I’m On LinkedIn – Now What???

LinkedIn Professional Headline: Yours probably sucks

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

Posted in LinkedIn Profiles, Using LinkedIn | 71 Comments »

Your LinkedIn Network is Useless if…

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?

Posted in Using LinkedIn | No Comments »

Worst LinkedIn Recommendation… Ever.

I found some Recommendations in my LinkedIn Inbox from a while ago.  Not sure why I was sitting on them but on Friday I decided to clean them out – approving all but two.  The first I deleted was what I posted on last Friday… my favorite LinkedIn Recommendation  This is the second one I’m deleting:

Some points:

• I don’t know this person (yes, I have since disconnected)
• Cheap? Guru?  Look at the person’s profile… lots of spelling errors.
• I don’t do SEO.. this is a clear violation of trust – he/she is just trying to get their SEO stuff and link on MY profile.
• The “recommendation” doesn’t talk about me at all – it’s all about SEO services.
• Year first hired: 2008?  NO.  I did not ever hire this person, and they didn’t hire me.

Yuck.  Makes me want to puke.  Prateek needs to go back to MySpace.

Posted in LinkedIn Recommendations | 2 Comments »

My Favorite LinkedIn Recommendation

I have had this LinkedIn Recommendation sitting in my box (not actively shown) for a while… I can’t put it on my profile for obvious reasons, but I sure get a chuckle out of it every time I read it (more on WHY below):

Now, Harp Arora wrote that because I was working on my LinkedIn book (or was it the LinkedIn DVD?) and I need to have an outstanding recommendation I could see (and walk through the process).  I went to Twitter and asked for Recommendations for that purpose (I hate asking for Recommendations just to ask for them… ).

Thank you Harp, for your fun sense of humor!  And, if there ever is a statue of me… oh wait, there won’t ever be (much less a religion!)!

Posted in LinkedIn Recommendations | 5 Comments »

LinkedIn’s Who’s Viewed My Profile (Part II)

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.

Posted in Using LinkedIn | 1 Comment »

LinkedIn’s “Who’s Viewed My Profile?” Messes with my HEAD!

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.

Posted in Using LinkedIn | 4 Comments »

Adding Bullets to your LinkedIn Profile

I was checking out a friend’s LinkedIn Profile and noticed he had some quasi-bullets… I’ve had this on my list for a long time but never get around to doing it on my own Profile, but I thought I’d steal 3 minutes from my schedule and throw something up really quick.

First, though, the caveat is that you can’t have REAL bullets.  That is, a bullet format where the bullets (usually dots) are in one column and the data is left-aligned in another column.  What this means is that if you write a long point after a “bullet,” the text will be under the bullet point (as opposed to under the text.

Here’s what I added – my bullet was a CHECK MARK, although you can use various symbols:

Notice for the last word, where the arrow is pointing, the word LINES is not under I EAT, it is under the symbol (that’s why I call it a quasi-bullet).

It is  simple to do this…. you can go to my profile, or any profile that has this, and just copy-and-paste the symbol into your profile.

I’ve seen stars and other symbols… if you have seen it on other profiles you can copy it to yours.   I can’t remember what these symbols are (I googled ascii symbols but I don’t think that is it)…. anyone know?  If we can figure it out I’m sure there are dozens or gabillions of symbols you can put on your Profile.

Oh yeah, lest you think this is anything new, check out this post I did back in 2008, with some other symbols…. thanks to Lisa Hendrickson (callthatgirl.biz).

Posted in LinkedIn Profiles | 1 Comment »

LinkedIn’s Principal Product Manager: Ian McCarthy

I’ve been seriously following LinkedIn’s progress for a few years now but recently just learned about Ian McCarthy.  Not sure why it has taken me so long to figure out who he is, since he is the guy who drives the actual product.

I was reading up on the new changes on LinkedIn Groups (what do you think about those changes?) and saw this on TechCrunch:

LinkedIn’s principal product manager Ian McCarthy says that overall, Groups has been upgraded to be more engaging with users and a place where people can have conversations on the platform.

So, it really is Ian who’s behind all this stuff… !  I don’t know what their product management team looks like… but here’s some info about Ian (from his LinkedIn Profile):

• He’s in the San Francisco area (of course)
• He went to Stanford (leaving/graduating in 1991)
• He tweets here (not much, though… 164 followers and 52 tweets)
• Past titles include “VP, Product Marketing” (Orb Networks) and CEO (GoPix – probably funded by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman)
• His Profile could use some beefing up (check out my DVD!)

I’m not crazy about all the social stuff LinkedIn is doing, but I think they investors think they have to be more like Facebook/Twitter… LI’s value has been, and should be, in other places.  It will be interesting to see where Ian continues to take the features.

Posted in LinkedIn News | 1 Comment »

LinkedIn Spam: Deleting a Contact (oops!)

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.

Posted in LinkedIn Groups, LinkedIn Profiles, Using LinkedIn, social networking | 1 Comment »

Merge LinkedIn Groups?

I recently saw this question on an alumni LI Group:

Any chance we can merge this group with the “other” [insert school name here] Alumni Group? We are missing opportunities to connect and share information.

It is a good idea but I don’t think it will work… here’s why:

TECHNOLOGY

As far as I know, there isn’t any technology that allows two groups to be merged… whether an option from the group admin interface or from LinkedIn’s employees. I bet they can DELETE a group, but I’d be surprised if they could/would merge multiple groups.

Developing technology shouldn’t be too hard… but, the bigger issue is…

POLICY

Of course, Policy could be written, rewritten and updated… but let’s look at the heart of the issue: OWNERSHIP.

Ownership: anyone can start a Group on LinkedIn. To start an alumni group you don’t have to be in the alumni office… heck, you don’t even have to be an alumnus!  There isn’t really an ability to have an “official” group – that is, a single group that is THE GROUP.

For example, if someone starts a Group for alumni of a school (or company), and they get, say, 20,000 members, and then the real alumni office/rep starts a group and they get 7 members, which is the better, more official Group?  I wouldn’t join the Group with 7 members because there is nothing going on there.

• Should LinkedIn GIVE the Group to the “official” alumni rep?
• Should LinkedIn CLOSE the unofficial Group and encourage people to move to the official Group?
• How does LinkedIn decide which Group is “official?”
• What if the person who is admin of the Group moves on, with some spite… how is Group ownership transferred involuntarily?

Another issue is kingdoms…. if I start a Group with 1k or 100k people, and there is a “competing” group with 1k or 100k members, why would EITHER of the group admins want to merge?  I would lose decision-making ability, and the power to send out Group Announcements, etc.  I want the Group to be my own… right?

If I’m worried about people sticking around, or having the Group grow, I should worry about the value I provide… sorry if we can’t merge and have one place for you (in other words, the consumer loses out because of the fragmentation), but I want my kingdom to thrive… not merge.

What do you think?

Posted in LinkedIn Groups | 2 Comments »