Week 2: Define Goals and Join LinkedIn

When creating any marketing campaign, you should know why you are doing it. And yet I find many people cobbling a LinkedIn profile together for no other reason than someone told them they should. But you have a huge opportunity here to create a marketing tool that might seriously contribute to the success of your business. So take a few minutes to think about why you are using LinkedIn and come up with some goals and metrics you can measure.

Monday: Create Your LinkedIn Account

For those of you who are brand-new to LinkedIn, now it’s time to get started. Even if you have been on LinkedIn for some time, I recommend following along to make sure you have your basics in place.

If you have not yet done so, go to www.LinkedIn.com. You’ll be prompted for your name, email address, and password, as Figure 2-1 shows.

Figure 2-1: Creating your account for the first time

Interestingly, LinkedIn now allows you to create your LinkedIn account by signing in with Facebook. So perhaps LinkedIn is already moving towards integration. I just have to wonder what kind of information LinkedIn could possibly grab from a Facebook profile beyond your name and email address! Yikes!

Understanding Email and Password Best Practices

Many people use their business email addresses when creating their LinkedIn account because it’s a business-networking site. But this might not be the best practice for a few reasons.

First, what happens if you lose or change jobs or something happens to your hosting site and you lose your domain name? If you lose access to your business email address and you forget your password, you are out of luck. You could ask LinkedIn’s customer support at [email protected] to give you access to your account, but you are not assured of a response or positive outcome.

Another reason is that social media sites get hacked. While LinkedIn is very safe compared to Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn was just hacked in June of 2012 compromising over 6.5 million accounts. So I always recommend to my clients and students that they create an email account just for their social media platforms.

As you can imagine, social media will generate increased email volume. On LinkedIn alone you might receive email for notifications, group messages, invitations, and direct messages. Creating a social media account will keep your “real” email account from getting overwhelmed.

If the worst happened and LinkedIn was hacked and someone used my email address to spam my contacts, I could just delete that email account and start over. If you’ve had to delete and change your company email address or the email address you’ve had for the past 15 years, you know what a hassle it is to let everyone know about the changes. And even then you’ll lose communication with those folks. Avoid all those issues by creating an account just for your social media.

Eventually, you’ll want to add all your email accounts. You’ll learn more about that later in this chapter when we discuss settings.

When it comes to creating a password, please don’t use the same one you use on your bank account for obvious reasons. Also don’t use your dog’s name (Mom!) or your daughter’s birthday. Pick a series of numbers you can remember and then add a word to it (like LinkedIn). That way, you are more likely to remember your password if you get on a new computer, but your cubicle mate won’t guess it in three tries. Or to create revolving passwords nearly impossible to hack, use a tool like RoboForm at http://Roboform.com or 1Password at https://agilebits.com/onepassword.

Setting Up Name, Company, and Location

When setting up your account for the first time, as shown in Figure 2-2, use the name most people know you by. If your name is Roberta but everyone calls you Bobbi, then go with Bobbi. (You will be able to use the Maiden Name field later on for your real name, your nickname, a common misspelling of your name—or, of course, your maiden name. You can only choose one.) Be aware that LinkedIn is smart enough to know the difference between Bob and Robert, but not Richard and Dick. So when first setting up your profile, choose the name most people know you by.

Don’t worry too much about your company name when you are filling out this section. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to add, edit, and change your company name when we get into setting up your profile.

Figure 2-2: Creating your professional profile

If you are a job seeker and don’t have a company name, you can always add a company you are doing volunteer work with. Greig Wells of BeFoundJobs suggests you create a group on LinkedIn and put your experience as Moderator of that group. I think this is a brilliant idea.

More on how job seekers can use LinkedIn in Chapter 11, “LinkedIn and You: Getting Specific.”

Location used to be an issue with LinkedIn because it simply did not recognize the postal codes for some cities. For instance, if you lived in Greeley or Loveland, Colorado, you would have to choose either Fort Collins or Greater Denver Area. But they changed that about a year ago. If you haven’t visited your “location” in your LinkedIn profile lately, it might be worth looking at again.

Once you have created an account, you can edit all you name and location information by clicking on edit next to your name on the profile page. This is also where you can add your nickname, misspelling of your name, proper name, etc. I’ve found it extremely useful to put the most common misspelling of my name, “Vivica,” in this field. I noticed almost immediately that more people were able to find and message me with that misspelling of my name. The real spelling of my name, “Viveka,” is not intuitive, which made me harder to find.

Using the Initial Connections Setup Screen

When you first sign into LinkedIn, it will try and gather names from your email address as shown in shown in Figure 2-3. I like it because it uploads the contacts from my email account (I need to supply the email address and password for the email account that has my contact list) and will tell me who in my contact list is on LinkedIn and who is not. So it can save me an immense amount of time.

Figure 2-3: See who you know

I don’t like it for a couple of reasons:

• Many people are nervous that LinkedIn is going to abuse their contacts (LinkedIn promises us they won’t).
• LinkedIn fails to mention anywhere that you can only invite 3,000 people in a lifetime. This is a problem for many of my clients, whose contacts lists are 3,000-plus.

LinkedIn makes it too easy to click the Select All and Add Connections buttons, which might lead to you inviting your ex-fiancé, customer service at AT&T, and your ex-wife’s attorney to connect! In fact, if you deselect the Select All check box, LinkedIn grays out your connections, which in most cases means “you can’t click here.” In fact, you can click on the people you want to connect to, but it is not obvious. If you do not want to add any connections at this time, click Skip This Step. (In fact, you will want to click on “skip this step” until you get to your profile. We’ll cover all the steps you’ll be skipping through the rest of the book.)

About 10 percent of your profile completeness depends on your connections, so you will definitely want to use this tool later. After you have done the initial set up of your LinkedIn account, LinkedIn will add a “Welcome [YourName]! See who you already know on LinkedIn” feature to your home page. This will bring you back to the same screen as above. I do recommend using this tool, but hold off until Chapter 5, “Weeks 10–15: Creating and Managing a Network That Works.” I’ll walk you through best practices so you can feel secure as you reach out and connect with your network.

Tuesday: Understand LinkedIn’s Features

Let’s take a look at LinkedIn’s landscape. We’ll take a quick tour of the home page and settings so you have a better idea of where everything is.

A Review of the Home Page

There is so much good stuff on the home page. Figure 2-4 shows a typical home page on LinkedIn. Let’s take a look at where everything is located.

Note: If you are using a public or work computer, always remember to sign out of LinkedIn. One thing you might have noticed after using LinkedIn for a while is that any time you go back to this Settings section or leave LinkedIn idle for a few moments, LinkedIn makes you sign back into your account. And that’s a useful (albeit somewhat annoying) security measure. But even better is remembering to sign out.

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• People
• Updates
• Jobs
• Companies
• Answers
• Inbox
• Groups
• Turn Off Suggestions

Figure 2-4: The home page

Note: Newer users will see a screen that says “Welcome YourName. See who you already know on LinkedIn.” That’s just LinkedIn’s way of helping you find people to connect with. After a while, that screen disappears. As mentioned earlier, you can also get to this screen to upload your contact list by clicking Add Connections.

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Figure 2-5: People You May Know

Figure 2-6: Applications screen

Don’t be discouraged if your screen doesn’t look exactly like the one in Figure 2-6. It’s going to reflect who you are connected to, what you’ve done on LinkedIn, and how long you’ve been using LinkedIn.

A Review of the Menu Bar

I’ve already pointed you in the direction of LinkedIn’s menu bar, but let’s look at the tabs in detail as shown in Figure 2-7. (This might be a good section to dog-ear if you are new to LinkedIn.)

Figure 2-7: LinkedIn menu bar

One thing you’ll notice about LinkedIn is that there are often many ways to get to the same screen. So choose the path that you find easiest to remember.

LinkedIn Home Tab

When you hover over the Home link on the menu bar, you’ll see the options LinkedIn Home and Advertise On LinkedIn. I always just click on the LinkedIn logo at the top left of any page to get to the home page, but this is another option. (We’ll talk a lot more about LinkedIn Ads in Chapter 10, “LinkedIn Ads, Labs, Apps, and Tools.”)

Profile Tab

The next item on the menu is the Profile tab. This is where I usually edit and view my profile. I also go here to get and manage my recommendations and to access the Profile Organizer.

Any time you want to edit your LinkedIn profile, from experience to education to additional information, you’ll click Edit Profile. Any changes you want to make to sections you add to LinkedIn like Applications and Skills also can be done in the Edit Profile section.

Note: Just be aware that it is easy to accidentally click View Profile instead of Edit Profile. So if you’re having a hard time finding the Edit button on your profile to make those changes, check under Profile and make sure you are in Edit Profile mode and not View Profile.

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Once you’ve made a change to your profile, I recommend clicking the View Profile link to see what your profile will look like to other people. Sometimes the spacing gets a little wacky and your content might not translate the way you want it to. Other sections of LinkedIn turn into linked searches (Interests, Groups, and Associations), so you want to make sure those sections are formatted in such a way to make the search work more efficiently.

The third link under the Profile tab is Recommendations. This is where you’ll go to ask for recommendations as well as manage your recommendations. We’re going talk a lot more about recommendations in Chapter 5.

The last option under the Profile tab is Profile Organizer. You have to have at least the minimum paid account on LinkedIn in order to use the Profile Organizer. This tool allows you to organize your network’s profiles into folders you create.

Contacts Tab

The next menu bar item is Contacts. This is where you’ll find your Connections, Add Connections, and Network Statistics, as well a list of links to businesses you’ve added to the experience sections and links to the schools you have added to your profile, as shown in Figure 2-8.

Connections are your first-level contacts—people you’ve invited or who have invited you to connect. The invitation has to be accepted for those people to show up under your Connections.

When we talk about creating and managing a network in Chapter 5, much of the work will be done in the Connections section.

On the Contacts page next to the Connections tab you’ll see Imported Contacts. Be careful with this one. If you have used the LinkedIn Add Connections tool to upload your contacts, make sure you don't invite all the people you upload (like your ex-wife and her lawyer!). It’s tempting, especially when you want to grow your network to just click on Select All and Invite selected contacts, but be very discerning with who you invite to connect. You can always go back and invite these people later if you decide to add more contacts.

The next link is the Profile Organizer that I’ve already mentioned. To the right of the Profile Organizer is Your Network Statistics. This tool tells you how many first-level connections you have, who they are connected to (your second-level connections), and their connections (your third-level connections). A few strategic first-level connections can add up to a very large network overall.

You’ll also see a Remove Connections link on the right side. When you click Remove Connections, a list of everyone you are connected to appears. Feel free to remove anyone who is annoying you here. LinkedIn won’t inform them that you have removed them as connections, although they might notice you are no longer first-level connections when they try to send you a message!

Groups Tab

The next tab on the menu bar is Groups. This menu tab will show you who your groups are, groups you might like, a Groups directory (so you can find groups), and a link that will allow you to create your own group, as shown in Figure 2-9.

Your groups are just that—groups that you’ve joined or are in the process of joining. We’ll talk a lot more about groups in Chapter 6, “Weeks 16–18: Getting Strategic with Groups.”

Figure 2-8: Connections

When you click Your Groups, you might notice the ability to reorder your groups. This will allow you to prioritize the groups that are more important to you, rather than having to always search your groups by alphabetical order. This does not reorder your groups on your profile.

Figure 2-9: Groups tab

Also on this page are icons indicating which groups are currently having discussions and which groups have jobs posted.

The Groups You May Like link will show up once you’ve joined a few groups. LinkedIn uses its own analytics to go through your profile and your interests to define groups you might like, just like on your home page. You can also search for groups according to keywords, categories, and languages. It is also from this section that you can search for groups by keyword.

Or you can simply go to the Groups directory, which allows you to search for groups. You’ll get the same results.

Jobs Tab

Next you’ll find the Jobs tab. Here you’ll see the links Find Jobs, the Job Seeker Premium account details, and Post A Job (which is a paid tool). Other paid options on this tab are Manage Your Jobs, Find Talent, and Hiring Solutions.

The Find Jobs link is one of the most useful tools LinkedIn offers a job seeker—more on that in Chapter 10. As shown in Figure 2-10, you can search for jobs by job title, keyword, or company name. If you choose the Advanced Search option for Find Jobs (which I recommend), you can also search by location (within 10–100 miles of a postal code) as well as by functions, experience, industries, and the date the job was posted. With the Job Seeker Premium account, you can also search by salary.

The Jobs tab allows you to apply for jobs from right within LinkedIn. It also enables you to see not only the company profile of the company posting the jobs but also who you know at that company. In addition, you can save the job for future review.

If you are using LinkedIn to find and hire candidates, then you should be using the job posting tools, which are very affordable starting at $99 a month. If you do post jobs on LinkedIn, you’ll manage those jobs and candidates in this section as well. You’ll learn more about posting jobs in Chapter 4.

Figure 2-10: Jobs tab

Inbox Tab

The next tab is Inbox. When you hover over your Inbox, a pop-up screen appears with your pending invitations and messages. I hope this particular tab gets a lot of action for you!

I recommend clicking the Invitations tab because you have a few more options (such as Report Profile). It also provides a better snapshot of your pending invitations, as you can see in Figure 2-11.

Figure 2-11: Inbox tab

Your Messages tab contains messages and replies to messages from your first-level connections as well as invitations, introductions and introduction requests, profile forwards, group invitations, InMails (LinkedIn’s paid messaging service), job notifications, and questions from your network.

Companies Tab

The next tab, Companies, allows you to search for companies by keyword, company name, and industry. This is also where you’ll go to see the companies that you are following and any updates from those you are following.

If you want to create a company, this is where you can add a company as well (more in this in Chapter 4).

When you click the Company tab, you might notice on the right side of this page a similar box to what you saw on the home page—Companies You May Want To Follow. If you have already created a company page on LinkedIn, you’ll also be able to view some information about your company page, as well as edit the information on that page. I usually just go to my company page, which shows up as a link, and edit from there.

News Tab

Next to Companies is the News tab. Here you’ll see LinkedIn Today articles you’ve saved as well as LinkedIn Signal.

LinkedIn Today pulls the top articles from across the blogosphere into your LinkedIn profile. You can choose what industries and topics you want to read about. The articles that show up on your home page are chosen according to categories you select and are based on how many LinkedIn users share them. LinkedIn Today is also intuitive and will make suggestions according to your selections.

Beneath the LinkedIn Today link is Saved Articles. You have to start organizing your reading list before you can save any headlines. But this is a great place to keep information that you might want to use as a resource later.

Beneath saved articles is LinkedIn Signal, one of my absolute favorite tools for monitoring my brand as well as finding, connecting to, and building relationships with potential clients, customers, vendors, employees or employers, or partners. You’ll learn more about LinkedIn Signal in Chapter 8, “Week 23: Putting It All Together.”

More Tab

Finally you’ll see the More tab. I always say this is where LinkedIn puts everything that couldn’t fit on the menu bar. You’ll find the following options:

• Answers
• LinkedIn’s Learning Center
• Skills
• Upgrade Your Account
• Get More Applications

We’ll spend a lot of time talking about applications in Chapter 7, “Weeks 19–22: Get Strategic with LinkedIn’s ‘Other’ Options.”

Answers is where you can go to ask and answer questions on LinkedIn. I talked earlier about getting an expertise ranking from LinkedIn Answers. Well, this is where you get it. Chapter 7 discusses this topic in greater depth.

The Learning Center is just that: a place where LinkedIn has collected all their blogs, training webinars, and videos. The Learning Center is a great source of information.

I love the Skills link; learn more in Chapter 3.

And finally, the More tab includes a Get More Applications link. You might notice that some applications are already a part of your LinkedIn profile: Reading List by Amazon, LinkedIn Events, and LinkedIn Polls.

Wednesday: Establish Initial Settings

It’s time to establish your initial settings on LinkedIn. We’ll talk about creating profile settings; setting email preferences; using groups, companies, and applications; and identifying paid accounts and settings that are right for your situation.

Using Profile Settings: Activity Broadcasts, Activity Feed, Visibility, Twitter, and Public Profile

To get to your settings, hover your cursor over your name on the top-right side of your LinkedIn screen and select Settings from the drop-down menu, as shown in Figure 2-12. LinkedIn usually makes you sign in again with your email and password. Don’t worry—this is a security measure. You haven’t done anything wrong.

Figure 2-12: Settings

The top section of Settings gives you a quick snapshot of your account:

• Your name
• Your Member Since date
• Your primary email address (which you can always change)
• Your payments (if you bought ads or have a paid account)
• A place to change your password
• The type of account you have
• InMails
• Introductions (used and available)

You’ll also notice on the right side frequently asked questions about LinkedIn.

Beneath your account settings are the tabs you’ll use the most in this section:

• Profile
• Email Preferences
• Groups, Companies & Applications
• Account

By default, the Profile tab will be highlighted (black). This is not the same as the Profile tab in your menu bar. Profile gives you access to Privacy Controls, Settings, and Helpful Links.

Privacy Controls

The first link under Privacy Controls is Turn On/Off Your Activity Broadcasts. I recommend turning off your activity broadcasts. By default, every time you make a change to the static content of your profile, it will get blasted to your network unless you choose to turn this section off. Some people think it’s good to leave this option on because they want their network to know when they’ve made a change in their business or career. If that applies to you, then I recommend you turn it off while you read this book, make the suggested changes, and turn it back on when you feel your profile is complete. Personally I leave this section off as most folks don’t like getting blasted with every change people make on their profile.

The second link allows you to select who can see your activity feed. Your activity feed is any communication action you perform on LinkedIn: questions you’ve asked or answered; responses to discussions or updates you’ve posted, liked, or commented on; companies and groups you’ve followed; and topics you’ve followed on LinkedIn Today. The activity feed is all the activity that you have performed and shows up on your professional profile. You can let other people see it (or not) when they go to your professional profile page.

I often get asked about security on LinkedIn. The next section allows you to Select What Others See When You View Their Profile (emphasis mine). If you do not want people to know you’ve been looking at their profile, you can change these settings. The default is that your name, your photo, and your professional headline and location will show up when you view another person’s profile. If you choose to be partially anonymous (your Industry or Title will show up) or completely anonymous, be aware those options will disable your ability to view your profile statistics if you have the free account. And profile statistics are some of those metrics you definitely want to keep an eye on to measure your success on LinkedIn. You can certainly turn on and off your anonymity.

The next link is Select Who Can See Your Connections. Many people are uncomfortable with the idea that first-level connections or contacts might be visible to their entire network—especially if you have a small network and a large majority of your contacts are also clients. One of the reasons I encourage a larger network is to hide your key contacts within it! To limit visibility, choose Only Me. (Even if you limit who can see your connections, your network will be able to see your shared connections. There is no way to turn that off.)

Some people feel they may be discriminated against because of age, sex, or race. The next link allows you to change your profile photo and visibility. I don’t recommend hiding your photo. I’ve read statistics that you have a 60 percent better chance of someone contacting you if you have a photo uploaded on your LinkedIn profile. I question people who don’t show their photo, at least to their network, on LinkedIn. I know some people are concerned about identity theft, so again, it is your choice to whom you make your photo visible. I recommend a smiling close-up. Do not use a logo in this section—doing so goes against the end-user agreement.

There is an option that will show or hide the Viewers Of This Profile Also Viewed box in a search. You may want to turn off that option if you don’t want to be compared to your competitors. Or you might want to leave it on to keep an eye on your competitors. It is completely up to you. By default, LinkedIn will display the Viewers Of This Profile Also Viewed box on your profile page.

Note: Recruiter Stacy Donovan Zapar says, “There’s a very compelling reason to leave it turned on. Makes it very easy for you to be found by others who are seeking out your competition. As a recruiter, I loved this feature and would find great candidates this way.”

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Settings

The next section is called Settings (not to be confused with the Settings section currently being discussed!). I’m guessing that in the future LinkedIn might add more links to this section. Currently, the only “Setting” is Manage Your Twitter Settings. You’ll learn more about Twitter settings during Week 4 in Chapter 3.

Helpful Links

Next comes the Helpful Links section. I’m going to skip the Edit Your Name, Location And Industry and Edit Your Profile links because I cover them in Chapter 3.

The next link, Edit Your Public Profile, is very important. Remember in Chapter 1 that I mentioned the public profile that’s based completely on the information you add to your professional LinkedIn profile? Well, here you choose what the general public can see of your professional LinkedIn profile, as well as edit your LinkedIn public profile URL.

If you are brand-new to LinkedIn, when you click Customize Your Public Profile, you won’t get many options to show or make fields invisible. As you add your photo, a headline summary, positions, skills, education, and additional information, you’ll have more fields whose visibility you can turn on and off, as shown in Figure 2-13.

By default, your public profile will be made visible to everyone on the Web, not just LinkedIn members. Your picture, your skills, additional information, websites, and Interested In data will be visible. You’ll have to turn on visibility for any other section you want the public to be able to view. I do not recommend showing your current and past positions, or your education. While I tend to trust my LinkedIn network with my information, I do not trust the 6+ billion people who have access to the Internet. If someone abused your relationship on LinkedIn, you could always report them, but you’d have little recourse on the Web.

Figure 2-13: Customizing your public profile

Beneath Customize Your Public Profile you’ll see Your Public Profile URL. Click that link to access the edit screen. Add your “FirstNameLastName” with no spaces or special characters, as shown in Figure 2-14.

LinkedIn will let you know if that URL is available by giving you a green check mark or providing suggestions if the URL you chose is already in use. If you have a common name like Jane Doe, you might have to put in the middle initial. Rather than www.LinkedIn.com/pub/firstname_lastnamc56e0994388245, you get something simple to remember: www.linkedin.com/in/JaneWDoh.

You can also put your company name in this section so that it reads something like www.LinkedIn.com/in/LinkedIntoBusiness, or include your area of expertise: www.linkedin.com/in/linkedinexpert.

Note: The box that lets you customize the URL appears above the Customize Your Public Profile box for users who have not yet created a customized URL. Once you’ve created one, the box jumps below the Customize Your Public Profile box.

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Figure 2-14: Customizing your public profile URL

Beneath the area for customizing your LinkedIn public profile URL is Create A Profile Badge. Walk through these easy steps to get a piece of code you can then use in your email signature, on your website, or in your blog.

The final link is Manage Your Recommendations. We’ll be spending a lot more time talking about your recommendations and how to ask for them, give them, and manage them during Week 15 in Chapter 5.

Setting Email Preferences

The next tab in the Settings section is Email Preferences. Options include Select The Types Of Messages You’re Willing To Receive, Set The Frequency Of Emails, Select Who Can Send You Invitations, and Select The Frequency Of Group Digest Emails.

You also can set your LinkedIn Communications with Turning On/Off LinkedIn Announcements, Turning On/Off Invitations To Participate In Research, and Turning On/Off Partner InMail.

I am okay with receiving LinkedIn announcements and participating in market research, but Partner InMail is advertising: LinkedIn Partner InMails are messages from our partners with informational or promotional content that is part of a marketing or hiring campaign. Partner InMails are sent to LinkedIn users based on such information as the title of your current position, your primary industry, or your region, and are not from individual recruiters using LinkedIn. Your name and email address aren’t disclosed to LinkedIn’s marketing partners.

You can adjust your email preference settings, as you can see in Figure 2-15.

Figure 2-15: Email preferences

If you’ve been on LinkedIn for a while, you’ll recognize the types of messages you’re willing to receive from the bottom section of your LinkedIn profile, which also reads Contact YourName At. This is where you can specify the type of communications you’re willing to receive:

• Career opportunities
• Expertise requests
• Consulting offers
• Business deals
• New ventures
• Personal reference request
• Job inquiries
• Requests to reconnect

I recommend checking them all because any one of them might lead to a new client, donor, employee, or job.

With the free account, you have the option of accepting introductions and InMail. This option is recommended by LinkedIn and I also recommend you choose it. If someone wants to send me an InMail, then I want to receive it!

Because of the price of InMails (LinkedIn prices them at $10 each), it is much less likely that someone will spam you through an InMail. If you do not want to receive messages from people you don’t know, you can choose to receive introductions only.

Set The Frequency Of Emails allows you to choose what messages you are willing to receive in your email, in addition to LinkedIn’s inbox:

• InMail
• Introductions
• OpenLink Messages
• Invitations
• Profile Forwards
• Job Notifications
• Questions And Replies
• Messages
• Network Updates
• Activity Notifications
• Referral Suggestions
• Actionable Emails
• Connections Suggestions
• LinkedIn Today

You can also choose how often you’ll receive these emails. Some of this content will be noise, but depending on your reason for being on LinkedIn, you might even choose Individual emails (as they happen) and no email or weekly digests (my default in most cases).

You can select who can send you invitations. I highly recommend choosing Anyone On LinkedIn to avoid missing out on an invitation from someone important to your business or career.

You can also click set the frequency of group digest emails from this section; you’ll have access to this option in the following section as well.

Using Groups, Companies, and Applications

Now click Groups, Companies, And Applications. Some of these options will look familiar to you.

You can select your group display order in View Your Groups as well as set the frequency of group digest emails and turn on or off group invitations.

I will talk about what types of groups you’ll want to join, why you might want to join them, and how often you’re going to listen to them in Chapter 6.

Turn on group invitations if you want people to send you these invitations. As my network grew, I changed this option to off. If you are new to LinkedIn, however, you might want to leave this option on just in case one of your connections suggests a group that would be beneficial for you to join.

In the section Set The Frequency Of Group Digest Emails, you can change the amount of email (in the form of daily or weekly digests) you receive from your groups. If the group is getting too noisy, you can use this section to choose, in each group, whether you want a daily, weekly, or no group digest email.

Beneath Groups you’ll see Companies. This is exactly the same page that you saw earlier when you clicked the View Companies You’re Following link. I prefer to edit my company settings from the top menu bar.

Next to Companies is Applications. This is where you can view LinkedIn applications. You can view the various applications you’ve authorized to display on your profile and/or have given access to your LinkedIn profile and network data. Not only can you view and access LinkedIn applications in this section, but you can also control which external websites have access to your account.

In addition, this section lets you turn on and off your privacy controls. By default, LinkedIn can share your data with third-party applications. So I turn the section off.

The setting Manage Settings For LinkedIn Plugins On Third Party Sites lets you control your offsite privacy management. According to LinkedIn: “If you’re signed in to LinkedIn when you view any page that uses LinkedIn’s professional plugins, we receive information that you’ve visited that page. This allows us to improve your LinkedIn experience and provide you with insights from your professional network, like how many of your connections have shared an article into LinkedIn using the Share on LinkedIn plugin.”

Managing Your Account

If you click on the Account tab, you’ll see Privacy Controls, Settings, Email & Password, as well as Helpful Links. You might notice things start to get a little repetitious in this tab.

In Manage Advertising Preferences, LinkedIn provides more information on Ads By LinkedIn (ads shown to LinkedIn users on LinkedIn and third-party websites) and Ad Selection (ads shown to you are selected based on non-personally identifiable information.) For example advertisers may choose to target ads to LinkedIn members in a particular industry, location or a LinkedIn group. LinkedIn shares its privacy policy under Protecting Your Personal Information. You can also choose whether or not you want LinkedIn to show you ads on third-party websites.

You’ll recognize Change Your Profile Photo And Visibility, an option that also lives on the Profile tab.

If you are a recruiter or hiring manager, you might want to click Show Profile Photos Of Other Members. This is a useful section for people who don’t want to be accused of hiring or not hiring someone because of age, sex, or race.

One of the links I recommend spending some time on is Customize The Updates You See On Your Home Page. As shown in Figure 2-16, as you grow your network and begin to be connected to more people, this feature helps you cut down on the noise.

When you are starting out, it might be a good idea to keep an eye on new connections in your network, updates from your extended network, status updates from your connections, and posts from your connections. From your home page you can easily send a message welcoming your new connections to your network or respond to posts and status updates. When it gets overwhelming, turn off some of these features.

I turn off all the options in Profile And Recommendation, but again, the choice is yours. One reason to leave them on is to congratulate people on their promotions and recommendations, allowing you to initiate or build a relationship with them.

I leave the Questions & Answers option on in case I want to participate in a discussion. It’s easier to glance at them here rather than go into Questions. You’ll learn more about this topic in Chapter 7.

There are also updates for Jobs, Events, Polls, Groups, Applications, Company Pages, and News. Just because you turn off an update from your home page does not mean you’ll no longer get access to these services. You can always get access to them from the menu bar tabs.

You’ll also see a Hidden tab. These are the folks whose updates you have hidden from your home page. If you want to unhide their updates, just click here to Show Updates.

Figure 2-16: Updates You See On Your Home Page

The last two links are Select Your Language and Manage Security Settings. Select Your Language will affect the way you see some profiles, and it will affect how LinkedIn communicates with you. Manage Security Settings lets you use secure connections such as HTTPS when available, which seems like a good idea until you realize it prevents you from using some of LinkedIn apps.

The next option is Email And Password. Your first link is Add And Change Email Addresses. You’ll want to put all your email addresses into this section. Only your primary email address will be visible to your network. If you fail to put an email address associated with you into this section and someone uses that email address to invite you to connect with them on LinkedIn, then LinkedIn will try to create a new account for you. In most cases, when people end up with two accounts it is because they inadvertently created a new account due to an invitation to an email address not listed in their existing account’s “Email Vault.” (This is my name for it, not LinkedIn’s.) As far as I know, no one has ever hacked into this section.

Beneath that is an option that lets you change your password. If you feel your profile has been hacked, this is your first line of defense. Change your password!

Other Helpful Links include Upgrade Your Account and Close Your Account.

If you have more than one account, and you can remember the email address and password you used to create your “bad” account, then this is where you’ll go to delete it.

You have to sign into your “bad” account, and then LinkedIn will ask you why you want to close your account (choose Duplicate Accounts), verify that this is the account you want to close, and allow you to delete the account.

You can now merge accounts on LinkedIn too, although you’ll have to do this through [email protected].

If you close your account, you’ll lose that profile’s contacts and connections. If you merge, you’ll keep your connections intact (although you’ll still lose your recommendations).

The last link on this page is Get LinkedIn Content In An RSS Feed. It’s also an interesting feature, offering both public feeds as well as personal feeds (which contain private information from your network). It’s worth noting that there are security concerns if you choose to publish your personal network updates in a web-based feed reader, which could make all of your LinkedIn updates available to search engines and the world at large. You can also subscribe to an RSS feed of LinkedIn Answers. Each category (and there are dozens of them) has its own public RSS feed.

What Settings Are Right for Your Situation?

The most important thing is that you choose settings you are comfortable with. I have made my suggestions based on what has worked for my clients and me, but in the end this is your account and you get to decide how visible and how open to communication you want to be.

While social media tends to encourage open communication, full visibility, and transparency, as a business owner you may have some legitimate concerns regarding privacy and customer interaction. Choose what is right for you. You can change the settings anytime you want.

Finally, keep an eye on your Settings section as well as the LinkedIn Blog at www.blog.linkedin.com. LinkedIn occasionally adds new links, options, and opportunities but rarely shares them with the members in an email before implementation. They just show up on your screen! However, the LinkedIn Blog is pretty good about sharing new features with its readers.

Thursday: Define and Create Goals for Your LinkedIn Presence

There are two types of goals you’ll want to think about when considering your LinkedIn presence: umbrella goals and campaign goals. Your umbrella goal is your main purpose for being on LinkedIn. Your LinkedIn campaigns are shorter-term marketing efforts and will change according to your more immediate marketing efforts.

First, what is your umbrella goal, your purpose, for being on LinkedIn? Is it to attract new clients? Position yourself as a thought leader? Connect with influencers in your industry? Find and hire employees for your corporation? Connect with potential donors and sponsors?

Second, what are the goals you have set for individual LinkedIn marketing campaigns? Any good marketing campaign starts with knowing your goals, and your social marketing campaign is no different. Have you considered LinkedIn to position your new product or service? Increase the awareness about your new book? Find affiliates for a new online offer? Invite potential consumers to an event? While these goals will shift and change over time, you should at the very least have a sense of what they are and why you are using LinkedIn.

Take a minute to jot down 10 reasons for being on LinkedIn, and then prioritize those reasons.

Now that you have a list of prioritized goals, it’s time to refine them even further. I like the acronym SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. (The acronym SMART can be attributed to George Doran, who originated the acronym back in 1981 in his article “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Management Goals and Objectives.”)

Looking through the list of goals you created for yourself, can you qualify them as being SMART?

Is Your Goal Specific?

I’m going to ask you to get specific about your goals. Why? Because the more focused you are on creating your goals, the more likely you’ll be to achieve them. If you don’t have a targeted audience or message, then your communications will be diluted. If you don’t have a “By When” date, you might never achieve your goals.

One of the driving factors when I started my speaking career was the ability to speak to audiences all around the world. After traveling 20 days a month for the past few years, I decided that even though I can work anywhere, I might want to focus on cities a little closer to home.

Is Your Goal Measurable?

What are the measurable criteria or metrics you’ll monitor to make sure you are on track? Establish concrete criteria for measuring the progress toward the attainment of each goal you set:

• How many people will you connect with?
• How many industries will your network represent?
• How often will you check your inbox and what kind of interaction are you expecting?
• How many groups will you join?
• How often will you monitor your search terms with LinkedIn Signal?
• How many messages will you send each week and to whom?
• How many companies will you follow?

Measuring your progress will help you stay on track and reach your goals. LinkedIn can be an elephant—and we all know the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Are you measuring those bites? We will go much more in depth on metrics you can measure on Tuesday.

Is Your Goal Attainable?

Spend some time on this one. Don’t set goals that are impossible to achieve, but don’t aim too small either. You are probably not going to connect with all the CEOs of the Fortune 500 this week. But maybe you can connect with someone on the executive team who can give you access to two or three of them. Wouldn’t that still be useful? If you don’t try to connect, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to engage with them.

If you have in your mind that a goal is unattainable, then it probably is. But if you truly believe you can achieve your goal, you might very well start to exhibit the attitude, abilities, skills, and financial capacity you need in order to reach that goal.

Is Your Goal Realistic?

For your goal to be realistic, you must be both willing and able to achieve it. There are some folks reading this book who might very well be able to engage with all the C-level executives of the Fortune 500 but might not be willing to disturb them or “call in that favor.” Some people will not be able to get past the gatekeepers. One of the benefits of LinkedIn is the ability to see the path leading to your target connection. You might suddenly “see” that your neighbor is a first-level connection of someone you are desperate to contact. You know and trust your neighbor and they trust and like you. Now you are both able and willing! Suddenly the unattainable becomes a realistic goal.

Is Your Goal Timely?

Have you set up “by when” dates? This is one of the most important specifics to consider. If you don’t have a “by when” date, then your project or campaign or goal for being on LinkedIn might never come to pass. By setting a time or schedule for your engagement, as well as a date when you’ll have accomplished your goals, you are much more likely to achieve success.

How many of you reading this book have created vision boards? And how many of you have reached the goals or attained the things you have pictured or listed on your vision board? If you answered yes, you probably had a very clear date in mind that you want these visions manifested. Most people answer no, and the reason most of these dreams never materialize is because there is no set date for completion. For those of you who thought, “What the heck is a vision board?” it’s like Pinterest—a poster board covered with images of things you wish to achieve.

Friday: Establish Success Metrics for Your Goals

I mentioned earlier in this chapter that you have to measure your progress on LinkedIn. There are two types of metrics you can measure: qualitative measurements and quantitative measurements.

Quantitative:

• Total connections
• New invitations
• LinkedIn profile views
• LinkedIn search results
• Business followers
• Article shares on LinkedIn Today
• Click-throughs to your website from LinkedIn

Qualitative:

• Inbox activity and sentiment
• Requests for business
• LinkedIn Signal keyword mentions
• Likes and comments on updates
• Group growth and interaction
• “Expert” designation in Answers
• Google SEO
• Recommendations
• Industry representation and Location representation

In Week 13 of Chapter 5, you’ll dive even deeper into monitoring, measuring, and aligning your LinkedIn presence with your goals. But let’s take a closer look right now at some of these qualitative and quantitative measurements and what they mean.

Quantitative Measurements

Quantitative measurements are usually associated with numbers you can measure. They tend to indicate the growth and impact of your social presence.

Total Connections

You can find your total connections in a few places. As shown in Figure 2-17, on the Contacts tab you’ll see Network Statistics and your total connections will be your first-, second-, and third-level connections as well as the total number of users you can contact through an introduction, including people with whom you share a group. There are a few other places to find your network statistics that we’ll look at later in this chapter.

Figure 2-17: Network Statistics

As I mentioned in Chapter 1, you are only as visible as the size of your network, so it’s a good idea to know how you are positioned right now. In the space provided in the sidebar “Know Your Network,” write down your first-, second-, and third-level connections, as well as the number of your total connections. I’ll go into greater depth as to what these levels mean in Chapter 5.

New Connections

On your home page in Your LinkedIn Network, click the New People link and then uncheck 2nd Connections and Group Members to see a thumbnail of your 1st level connections as seen in Figure 2-18 below.

Figure 2-18: 1st Level Connections

You’ll want to keep an eye on these numbers to make sure they do not get stagnant. A little strategic growth every week can make all the difference to your success on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Profile Views

Just above Your LinkedIn Network is Who’s Viewed Your Profile, as shown in Figure 2-19. I find great value in this section. You’ll see a blue link that reads “Your profile has been viewed by X people in the past X days.” Click on this link and you’ll be guided to a new page that identifies how many visitors have viewed your profile in the last X days, and that identifies these visitors by name, title, location, and/or industry. These people are known as leads.

If you aren’t getting at least 10 views a week, then chances are you are not getting as much business as you could out of LinkedIn.

Figure 2-19: Who’s Viewed Your Profile

LinkedIn Search Results

If you haven’t done so yet, type the keyword or keyword phrase that best describes what you do into the People search field at the top right of your profile. How many pages do you have to scroll through until your profile shows up? Again, it’s good to get the number now so you can see how much you improve later! In Chapter 3, we will focus on keyword searching and profile optimization on LinkedIn search results.

Company Page Follows

If you have a company page on LinkedIn, keep an eye on your following. Get that baseline now and watch those numbers grow as you move through Chapter 4.

Article Shares on LinkedIn Today

If you do content marketing, keep an eye on LinkedIn Today. Nothing could be better than getting your article shared, re-shared, and commented on in this LinkedIn news feature. You’ll notice it’s usually the better-known blogs and newsfeeds that get shared. But once in a while a relatively unknown blog will get a lot of attention. When setting up LinkedIn Today, make sure you put in the various metrics and interests important to you and/or your network.

Website Click-Throughs

If you have the ability to create a unique link back to your website, you can add that unique link to your profile and track how many times people click on it and through to your website. I recommend using a tool like bitly to create unique links you can track.

Note: Bit.ly is a free resource that allows you to create customized and trackable URLs for any website, including your own website and landing pages.

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Qualitative Measurements

Qualitative measurement has more to do with the quality and sentiment of your engagement. You want to track this to measure your influence in your social community.

Inbox Activity and Sentiment

Are you getting any inbox activity? Some of it will definitely be spammy in nature, but it’s good to keep an eye on your messages. Some people will want to build a relationship with you.

Now, evaluate the sentiment of your interactions with people. Are people thanking you for connecting? Genuinely interacting with you? Sending blanket newsletters? You’ll get a bit of each, so I highly recommend nurturing the “real” communications. Feed what you want more of; ignore or delete what you want less of.

When you accept a person’s invitation on LinkedIn, you are implicitly agreeing to be open to their communications. You might receive unsolicited newsletter-like communications, and while these can be annoying, they are not really spam. On the other hand, if someone tries to solicit your hand in marriage for a green card or your social security number with promises of great riches in Zambia, then hit that Report Spam button.

Requests for Business

How about requests for business? I knew there was something wrong with my LinkedIn visibility when I went from ten or more requests for consultations a week to less than three. This is probably one of the most important metrics to measure—and one of the main goals for being on LinkedIn: to get more business!

Note: To avoid getting “blacklisted” by LinkedIn, don’t break their end-user agreement. I put “LinkedIn Expert” in the last name field, which specifically broke the agreement to “not publish inaccurate information in the designated fields on the profile form (e.g., do not include a link or an email address in the name field).”

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LinkedIn Signal Keyword Mentions

Have you checked LinkedIn Signal to see how many times your keyword search terms (company name, your name, username, industry, product, or service) are being mentioned? Once you set your metrics on LinkedIn Signal, all you have to do is click on your saved searches to see what new mentions you are getting. Learn more about LinkedIn Signal in Chapter 8.

Likes and Comments on Updates

Many people don’t even realize you can monitor your own updates to see how often people liked or commented on them.

Now you can see exactly what you have posted and how people have responded. If you are not getting many responses, consider adjusting what you post. And do not, whatever you do, automatically post all your tweets to LinkedIn. Your LinkedIn network might be a completely different culture than your Twitter following, so the sheer quantity of tweets landing on your network’s home pages might be incredibly annoying.

Group Growth and Interaction

If you manage a group, you’ll want to keep an eye on your group growth and interaction. Check out how many members you have right now and make note of the number here: ______. If you have been ignoring your group, check on the content in your discussions. Is the group thriving without you, or has it been killed by spam-like postings? Learn how to build and manage your groups in Chapter 6.

“Expert” Designation in Answers

LinkedIn Answers is LinkedIn’s member-driven Q&A and is one of my favorite tools for thought leader positioning on LinkedIn. One of the features is the “Best Answer” ranking given by the person who posted the question to the answer they thought most useful. Get enough best answers and you are listed as an expert on the Answers home page. Learn more about Answers in Chapter 8.

Google SEO

Have you Googled yourself lately? Where does your LinkedIn profile show up? Is your LinkedIn company profile showing up? How about your LinkedIn events or LinkedIn group? One thing I like about LinkedIn is that, because Google seems to like it so darn much, you can use your LinkedIn profile, events, groups, company pages, and even Answers to manage your reputation and push down some less optimal Google results. Learn how to optimize your profile for better Google search engine optimization (SEO) in Chapter 3.

Figure 2-20: Locations and industries

Recommendations

Are you getting recommendations? Are they thorough? Descriptive? From good people? Sometimes you have to give to get. Or at least ask for them! When requesting recommendations:

• Only request recommendations from people you know.
• Remind them how you know them (change the default subject line).
• Give them some speaking points.
• If you know the person well and you think they won’t mind, consider providing a few details and/or lines to get them started.

LinkedIn recommendations used to account for 15 percent of your Profile Completeness on LinkedIn, but that recently changed. (Now it doesn’t contribute to completeness at all.) Nonetheless, I recommend you get 10–15 recommendations for your profile.

Week 15 in Chapter 5 focuses on giving and getting recommendations from your network.

Industry and Location Representation

When you look at your connections, what is the industry representation and location representation of your network? Are you connecting to people in the right industries and locations?

To check this out, go to the Contacts tab and the Connections drop-down, as shown in Figure 2-20. On the bottom-left side of the screen, click Locations and Industries, and you can see what industries and locations are best represented by your first-level connections. Do you need to connect with more people in more targeted companies, industries, or locations?

Well, that’s it for Chapter 2. If you have completed your daily tasks then not only do you have the foundation and materials you need to create a powerful profile and marketing campaign on LinkedIn, but you’ve dipped your toe in and gotten started. If you’re an experienced user of LinkedIn, maybe you’ve learned some new things and been introduced to a few of LinkedIn’s new tools.

Next up: optimizing your profile!