I just got a note about this and had to check it out… when trying to log into LinkedIn, after you put your username and password in, you go to a security page (I’m guessing they’ll streamline that later so it’s all on one page):

My first thought was DANG, one more step to login!  This will slow me down!

And indeed it will.

However, this shows LinkedIn (the company) is serious about the spam, and potential for spam.  Putting this in place helps keep bots, or programs that can auto-login, from the system, which hopefully means less fake accounts, less spam, etc.

I guess it’s the price of fame in the social space.  We all want the crap users to go away, and this should keep it down quite a bit.

But it’s like adding TSA to the airport process…. more hoops for us to jump through.

Is this a big deal or a good move?

I’m reading through the post on the LinkedIn professional headline and Peter Osborne’s great feedback to those who have left comments (I’ll probably close the comments in a while).  One thing that jumps out is … how to put this… BORING.

Why is it boring… that’s the question I’m asking myself.  Perhaps it is boring because it reads like this:

Jargon cliche boring jargon boring cliche fancy-pantz just-like-everyone-else.

If you have it in your professional headline, or your summary, or your email message, or your ___________, it makes you sound:

• like everyone else
• boring
• cliche

Jargon is useful in certain places (perhaps where everyone speaks the jargon), but NOT in marketing yourself or your product.

Go through your profile, and the last few emails, and your email signature and see how much boring, cliche jargon you are spewing.

Then, change it

Maria Elena Duron wrote the post: Being Consistent In Your Brand Doesn’t Mean Be Annoying… it is a good read. She is talking about the frequency of your updates on sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

How much is too much?  How much is too little?

She throws out the number 15, in one day (presumably on Twitter).  Wow, that is A LOT.  Unless you have someone dedicated to social media outreach I’d say that (a) you are going to alienate people and (b) you are wasting your time that should be spent elsewhere (like pursuing deeper relationships, instead of spewing your kewl ideas all day long).

Her post talks about some ideas on frequency for Facebook and Twitter, and on LinkedIn she says:

On LinkedIn, my personal thoughts are on once or twice a day on status updates and then a whole lot of answering and asking of questions along with participation in groups. I’ll defer to my esteemed colleague, Jason Alba, author of “I’m on LinkedIn – Now What?” as he knows that network well and more specifically provide greater direction there.

I would never recommend you have a strategy that ties you to once a day, or more than once a day.  I think it’s okay to do it once a day on LinkedIn, but I wouldn’t do it more unless there was some really important stuff to share.  Even then, can’t it wait until tomorrow?

If you want to be front-and-center on LinkedIn I think anywhere between once a day and once a week is FINE.  Don’t do it too often… if you want to do it more encourage your LI network to follow you on Twitter (which is what Twitter is made for).

She also suggestions “a whole lot of” questions and group participation.

Again, I think you can overdo this…

Check out this brilliant post by Scott Allen: It’s Time to Practice a Little Selfish Networking.

Some times you can have too much of a “good” thing… the danger is when you let this get in the way of what you should be doing…

I have a beef with one of the perceived policies with LinkedIn.

Supposedly I’m only supposed to connect with people I “know and trust.”

Both of these words can mean different things to different people – not even going to go there.  Maybe Bill Clinton can weigh in on what “know” and “trust” mean.

Let’s just assume it means that I shouldn’t connect unless I have some kind of relationship, and the relationship has some mutual element to it (they “know and trust” me).

So here’s my beef: if I go to a networking event and meet someone for the very first time, I don’t quite know them yet, and I certainly don’t have any reason to trust (or not trust) them.

I’m not allowed to connect with them on LinkedIn?  WHY NOT?

How do we get to a point where we can say we know and trust them?

The relationship has to start somewhere (that initial meeting, usually).  The relationship nurturing continues with further ocmmunication…. lunch, phone calls, email, sending one another news clippings, etc.

At what point can I invite this person to connect in LinkedIn?

MY ANSWER IS: whenever I want.  Because I use LinkedIn to HELP me with the relationship nurturing.

I use it as a communication tool.

I think it’s naive to think that we wouldn’t use LinkedIn as…. this seems silly to even write…. as a NETWORKING TOOL.

Of course, this is just my opinion… what do you think?  Is it okay to use LinkedIn at an early stage in a relationship, or is it something that should be saved until later?

Yesterday I wrote about LinkedIn Professional Headlines as a marketing opportunity and said you could put yours in the comments and “I (we?) might critique it.”

Then, I buckled down and went to work on some big deadlines.

THEN, people started putting their headlines in…. I critiqued three but had to get back to work.

That’s when Peter Osborne, creator of Consultant Launch Pad, jumped in.  Peter has executive experience and has written some very smart responses to people’s professional headlines… I still plan on going over and weighing in, but I have to get some other work out of the way.

For now, if you want yours looked at, you might still have a chance – leave a comment on THAT post

So many times I see LinkedIn Professional Headlines that … well, suck.

Yours probably sucks (unless you got my LinkedIn book or my LinkedIn DVD, as I talk about this quite a bit in those).

Here’s a quick test:

(a) Does your LinkedIn Professional Headline have your TITLE?

(b) Does your LinkedIn Professional Headline have the name of your company?

If it has either of these you have a great chance of having a sucky professional headline.

Why do I say this?

1. The title doesn’t tell me a whole lot.  If it’s a big title in a small company I’m not impressed.  If it’s a regular title in a company or industry I’m not familiar with, I might not really know WHAT YOU DO.
2. Beyond that, though, your title doesn’t tell me WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?). I don’t care that you are a CEO, or analyst, or any of that other stuff.  If I SHOULD care, I can find that in the rest of your LinkedIn Profile, right?
3. Use your Professional headline as a change to educate me on why I should care about you.  Title/company doesn’t do it.
4. With regard to the company, most companies I see out there have cute names… that mean nothing to me.  They are not branded enough to tell me anything.  Thus, putting the name of a no-name company in your headline does not help me understand your value proposition… IT ONLY TAKES UP SPACE.

How’s your LinkedIn Professional Headline?  Leave it in the comment and I (we?) might critique it

Check this out:

I try to NEVER share the number of contacts I have because some people use the number to erroneously judge the value or success of my strategy.  So, take that number with a grain of salt.  A few things I wanted to point out:

• 3.3k first degree connections means that in my first, second and third degrees I have “access” to almost 15M people.  That’s interesting math… and my supposed reach is 20% of all of LI’s network.
• In the last 4 days (I wrote this post yesterday :p) I’ve had over 80k new people in my network… that’s pretty amazing growth!

What does all of this mean?  How does it bring me any value?

Back to the title of the post:

Your [My] LinkedIn network is USELESS if I… DON’T DO ANYTHING WITH IT!

What are YOU doing with your account/network?

Yesterday I talked about the Who’s Viewed My Profile stats on your LinkedIn homepage… let’s go one step further.  Two points to talk about… I clicked on the link that shows that 13 people viewed my LinkedIn Profile:

POINT 1

Many times you are quite anonymous when you look at someone else’s profile… but not always.  Check your account settings to see if you are browsing anonymously (!! Did you know that was a setting!?!), or make sure your profile is set up in such a way that it won’t out you if you see someone’s profile (like #1 above… notice how everyone else is someone or something vague, but that one is the person’s name??)

POINT 2

There is an idea that you will SEE WHO the people are if you upgrade.  I’ve had people with premium accounts ask what who is viewing their profile so I’m guessing it is just as it says “see more people,” not see WHO the people are.  Don’t upgrade just for this reason… you don’t need to see all of the “someones” that have viewed your Profile… especially if it doesn’t say who the someone is.

You know this part on the front page, right column, of your LinkedIn Profile:

I get a lot of questions about this… including this one:

A client of mine who is a paid member of LinkedIn receives information regarding how many times his profile is being viewed… e.g., his “profile has been viewed 23 times” and he hasn’t received phone calls… Would these necessarily be people who are looking to fill jobs? Or might they be people who are just doing keyword searches… or searches re groups he’s a member of… or alumni… Or??

My response:

I don’t think anyone knows…. it’s a blackbox area of LI, and usually I think they use it to get people to upgrade… I recommend IGNORING that part, it can lead to false hopes or stalking (”hey, I saw you looked at my profile – should we talk now or tomorrow?” which would scare me away :p)

She continues:

what do these numbers represent?

I respond, and here’s the key:

the number of views, but NOT THE INTENTION of the viewer…

That’s they key… just because someone might have mistakenly found your profile doesn’t mean (a) they read it, (b) you are a good match, (c) they have any intention of doing business with you, etc.

A view does not indicate positive (or negative) intention!

Sorry to burst your bubble.  The best way to use that number is to see if it grows, as you optimize your LinkedIn Profile… but not as a measurement of how many people really want to talk to you.

LinkedIn has a great opportunity to clean up spam on its network… it would be a very simple enhancement that would help the community self-police.

On a LinkedIn Profile page, on the right, there are a bunch of links:

The closest they get to deleting a contact is to “report profile photo as…” but that is not exactly what I want to do… I just want to delete a contact.

My suggestion, obviously, is to put a link right there to delete the contact.  Even Facebook allows you to “remove” a “friend” from the friend profile page… but on LinkedIn I have to:

1. Click on Contacts,
2. Click on Remove Connections (from the top right of that page),
3. search for the name (and hope I don’t choose the wrong person, if the name is a common name (in this case, this morning, it IS),
4. …. OH WAIT!!

No, it’s not a connection I’m dealing with!  It’s someone who’s in the same LinkedIn Group!

Now I’m really hosed.

Okay, two issues here… first, make it easier to remove the connection from the profile page.

Second, if someone from a Group spams me (blatant, obvious spam), allow me to somehow report it, block messages from that person, etc.  I’m not talking about a Group Discussion, I’m talking about blocking the person (like Twitter has: block and report for spam).

I’m not an advocate of becoming more like Facebook or Twitter, but these are two options that I really think need to be implemented, to protect the integrity of LinkedIn as a system.