Connect. Cultivate. Succeed!

I am a LinkedIn aficionado and strong advocate.  If you are not IN, you need to be.  For those of you who are leery of dipping your toe in the LinkedIn pond or others who are just splashing around, here are some keys to success which will hopefully relieve online anxiety and accelerate your success.

LinkedIn grew steadily then reached a tipping point and in late 2007 began a sudden exponential growth trajectory, reaching over 30,000,0000 members.  With this critical mass of users, you can truly achieve some amazing results.

1. Complete your Profile. Your profile is essentially your online brand of YOU.  Your word choice and depth of your responses send a powerful signal to all your connections.  By including your previous experience, interests, hobbies, volunteer activities, education etc.. you create more potential opportunities to connect with others who share something in common with you.  You don’t want to have a half completed profile, misspellings or poor grammar – as such will signify to others that you don’t follow through, don’t pay attention to detail and even worse – don’t take pride in your accomplishments.  This includes having a headshot.  Your non glamour shot should be from this decade and not your high school yearbook photo.  I can’t tell you how helpful this simple feature has been when going to meet someone for the first time at Starbucks and being able to have a visual of  who I am looking for.

2. Recommend – Giver’s Gain and the same applies to your online network.  One of LinkedIn’s core features is the ability recommend others.   You can provide written endorsements to those whom you have worked with previously or know well.  Recommendations serve as validations to others that people had a positive experience and think highly of them. After you have given several recommendations, hopefully some of those people will reciprocate, but there is nothing wrong with asking a few targeted connections for a recommendation. No mass email of “Recommend Meâ€� .. it’s highly unprofessional and demonstrates that you don’t value your network.

3. Join Groups – LinkedIn has a group for nearly every purpose.  Networking, school alumni, industry focused, entrepreneurial, corporate groups.. you name it, you can find it.  I recommend you join at least 1 networking group in your local area and 1 within your  industry.  Next, select 2 0r more that are simply of interest to you – where you went to school, hobbies etc. Groups offer a quick and easy platform to expand your network and connect with other like-minded individuals whom you share a common interest.  Groups offer a unique/secret capability to contact people whom you don’t know directly, but you can send a message because you share a group relationship.

4. Engage – Similar to any organization, once you join you then you actually must participate to derive any meaningful value.  Simply sitting on the sidelines and waiting for others to contact you is not a successful strategy.  The rules of the online world are no different.  You must dedicate the time and engage yourself to truly realize the benefit.  To engage in LinkedIn, a few core suggestions.

Upload your existing contacts and invite them to join your network.  This will automatically help connect you with others that you already know.

Serve as a Resource – Post questions or needs out to your network and respond to discussions and questions which others submit with thoughtful and valuable commentary.  You want to position yourself as a resource and expert whom others seek for guidance and insight.  Share articles and make introductions to connect your contacts to one another.

Set your profile for full view and public. This will increase your likelihood of appearing in search results and improve your ranking on Google searches as well.

5. Form a LinkedIn Habit – Allocate time each week to utilize LinkedIn.  1-2 hours should be sufficient when just getting started.  This should include adding new connections, replying to posts, sharing resources and other forms of engagement.  Clearly, the more you engage and are active the greater the results.  I highly recommend that you strive to incorporate LinkedIn as a follow up tool.  When you make new contacts in the offline world, invite them to join your LinkedIn network, as this can be a quick and effective manner to re-connect and stay in touch.  Once they are connected, you can view their network of contacts to glean if any may be people you would like to meet.

These are some simple tactics to get started and enhance your LinkedIn experience. Come on in.. the water is warm and the networking is quite refreshing.

Contact me with any questions. Always welcome to have new connections: http://www.linkedin.com/in/adamhsmall

About Adam:
Adam is a dynamic entrepreneur and currently serves as CEO of Strategic Business Network, a recognized leader of professional networking opportunities, expertise and resources.  SBN serves as a catalyst and champion in supporting people’s efforts to connect and cultivate relevant professional relationships. Learn more at www.strategicbusinessnetwork.com