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Category: LinkedIn
Why Most People Don’t Have M(Any) LinkedIn Recommendations
02 May 2012
2 Comments
How many times have you pulled up the LinkedIn profile for someone you met at a networking event, a prospect, a client, a co-worker or a friend and seen the image below?
Why do you think that is? Have those people never done anything memorable in their careers?
Have they never impressed someone with their work ethic or excellent customer service?
Are they just bad at their jobs?
While that certainly could be possible for a few people in your network, that probably isn’t the case with most of your LinkedIn connections.
So why do most people have no LinkedIn Recommendations or maybe just 1 or 2?
1. THEY HAVEN’T ASKED.
They haven’t taken the time to ask long-time colleagues for one. In general, we don’t recommend you ask people for recommendations unless you have worked with them extensively and you know they are someone that would gladly recommend you. When asking for recommendations, don’t email the person or send a note through LinkedIn.
Instead, pick up the phone, see how they are doing, see if there is anything you can help them with…and then let them know that you are working on your LinkedIn profile and would appreciate it if they would write a recommendation for you
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2. THEY NEVER GIVE RECOMMENDATIONS.
Even better than asking people for recommendations, instead take time each week to GIVE recommendations to people that you have worked with throughout your career that have done great work, impressed you, delivered in a pinch, have an unwavering commitment to customer service, have referred people to you consistently, and on and on.
Once you write a recommendation, that person receives an email saying “Mary Jane has recommended you on LinkedIn”. They open the email, read your recommendation (that made their day because it came out of the blue), and then they click the button that says they want to add the recommendation to their profile. Then what happens? A little box pops up and asks them, in so many words, if they want to return the favor.
To write a recommendation, just click on the link that appears on the right hand side of your connection’s LinkedIn profile. (see image)
I often brag about Jason Terry who has 58 LinkedIn recommendations. (Please let me know if you ever see anyone with more. I’ve been on LinkedIn for about 7 years and that is the most I’ve ever seen…and it’s not even close.)
But you know what the more impressive number is? Jason has recommended 77 people on LinkedIn. (Again, that’s the most I’ve ever seen, so let me know if you ever see a profile with more!)
Recommendations matter. Whether it’s someone looking to hire you personally or your company to do work for them, it’s always better to hear what OTHER people say about you. At the end of the day, every single consumer out there wants to do business with people they can trust, who provide great value, and who do what they say they are going to do.
You can tell people all day long that’s how you work, but it’s so much more effective if they can read it for themselves from other people you’ve worked with throughout your career.
So do yourself, and a connection, a favor today….and give a recommendation. You just might be surprised by what you receive in return.
LinkedIn for Students – It’s Never Too Early to Start
29 March 2012
0 Comments
We are asked to speak about social media, specifically LinkedIn, at least two or three times every month. Some of our speaking is fee based and some we do for no cost as a way to give back. I specifically have a heart for helping students. I have spoken at Rockhurst University, the Bloch School of Business and just last week Avila University. After doing the presentation at Avila, I realized that we had not written an article about the power of LinkedIn for students getting ready to graduate!
If you think about it, your professional career has been influenced by two major factors. Your skill set and who you know. Pretty simple concepts, but powerful in its simplicity. You learn something new every day, increasing your skills, and my hope is that you have a solid work ethic that allows you to apply those skills to the task at hand. As you are learning, you meet new people almost every day as well. Your boss. A new client. A new vendor. A new neighbor. A new instructor. The list goes on and on. Think about how many people you interact with on a weekly basis.
I usually speak to classes of Juniors or Seniors in college who are gearing up to find their first job. My message to these students is that LinkedIn is a powerful way to have an edge over other people fresh out of college looking for the same job. Do you remember spending a lot of time and energy on your resume, and buying the thickest stock paper to print your resume on? I believe that the smart HR and recruiting people are quickly looking to LinkedIn for more information on potential candidates. How much more professional would a resume look if it had a link to a great looking LinkedIn profile?
Granted, someone coming out of college is probably not well connected to the business community in their area yet. That said, they have a bunch of professors that they learned from… many of the instructors I have met are well connected in the community, usually in the niche of the topic they are speaking about. These include strong fields like information technology or marketing. So students can link in with their professors as a start.
My encouragement to students is to change their mindset immediately and start treating each new relationship as a potential long term relationship. Think of knowing someone for 25 years professionally and all the opportunities that can spin out of that relationship. Definitely take the time to get a feel for each person, whether or not you like them and see them being a good influence on you personally and professionally. If they pass that test, Link In with them! You never know how that relationship will help down the road. The relationship is a two-way street, potentially benefiting either side.
As we continue to train organizations to use LinkedIn to grow their business, influence their peers and communicate more effectively, I realized that the challenges facing a student graduating from college and trying to find a new job are very similar to the challenges facing a salesperson at a company that is trying to find new clients to work with. It takes a strong skill set or product and a vast web of relationships that can help you get the word out. LinkedIn will help you in your efforts to create that trusted web of relationships that will be with you for many years to come. There is no better time than right now to adopt the habit of connecting to people that you know, trust and respect through LinkedIn.
The Mistake That People Make Every Day On LinkedIn
22 March 2012
6 Comments
This picture is an actual screen shot from my LinkedIn account. Ever gotten a request like this before? Do you know what’s wrong with it? Do you know the mistake that this person is making and that thousands of people make every single day on LinkedIn?
If you answered “They don’t know you. They don’t indicate why they want to connect with you. And they didn’t personalize the request, instead opting for the ‘I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn”, then you are the proud owner of a virtual high-five from me!
I wrote about this nearly two years ago, Personalize Your LinkedIn Invitations, and here we are in March 2012 and the “madness” (yes, I’m a college basketball fan) continues.
So here are some quick LinkedIn tips to think about when you are dealing with LinkedIn invitations:
1. Generally speaking, only connect to people that you know, trust and respect. Anyone can build a massive network of people they don’t know. And those people are generally the “takers” vs. the “givers”. Steer clear of them.
2. When you send a LinkedIn invitation, personalize it. As I mentioned in the earlier article, using the standard default message is another way of saying: “Hello. I’m lazy. This invitation isn’t important enough for me to spend the 15-20 seconds it would take to write a personal message telling you who I am, how we know each other, and why I want to connect.”
3. As a general rule, many people do (and more people should) place tremendous value on their LinkedIn network. Respect that and don’t assume that they are going to add you to their trusted network just because you sent a LinkedIn request.
4. Most people that do this aren’t Linkedin Jerks. They simply haven’t had any training on the tool and didn’t know any better because “everyone else always sends me that standard message”. Which brings me to another point…How do you differentiate yourself on a tool like LinkedIn? It certainly isn’t by doing what everyone else is doing, right?
5. If someone sends you a LinkedIn request with the general default LinkedIn message, reply back to them and offer to meet for coffee to get to know each other first. Or reply back to start a dialogue. An actual message I sent recently is below:
Thanks for the invitation and for taking the time to read and comment on the material you’ve read.
I typically reserve my LinkedIn network for people that I know, trust, respect, have worked with, etc. and that is also how we train people to use LinkedIn as social media coaches. This is nothing against you personally; just the way I choose to grow and protect my network. Hope you understand.
If I can ever help with LinkedIn training or anything else, please let me know.
Have a great Monday,
Mic
Why Your Business Should Blog: A Real Life Case Study
07 March 2012
3 Comments
Blue Gurus has been in business since April 2009. This is our 146th blog post. We blog once a week and have, with few exceptions, every week since the business started. Outside of a few networking events and occasional speaking opportunities, our blog is our only consistent marketing tool.
We coach our clients to blog too, whether that be helping them get their blog posts out each week, helping them create the content, or coaching them on how to become better bloggers.
Blogging takes time. Blogging takes creativity. Blogging takes effort. Blogging requires consistency. Blogging requires commitment. Blogging requires good, relevant content. Blogging requires writing skills. And it’s for all of these reasons that many businesses fail miserably when it comes to blogging.
So why do we blog? Why should your business blog? Let me just give you one quick example. Recently I wrote an article called 20 Reasons Your Business Should NOT Be On LinkedIn. All that came out of that was:
-Within the first day of posting the blog on our web site and social media accounts, I heard from people I know and people I don’t know commenting on the article.
-Ragan Communications, a PR and Communications firm out of Chicago, reposted my article for their readers and sent it out with their email newsletter. Others that saw the article retweeted it on Twitter, “LIKE’d” it on Facebook, and re-posted it on their LinkedIn status updates.
-I shared the article with Eric Ly, one of the co-founders of LinkedIn, who I met at a convention over a year ago. His reply: ”LOL Mic! Love the reverse psychology of all these points. I should NOT use LinkedIn. Love it!”
-In the first couple of days after posting the article, I looked at my “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” section on LinkedIn and two people from New York, one person from San Diego, and one person from Lebanon had viewed my profile. And that’s all that I could see (you have to have a paid account to see more).
-One of the people from New York also tried to connect with me on LinkedIn (I politely declined because we recommend that you, as a general rule, only connect to people that you know, trust, respect, etc.) I asked her where she saw the article and she said “A coworker of mine forwarded it to me.”
-A guy I don’t even know wrote this article about it and shared it with his audience.
-Peter Wilkinson, who owns a company based out of Australia, posted his response to the article and shared it with his audience.
All of the things mentioned above are just the ones that I know about. I have no doubt that other people read the article, shared the article on social networks, reposted the article, emailed the article to clients, coworkers and friends, and more. Most of the time that’s what people do. It’s an added bonus if they actually take the time to comment or tell you that they enjoyed your article. In the end, the article spurred opportunities for engagement with other people.
Blue Gurus is a 3-person company and we blog every week. It does, has, and will continue to lead to business. In February, we had more than 2,200 unique visitors to our web site. A large portion of that traffic came from the fact that we consistently create good, relevant content via our blog. In fact, we signed up a new client just last week who saw Jason’s blog post Why You Should Consider Migrating To Google Apps and reached out to us.
Our blog helps create awareness for who we are and what we do. Blogging helps us stay “top of mind” in Kansas City and across the country…even the world. We simply share our stories with people in the hope that it will inspire them or help them in some way. If we do that consistently and authentically, the business will, and has, come.
You want to stress over the ROI of blogging and social media? Be our guest.
We’re just going to keep on blogging.
20 Reasons Why Your Business Should NOT Be On LinkedIn
23 February 2012
5 Comments
A year ago I wrote an an article called “10 Reasons Why Your Business Should Not Be On LinkedIn“. The inspiration for that article came from the fact that I was amazed that part of my day-to-day job involved convincing business owners, especially those in the B2B space, that LinkedIn was a viable tool to help them grow their business and facilitate culture change.
So here I am today having the same conversations with business owners and decisions makers. The education process continues. I suppose in a way I can understand it because “social media” is like a 6 year old…still growing, maturing, and changing. People in every generation are adjusting.
Some think (yours truly included) that the 6 year old has all of the potential in the world. Some think the 6 year old is cute, but has a rough life ahead. Some people think the 6 year old is like all of the other 6 year olds out there. Some people think the 6 year old will eventually grow up and move out of our lives. Some think that a better 6 year old is coming soon. Some think that 6 year old is intriguing and want to be a part of his life as he grows up. And some people just keep trying to ignore the 6 year old and wish he’d just go away.
One tool that I believe is going to be around for a very long time is LinkedIn. And since you can find articles all over the place telling you why your business should be on LinkedIn, let me humor you and hopefully open your eye a bit by taking a slightly different spin on things.
Without further ado, here is my updated list for your reading pleasure…
20 Reasons Your Business Should NOT Be On LinkedIn
1. You will take a cold call over a warm, or even hot, call every day of the week.
2. You think business can only be done face-to-face even though relationship building (isn’t that what business is all about?) happens every single day online.
3. You believe that you (and your employees) 30% complete profile with no summary, no picture and zero recommendations doesn’t reflect poorly on you or your business.
4. You don’t have time to spend a couple of hours on LinkedIn each week to research prospects because you are too busy doing the same sales techniques you’ve used your entire career.
5. You don’t want to participate in forums that make you or your business look like subject matter experts in your industry.
6. You don’t want to read blog articles and stories from people in your professional network that may help you or your business.
7. You don’t want to take the time to give recommendations to people that you’ve worked with throughout your career that are awesome because there isn’t anything in it for you.
8. When customers or prospects search for you on LinkedIn, you want to make sure they can’t find you. And if they do, you want to make sure that your personal profile and company page don’t tell them anything of value. 
9. You know for a fact that none of the 150 million people on LinkedIn are your customers or prospects.
10. You know that LinkedIn is adding 2 people every second (up from 1 person a second a year ago) but those people probably won’t ever want to buy anything anyway.
11. You don’t want to share your personal and professional brand with people because that would be bragging. Even though they want to know. Everyone knows that, in business, it’s always better to not give people what they want.
12. You don’t want to know more about people that you are doing business with or would like to do business with.
13. You believe, with all of your heart, that there is no value in keeping up with what is going on in your professional network (such as new business deals, new hires, new products and services, etc.).
14. You have all the business you will ever need and aren’t interested in generating more.
15. You prefer to limit your prospecting and sales activity to the two networking groups you belong to and the five coffees and lunches you try to set up each week.
16. You don’t see any value in updating your LinkedIn status regularly to tell your professional network about things that may help them.
17. You think tools like LinkedIn aren’t fundamentally changing the way business is done.
18. You don’t want your employees spending time on a tool that can help enhance your brand, your reach, and open up the lines of communication.
19. You don’t want to find talented people to work for you or get recommendations from people that they are connected to on LinkedIn. A two-page resume and a 1-hour interview give you all you need to make a $50,000 decision.
20. You think you’ve done your job on LinkedIn by having an “ok” profile “just so you’re out there” and see nothing wrong with having a LinkedIn inbox full of invitations and messages you haven’t responded to.
If you made it through the whole list, THANK YOU. What do you think?
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