Someone I met in Minneapolis last month emailed to ask what to do if your LinkedIn account gets hacked… I didn’t know but he reported back. He shared this part of the email he got from customer support:

Option 2: Regain access to the account by signing the following affidavit of identity before a Notary Public. Once notarized, this form can be faxed back to me or scanned and attached in your response to this message. Once received, I will submit the form to our Privacy Team to begin the account recovery process.

Affidavit of Identity:
http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3629

So there you go… you can prove who you are with an affidavit

Donald Burns, executive career coach and resume writer, turned me on to an awesome LinkedIn profile that I really like.

There are a number of things I’d recommend to improve this Profile, but Orrin hits two things really, really well! Check out the LinkedIn Profile of Orrin Hudson here.

First, he has a great video (from CNN, no less!) that auto-plays on his slideshare app.  This might be considered annoying by some (a lot of people don’t like auto play on video), but I liked it in this situation.  Also, the video is visible without scrolling down… so I can see it right away.  It’s impressive that it comes from CNN.

Did you know you can serve video from the slideshare app?

Second, his LinkedIn Summary is very well-done.  This is one of the best I’ve seen.  It’s all about his story AND his value proposition… but I don’t see a list of his qualities, or why he’s great… the story tells it all.

I LOVE Orrin “Checkmate” Hudson’s LinkedIn Profile… great job!

As a Group admin I go in and approve members of my Group on a regular basis.

I don’t want spammers in my Group, so I try to very quickly determine who is real and who isn’t.  I wrote about this just a few weeks ago here: Want to Join a LinkedIn Group? Get more than ONE CONNECTION!

I just went in this morning and found I have 3 major criteria that I look at that will keep you from my Group:

1. The warning I get from LinkedIn, as per the post above,
2. NO PICTURE. If you don’t have a picture I don’t approve you, until I look at your Profile.  Guess when I take the time to look at your Profile (hardly ever!),
3. NO CONNECTIONS.  If you have no, or only one, connection, you are either NEW or fake.  I don’t take the time to try and figure it out… I just put you on hold until you look more real.

I’m sharing these off-the-cuff reactions as a Group admin so that you can reevealuate the message you are giving people with your Profile… is it complete?  Does it look real?  Or does it look like spam?

I continually here LinkedIn people saying you need to shoot for 100% completion on your Profile.

I regularly hear this from trainers that work at LinkedIn.  I also hear it from non-LinkedIn employees.

I’m sorry but I don’t agree.

Why?

I think you need to focus on the quality of your Profile.

I’ve seen plenty of 100% complete Profiles that SUCK.

I’d rather see an 80% or 90% complete that knocks my socks off than a 100% Profile that SUCKS.

You can always inch towards the 100% (nothing wrong with GETTING 100%, just don’t FOCUS ON 100%, and have that be more important than the quality of your Profile).

As a LinkedIn Group Administrator I have the power to accept or decline access to my Group.

LinkedIn flags certain profiles as a help… here’s a snapshot of three that are flagged:

I rarely take time to check those Profiles out.  I just uncheck the box on the left (which I already did) and then approve the rest.

One person had ONE connection, but I could tell from her Profile that she was real, so I approved her… but the rest… OUT.

You have to look legitimate.  A picture helps.  A headline helps.  A summary helps… work experience helps.  Recommendations help.  Connections help…

If you want others to not even think “is this a spammer,” get serious about your Profile!

Check this out… an invitation I got today:

I would say this is a MAJOR win for LinkedIn… not only are people in (South) Africa signing on, and using it, but they are needing help, and Bruce seems to be the guy to help.

His  LinkedIn profile looks great.

His website looks great.

His Twitter presence is great.

I’m impressed, and encouraged!!

Brenda Bernstein, a resume writer recently asked me this:

Curious to know more about your 2,000 character summary recommendation in the age of short attention spans.

That’s a great question.

She’s referring to my strong recommendation to use as many of the 2,000 characters in the LinkedIn Summary that you can.

Also, I talk about SHORT messages… short emails, short(er) “elevator pitches,” etc.

So where does this “use it all up” and “go shorter!” meet?

Specifically, on the LinkedIn Summary, this is a place where people have come to learn more about you.  You already have their attention… you don’t need to do the 5 second elevator pitch, especially if they have scrolled down to your LinkedIn Summary.  They’ve seen your Professional Headline, your titles, etc.

The Summary is a place that can stink whether it is long or short, really.  I’ve seen stinky short, long and mid-sized Summaries.

If you have my book or DVD you know ONE goal of the Summary is to engage.

How do you do that?

For most people, you will tell stories.  You can use the PAR format to tell your stories.

The cool thing about stories is that they are more engaging… and will suck the reader in.  Tell multiple stories (multiple PAR statements), and become more engaging.  Do this well and before you know it you’ll wish you had an extra 1,000 characters…

That’s how you use it up, and how you avoid the issues with the short attentions spans.

Make sense?

I’ve received emails from my first degree connections for a while. I am always curious to know how people do this.  In the early days I had a note in my Summary that said something like “If you connect with me, I’m going to put you on my newsletter.” I’d then export my contacts and import to iContact or ConstantContact.

Then, I got smart and changed it to say “click here to sign up for my newsletter,” which made it “opt-in.”

Then, I got tired of paying for the newsletter services, and changed it again to say “join my LinkedIn Group, and I’ll send you periodic newsletter-like emails.”  This is where I’m at now.

But you can do something more direct to your first degree Contacts.  Check out this post: How to Use LinkedIn Mail to Connect With Your Contacts. Linda Coles breaks down the process, and some pros/cons, of using this tool.  The biggest con is that you can only do 50 at a time.  If you have 1,000 contacts, you will have to do this 20 times to reach all of them.  Yuck.

At the same time, if that limit wasn’t in place, your contacts might be overly eager to spam you all the time.

The easier it is, the more it might be abused.

So it’s not easy, but it works.

Have you ever tried it?

Here’s a quick change I just made on my Profile.

I switched from Constant Contact to iContact (because a friend worked there – he doesn’t anymore), and finally just moved my “newsletter” to my LinkedIn Group (where I can send an “announcement” every 8 days).

So, I had to update the link that I had let sit there for TOO LONG to the new Group URL:

Why am I sharing this?  Because every little tiny thing that we neglect, like changing the URL in my Summary, affects our communication and brand and effectiveness.

What are you neglecting?

This took me all of 50 seconds to fix.

I saw an interesting title on my LinkedIn Group and clicked over to learn more.   Check out this biting title:

LinkedIn Pulled A Facebook And Messed With Your Info — Here’s How To Fix It

Wow. That is a strong accusation. Facebook has become notorious for screwing (there’s not really a nice way to say what FB does, with regard to our privacy!) users by making all kinds of weird changes to privacy.

So what did they do?  Read the article to see how to OPT OUT… here’s what it is in a nutshell:

LinkedIn has volunteered your name and photograph to be used for advertising if it feels like it wants to use them.

I hadn’t heard of this before, so I followed the simple steps to opt out and found that yes, I indeed am in their list of people who can be used for LinkedIn’s advertising. In a nutshell, you opt out by going into the Settings page, then in this order:

I haven’t seen or heard this anywhere else… maybe all the hype over Google+ is keeping the LinkedIn bloggers busy?