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LinkedIn or Left Out?

What You’re Missing If You’re Not Utilizing This Powerful Social-networking Tool

Old-school networking consisted pretty much of a round of golf, lunch, dinner, cocktails, and charitable and community involvement. Today’s networking strategies also include a much greater variety of online opportunities through which you can reach out to a much broader potential business base.

Blogging, microblogging, and social-networking site participation are some of the most powerful means to reach prospects and reinforce professional relationships today. They are the contemporary version of working the room.

Arguably, the most significant social-networking tactic that you should employ is LinkedIn. There are many professional networking sites, but as far as business potential and clout, no other site comes close.

LinkedIn.com is the grown-up version of the MySpace that your kids use to connect with their friends. LinkedIn’s unique advantage, however, is that your connections have access to you when they search for a professional resource with your skills.

It is akin to the Kevin Bacon six-degrees-of-separation formula and penetrates three layers deep. This provides the opportunity for someone in need to contact the middle-person (your connection), and inquire about you before blindly calling you.

The result is a warm introduction rather than a cold call to a stranger.

Connecting to Other Professionals

Building your network of connections takes dedication and commitment. You won’t gain much ground if you sit back and wait for peers, friends, and colleagues to find and connect to you. You must aggressively search for everyone you know professionally and send them an invitation to connect to you.

You may also invite people who are not yet members, but oftentimes this nets a disappointing result, because these people have not yet recognized the value of LinkedIn, and they aren’t willing to build up a network that enhances yours.

Remember that your network grows exponentially when you add a connection because you then have access to their connections (second tier) and people they are connected to as well (third tier), and vice-versa. It is entirely possible to build up a network of about 4 million people within 3 months by making smart connections with well-connected professionals.

Raising Awareness by Asking and Answering Questions

One very significant aspect of LinkedIn is its questions-and-answers component. Everyone has the opportunity to choose one or more industries to monitor on their home page, and new questions appear most every time you refresh that page. Usually these questions come from someone who needs advice or help with a problem. When you post a thoughtful and insightful answer, it’s like raising your hand and saying, “I’m here, and I’m available to help you,” but in a less boastful and intrusive way.

It is a means to demonstrate your expertise, establish some clout, and raise awareness.

Posting a question also has the potential to raise awareness of you within a particular industry. This is especially helpful if it is an industry that you are trying to penetrate. For example, posting an insightful and well-constructed question about employment law will raise awareness of you among employment-law attorneys on LinkedIn, and it will likely open a dialogue with several of them.

It is possible that at least one of them will evolve into a connection, which may one day result in a professional opportunity.

Finding a Job

The jobs component is another powerful advantage for employees and employers alike. From the employee side, the advantage is obvious. You can search for jobs by specific criteria such as title, keywords, location, experience level, company, function, industry, and time posted. Then you can sort the results by various criteria. LinkedIn has incorporated Boolean logic into its search function, so it is possible to target your search very specifically to narrow your results.

Monitoring Your Competition

The obvious advantage of the jobs function for employers is in the potential to recruit qualified candidates to fulfill a particular need. But there are additional LinkedIn benefits to employers that are not immediately obvious.

For example, LinkedIn makes it easy to monitor your competition from an employee standpoint. What is their employee structure? What is the rate of turnover? Are your competitors ramping up in a certain department? Are they laying off employees? By searching for a company and limiting the search results to current employees only, it is easy to see patterns. Monitoring your competition through LinkedIn may lend insight into their business models.

Getting Value Out of Groups

Groups are another powerful LinkedIn component. There are alumni groups, geography-specific groups, interest-based groups, industry-specific groups, and company groups. If you can’t find a group that suits your particular interest, it is easy to start one on your own and then invite others to join.

LinkedIn groups provide a good way to expand the network of people that have access to you, with the added advantage of a shared interest or characteristic. Linking to your school’s alumni groups is a no-brainer, but also be sure to join any professional-networking groups for your area and groups of professionals in your particular industry.

One of the most powerful aspects to groups is the discussion board. Here, members can post a question or any information that they want to share with the group, and others may post comments, much like a blog. For example, the LinkedIn Western Mass. group currently contains a job posting and an inquiry to find an industry-specific speaker, among other topics.

Imagine the immense potential of filling a job opening for free rather than paying for a classified ad. This may eventually become reality as more and more people join LinkedIn, while newspaper circulation continues to drop.

Remember that not every prospective employee reads job postings, but they may just monitor discussion boards and have their interest piqued. Groups are a great way to share resources and bounce ideas around. And, like ‘Questions and Answers,’ participation in discussions within groups raises awareness of you and increases your potential to establish and deepen relationships that may one day turn into business opportunities.

A Recruiter’s Dream Database

LinkedIn membership is exploding so rapidly that it is becoming a gold mine for recruiters. There are several levels of LinkedIn membership, with most members remaining content with the free level. Recruiters, however, have expanded potential to find candidates for job openings with paid memberships that include enhanced features, and recruiters who don’t use this powerful tool are being outgunned by those who are embracing this technology.

Putting Your Best Foot Forward with a Strong Profile

Currently, at least 50% of LinkedIn members have substandard profiles. Many people simply list their current employment and maybe their college, and add a link to their company’s Web site, then expect that to bring in business. It doesn’t work that way.

Your LinkedIn profile should be a high-test, souped-up version of your most polished resume. The best LinkedIn bios convey a compelling reason for a person to hire you or do business with you.

Your LinkedIn profile should convey your professional accomplishments and demonstrate what someone gets when they hire you. It should contain details about your professional accomplishments, community and civic involvement, educational background, interests, groups you belong to, and any honors and awards that you have received. It must be well-written and free of typos, as well as grammar and punctuation errors.

Benefits of Referrals

LinkedIn referrals are a public stamp of approval by someone you have worked with successfully. In fact, LinkedIn places so much significance on referrals that you need a minimum of three for LinkedIn to consider your bio ‘complete.’ Like references, referrals let potential employers and clients know the kind of employee or consultant you have been to others in similar situations.

Strong, well-written referrals sing your praises in a way that often embarrasses you a bit when you first read them, but they lend a lot of insight into what someone can expect from you by means of work ethic, dedication, skills, and commitment.

On the flip side, giving referrals has a dual benefit. You are helping your peer by detailing how instrumental they have been to you in a particular situation, but referrals are also a means of raising awareness of you among that person’s network, because everyone will see your referral on that person’s profile. This puts you in front of people who may be in a position to collaborate with or hire you one day. Giving a referral is another way of tactfully raising your hand in a crowded marketplace.

This article covers the major components of utilizing LinkedIn as part of your networking strategy. However, there are many fine nuances that can further contribute to separating you from the pack and helping you build a profile that will make you attractive to employers and prospects.

One thing is for sure — as more and more of your colleagues and peers build their own powerful LinkedIn networks, anyone who continues to ignore this contemporary networking giant does so at his or her own peril.

Christine Pilch is a partner with Grow My Company and a social-networking strategist. She works with clients to enhance their LinkedIn profiles, and she collaborates with professional service firms to get results through innovative positioning strategies; (413) 537-2474;www.linkedin.com/in/christinepilch;growmyco.com; “Miracle growth for your company.”