When it comes to business, who you know really is important. LinkedIn is a powerful network that can make interesting things happen in your professional life. I can’t argue that you’re likely to see more direct profits and outcomes from some of the other platforms we’ve looked at, but there’s so much value in networking well on LinkedIn, that I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t show you how I use it and why. Even if everything you ever do on LinkedIn never brings you one single sale, you can still use the site to uncover business opportunities you’d never have known about otherwise and networking connections that, in their own way, can save you thousands of dollars, or more, over the life of your business.

More than 200 million people worldwide use LinkedIn as I write this. There will probably be way, way more when you read it. The people who use LinkedIn are focused on their work and businesses much more than they are in other corners of the social media world. You won’t find a lot of off-target conversation on LinkedIn, and virtually none about personal stuff, like kids with the stomach bug or vacation mix-ups we can all laugh about now. People use LinkedIn because they want to share or gain business opportunities and professional expertise. If you’re looking for a job, LinkedIn is an obvious choice. But because I’m going to assume most of you are already employed, running your businesses, I’m going to show you how to get great free advice, find business partners, and build your own personal brand awareness—the Fifth Finger, people—all at the same time.

The people on LinkedIn may be more focused on work than those who occupy other social networks, but that’s perfect for us because we’re using all these social networks for work, too. The culture on LinkedIn expects that you share with the people you connect with there by bringing more to a group or conversation than you take. In this case, the 80/20 Rule says 80 percent of your time on LinkedIn should be spent offering help and advice and 20 percent of your time spent asking for it. This sense of community is one of the things that makes LinkedIn so powerful, and you want to respect it. Just the same, you’ll find with your active blogging, and sharing on other networks, offering your LinkedIn community the benefit of your expertise is pretty simple and well worth the effort.

YOUR PROFILE: YOU NEED 100 PERCENT AFTER ALL

Like all the other social networks, LinkedIn makes it easy for you to get up and running on the site. The core of your life on LinkedIn, of course, is your profile. Once you’ve got that done right, you’ll be ready to build your network and make things happen. You won’t get much traction on LinkedIn until your profile is 100 percent complete, which basically means completing each element of the profile form, including the addition of a picture and at least three recommendations. I’m not going to hold your hand and take you through the process, which the Help screens describe quite well. Instead, let’s spend our time talking about strategy and tips to make your networking time pay off for you.

As you step through building your profile, LinkedIn will keep track of how close you are to that 100 percent. Fortunately, the information you need to complete your profile probably already exists in some form in the marketing materials you’ve created for yourself and your business. Your task now is to adapt those materials to LinkedIn, and that’s simple.

Figure 12-1 shows my LinkedIn profile. Of course, if you check out my profile now, it’ll be different, but that’s because your LinkedIn profile lives your business life with you and so it frequently changes. This is what I had while I wrote this. I wanted to show it to you, because it illustrates some of the things I think are most important in a profile.

Figure 12-1

That Photo

The picture you post to your LinkedIn profile sends a specific message. I want my photo to say: Here’s John. He knows what he’s talking about. You can believe what he says, because he’s honest. And just look at that friendly smile. Mama loves me. I think I got that with this picture. Now, you may want to send some of that same message, but you may also want to tweak it to reflect who you are as a businessperson. Be sure that whatever image you choose sends the message you intend. A headshot that shows you looking professional but friendly and open is the place to start.

This is all a part of building your overall professional and business brand. Make sure your photo only includes you. It’s not the time to include a partner or your employees. Save that for other sites. This profile is yours and should be focused only on you. Don’t stress too much about what you wear. If your business persona is more formal, then go for it. If it means something more open like mine, then that’s fine. Your LinkedIn photo is valuable space, so make it work for you.

Tips and Tricks for a Great Profile

Next to your picture is your headline. It’s okay to list yourself as CEO of your company, because you are. I also mention I’m a social commerce strategist, because that’s an important part of my business. If you wear more than one hat, separate your different job titles by a slash (/). It makes each one stand out more and reads well on a screen.

When you first signed on to LinkedIn, its computers randomly assigned a URL to your profile page. Be sure, if you haven’t already done it, that you go in and edit that. You want your Linked In URL to be exactly the name people would use to search for you. Right under my picture is my URL, www.linkedin.com/in/colderice. Nobody forgets colderice. When people decide to look me up after one of my speaking engagements, I want it to be easy for them to find me. Colderice does that for me. The good news is that LinkedIn profiles rank very well in search results, so if someone wants to find you, this little trick will make it much easier. That’s the Fourth Finger, people, good old SEO back in the game.

Below the picture in my profile, you’ll see a window that shows my activity. This is going to reflect everything I do online, because I’m linking everything I do on my blog to all my social networks, including LinkedIn. Keep your activity fresh and changing. Make it something people within your network will want to read, comment on, and repost. Your dandelion seeds will keep on spreading.

I told you I wasn’t going to walk you through every aspect of building your profile, and I’m not. I do want to take a quick look at the summary area, because this is a corner of the profile that people often misuse. It’s not just a quick summary of your resume, so you shouldn’t use it that way. It’s a part of your profile that lives and breathes as you work every day. Make it an ongoing description of your achievements and the problems you’ve solved. Be sure to show people not only what you’ve done but also what you are doing, and are capable of doing for others in your network and beyond.

THINGS I DO ON LINKEDIN: IF IT DON’T MAKE DOLLARS, IT DON’T MAKE SENSE

As you know, this book is all about making money; the “commerce” part of the phrase social commerce. A good friend of mine once told me, “If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.” If I don’t see a benefit that results in more money, I have to direct my energies toward something else.

I’m going to share with you some of the ways I like to use LinkedIn to meet my own business objectives. As someone who operates a growing e-commerce business, I have all the same issues that you do: finding reasonable and reliable vendors, vetting potential business partners, hiring virtual workers, or even the in-person ones. I’ve also found that LinkedIn is a great way to learn about upcoming conferences and meetings to preplan how to use your travel dollars wisely.

Participate in Groups

There are more than 15 million groups on LinkedIn. You’ll find a group for just about any industry you can name. When you join a LinkedIn group, all the members who already belong to that group become part of your network in that you can contact them directly. Members within groups engage each other in discussions, share news and data relevant to the group, and ask and answer questions. When you search for groups that might be interesting, take notice of how many members belong and how active the discussions are. You want to spend your time where people are actively engaged and sharing.

With more than 15 million choices, I clearly can’t leave you to wander around trying to decide which ones you should start with. Exploring the Groups feature on your own will open up new opportunities—especially once you find the groups that are most specifically aimed at people within your industry—but just for now, let’s get you started with some of the ones I find to be useful.

Find and Vet New Vendors

Everyone who operates a business needs to build a network of reliable vendors to fulfill the demand for any number of different products and services. Online merchants always have a nose out for the next great inventory addition, but there are all kinds of vendors who can help you keep things moving along, and LinkedIn Groups can help you find them, connect with them, and vet them. Join the groups you think will be most helpful to you and your business, and then search the discussions to see what others recommend in terms of finding and vetting vendors. You can always start a discussion of your own if you don’t find one that addresses your specific question. Just remember to answer other peoples’ questions when you can. Be a friend, make a friend.

Once you have some prospective vendors to consider, do a company search on LinkedIn to see not only how they represent themselves professionally, but also what current and former employees have to say about them. That’s where most of the company information on LinkedIn comes from, making it insider knowledge, which can definitely give you a richer and deeper picture of what a company is truly like than all the PR material you could collect.

LinkedIn Today, a Nose for News

LinkedIn Today is your own custom RSS news feed right on LinkedIn. Rich Site Summary, aka Real Simple Syndication or RSS, of course, is nothing new. You set your RSS feed on whichever browser you use, and then every day, or however often you choose, you’ll get a custom delivery of news relevant to the search terms you chose. It’s an old tool, but LinkedIn Today brings it up to date by showing you the news stories people within your network, groups, and industries are sharing. It’s a very easy way to get the “buzz” of what others in your corner of the social media world are talking about.

Use Your Travel Dollars Wisely

There is no denying the power of meeting people face-to-face. Going to a conference or a trade show where you can mingle with your peers is the best way of all to cement the relationships you build through e-mail and social media. At these meetings you can find new vendors or attend seminar sessions that address issues you might be facing in your business. Plus, I never leave a conference or trade show without something new to think about based on what I’ve seen. They are very stimulating places to be. Still, in good economies and bad, there is only so much money set aside for business travel, education, and networking.

I use LinkedIn to identify which conferences and shows I’ll attend. Set a calendar for yourself and decide how much travel you can afford, both financially and in terms of time away from your business. Then you can decide what you hope to gain from going to each conference or show and build your strategy around those goals. A quick search of LinkedIn Groups for the term “e-commerce conferences” found several articles that discussed the e-commerce conference calendar for the upcoming calendar year. There were ongoing discussions of which shows were most productive and travel details, too. The same search for trade shows brought up more than two hundred entries for both domestic and international shows. If you make your travel decisions early in the year, you are also more likely to save something on travel and hotel expenses, so that’s money in your pocket, too.

SUMO LESSON

LinkedIn is personable, and we want to keep it personable. Part of that requires everyone to really interact with the individuals who connect with them there. This can be difficult to do as your network grows. How do you manage to interact personally with so many people? Well, of course, being in touch routinely with that many individuals is probably a bit unlikely. But even if you have say, 200, 300, or even 500 people in your network, it’s still possible to be personal with enough of them to keep LinkedIn person-to-person, and show your personal touch to your network and beyond. I like to use the Recommendations feature to do that.

When you write a LinkedIn recommendation for a person in your network, it shows up both on that person’s profile page and on your own. Both of your networks get notified, and that puts your name out there among your crowd. The good thing about randomly sprinkling unsolicited recommendations among your network is that it builds your place as a member of the group. Those in your LinkedIn network will see that you take the time to give to individuals who invest their time and attention by being part of your network. Plus, people are really responsive to being recommended on LinkedIn. Just think, on a random day, out of nowhere, you reached out and said, “Good job.” It’s bound to brighten anyone’s day. So, several times a week I offer unsolicited recommendations to people in my network.

Like so many other instances in social media, the best way to get recommendations is to give them. But trading recommendations on the site, one in exchange for another, is easy to spot on LinkedIn and savvy LinkedIn users frown on it. If you send out unsolicited recommendations, some of those people will respond in kind, but some won’t. It’ll look more randomly generated than the prearranged ones do.

Be sure to select your keywords carefully when you craft your recommendation to make it easier to find during searches. Don’t go overboard by adding a couple of dozen keywords. It’s not necessary and the list is going to get boiled down to the top two or three anyway. So just select the top few and use them. It’ll get you a better return.