink application.

WordPress Application (use this one if you have a WordPress blog):
1) Add the WordPress Application to your personal LinkedIn Profile
2) In the WordPress Application: add the URL of your blog.

Bloglink Application (use this one for all blogs but WordPress):
1) Add your blog to “Websites” in your personal LinkedIn Profile
2) Add the Bloglink Application to your personal LinkedIn Profile (it will automatically look for your blog in “websites” in your Profile)

How does it work?

Every time a blog post appears on the original blog, your LinkedIn Profile is automatically updated.

Remark: if you have a personal blog and also want to show the company blog, you might want to use the WordPress application for one blog and the Bloglink application for the other one. In this way both are shown on your personal Profile.

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates (50 pages in the meanwhile!) of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

How Solo Entrepreneurs Might also Benefit from the LinkedIn Lever when Blogging

Last week I shared some insights and numbers to show how a blog might benefit large organizations.

Many readers of this blog are solo entrepreneurs, so they might have felt “left out”.

However it doesn’t have to be the case.

Remember that the power of networking is in the second degree.

How apply this to blogging in a business environment?

These are the steps:

1. Define your target group.
2. Think about other suppliers to this target group.
3. Invite them to start a blog TOGETHER.
4. Make a list of topics and who’s going to write about which topic.
5. Make a timeline and make sure the team has a blog post at least every week.

The advantages are:

• You don’t have to write so much yourself. For example: if there are 5 contributors each if you only has to write 10 blog posts a year!
• You benefit from each other’s network: their network will read it and you will appear on their radar screen. The same thing happens with your network and your fellow bloggers when you post your tips and insights.
• You have partially the same advantages as larger companies when using Twitter, LinkedIn Status Updates and posts in LinkedIn Group Discussions.

To your success !

Jan

LinkedIn and other Social Media invite Organizations to Think about Human Relationships

Many companies are realizing: LinkedIn and other social media are here to stay, but how can they benefit us as an organization (versus as individuals)?

The answer is: by tapping into the power of the second degree!

In this case the first degree is the management team of an organization (or other central departments like marketing or recruiting).

The second degree: all the employees of the organization.

The task at hand for the “central” unit is to help the rest of the organization by OFFERING them good content for their individual LinkedIn Profiles. When all employees put this content on their Profile their network (and people who visit their Profile) will see this. Do you see the exponential power?

If you want to be successful with this, it’s important to remember that it’s about OFFERING them content, not FORCING it upon them. The latter will create more resistance than gratitude for help.

This is how LinkedIn for example can be beneficial, but this is only the end of a process, not the beginning. And that’s where many organizations drop the ball.

Being successful with social media starts with creating a great working environment in which people are empowered and trusted. Only then organizations will really benefit from the tremendous power of LinkedIn and other social media.

Employees have always been the ambassadors of an organization. In the past it was at parties with friends, in the gym and in the pub. Now it is also on the Internet, which makes it more visible. The latter makes organizations that are more hierarchical or “dictatorial” nervous. They are loosing control over their “slaves”.

LinkedIn and other social media invite organizations to look inside again and work on human relationships first. They invite organizations to rethink why these people are working together and how the talents of each individual can be recognized and allowed to show and grow for the greater good of the organization.

In other words the “new” media invite us to connect with each other again as the wonderful, talented and inspired human beings we are and to invite each other to live up to our potential.

And isn’t that what it has always been and always will be about?

To your success !

Jan

The Person I Want to Connect With on LinkedIn Only Has A Few Connections. Now What?

One of the (many) misunderstandings about a professional networking website like LinkedIn (or Xing, Ecademy, Viadeo and others) is that it doesn’t work when the people you are looking for are not active on them.

The major benefit of LinkedIn is that it shows us who is connected to whom.

Or in other words: who can introduce us to the customer, partner, employer, employee, investor, expert or other person who we want to meet.

So it doesn’t matter that much whether they are active or not.

To get in contact with the people you want to meet, always think of these three steps:
1) Use a professional networking website as a research database to see who is connected to whom.
2) Pick up the telephone and call the person you both know.
3) Ask to be introduced via a regular email (in the book “How to REALLY use LinkedIn” I call it the Magic Mail; if you want to know what that is, you are welcome to join a free LinkedIn Fundamentals webinar in English or Dutch, or if you can’t wait, just buy the book :-))

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates (50 pages in the meanwhile!) of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

Why having an Attractive LinkedIn Profile is important for people at C-level?

Let me give you the answer straight away: for marketing and PR reasons!

Nowadays when CEO’s, General Managers and other chief executives and board members are mentioned in the press, many times a link to their LinkedIn Profile is used.

If people click on that link and they see an incomplete, boring Profile they might assume that the organisation they represent is also boring and inattractive.

Next to that many recruiting and lead generation opportunities are missed that way.

A few weeks ago I already shared that it is important for managers to have an attractive LinkedIn Profile for recruiting matters and I also gave some advice about what to do.

What can CEO’s add to that from a marketing or PR point of view? A few quick tips:

1) A SlideShare presentation with tips showing their organisation’s expertise.
2) The books they are reading via the Amazon Reading List (this gives a personal flavour to the Profile).
3) A SlideShare presentation with their personal point of view or strategy (or at least that part that can be shared with the outside world).
4) Box.net files application: share their notes, articles or interviews.
5) A movie clip with tips, insights, an empowering message or interview.

What is important is to not focus too much on saying how great your own organisation is, but sharing stuff that can help other people. Remember that it is about building Know, Like and Trust.

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates (50 pages in the meanwhile!) of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

Use SlideShare in your LinkedIn Profile When You Are Looking for a New Job

I have already shared many tips in the past about an attractive LinkedIn Profile (see for example the post about new features for your LinkedIn Profile) and the use of Applications in your LinkedIn Profile (for example how to use video in your LinkedIn Profile).

Last week I had a call with Laurence Bret, the new marketing director EMEA at LinkedIn.

Of course I prepared for the meeting (as you should do, whether you are looking for a new job or not, see also my blog post why an attractive LinkedIn Profile is needed for Hiring Managers) and I was impressed with the SlideShare presentation Laurence put on her LinkedIn Profile to present herself, titled “Meet Laurence”.

I advice everybody to have a good look at it and learn from it.

Yes, it is more work, but you will also stand out from the crowd.

Remember the saying “there is no traffic jam on the extra mile”. So go ahead, go the extra mile and update your LinkedIn Profile with a stunning SlideShare presentation !

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates (50 pages in the meanwhile!) of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

Why Having an Attractive LinkedIn Profile is Important for Managers? (Hint: it has to do with Recruitment)

A few weeks ago we got an interesting question from one of our corporate customers.

They asked us to give them a LinkedIn workshop for their managers.

Not very special you would say.

But what was different, is that they didn’t want to learn how to attract new customers, new employees, new partners, new investors or help some of them find a new job in an outplacement program (these are the questions we normally get), but they only wanted to have a workshop to create an attractive personal LinkedIn Profile.

When I asked them why they didn’t want any other topic and why it was so important to them to have good LinkedIn Profiles, the answer was: “These are managers from our IT department who don’t have to find new customers, suppliers, partners or investors and who are not in an outplacement program. The reason why they need to have an excellent LinkedIn Profile, is that potential employees check their LinkedIn Profiles out before even considering applying for a job with us.”

So let me share what is important as a manager:
– Create an attractive Summary with words that show what you do and how interesting your current job is.
– Share what a specific function you held in the past entails. This might be the job the other person is applying for.
– List all the jobs you did in the past. This shows the career path other people might be interested in following as well.
– Link to the job site of your company in the “Websites” part of your LinkedIn Profile.
– Use SlideShare, Google Presentation, Box.net and other applications to upload the presentations you have given. This shows the topics you are working on. This might have a very appealing effect on potential employees.
– Use SlideShare, Google Presentation, Box.net and other applications to upload job openings in your team.
– Use SlideShare, Google Presentation, Box.net and other applications to showcase what your team or department does. (Note: this might also be beneficial for your visibility WITHIN your own organisation)
– Ask your team members to apply all these tips as well. They might be an even better example to the potential employee.

This is what you can do as a “passive” strategy. If you are looking for new employees I advice to work together with your recruiters to come up with a “proactive” strategy. When you combine the experience of recruiters with the networks of managers in the business units, you will get real recruitment power!

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates (50 pages in the meanwhile!) of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

Who Can Edit a LinkedIn Company Page?

Especially when we give training courses to multinationals or when we do strategic sessions with the top management of a company, this question pops up: who can edit our LinkedIn Company page?

This is how it works by default:

1) Someone creates the first version of a LinkedIn Company Page.
2) Everybody else with the same email address after the @ sign can edit the page. So if john.smith@company-abc.com has created the LinkedIn Company page then everybody with the @company-abc.com email address can change the page.

As a consequence my advice to you is: if you don’t have a LinkedIn Company page yet, make one right now before someone with another email address creates it without you being able to change it!

As you can imagine the fact that anybody with the same email address can change the Company page, makes some people very nervous. In my opinion you don’t have to be too dramatic about it since you can always see who changed the Company page and you can change it again.

But now LinkedIn also has the option to choose who is allowed to change the Company page.

How to do this?

1) Go to your Company Profile.
2) Click Edit.
3) Under “Company Page Admins” choose “Designated Users Only”.
4) Choose which colleagues are allowed to change the page (of course they must have a LinkedIn Profile and you must be connected to them)

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)