Social networking

Not Everyone Likes LinkedIn but with 120 Million Users Can You Afford to Ignore It?

April 11, 2012 By Des Walsh Leave a Comment

Getting the Point About LinkedIn

Whenever I get up to speak to a group about LinkedIn, I’m conscious that there will almost certainly be some people in the group who have decided they don’t like the platform and others who may not feel strongly for or against it, but just don’t see the point.

Because let’s face it, for many people, the word “LinkedIn” just conjures up the image of messages, including from people they may not even recall having met, declaring they would like to add the recipient to their “professional network”. Those people probably think of LinkedIn, if they bother to think of it at all, as at best a mystery and at worst an annoyance.

Which is a shame, especially for anyone in business or wanting to promote their brand or career, because there is so much benefit to be derived from LinkedIn. And I for one believe the network should be an essential part of a social media strategy for just about any business, and especially for any business in the broad field of professional services.

So I see it as a key part of my mission these days to show people how they can most effectively use LinkedIn.

Because:

LinkedIn with its more than 120 million members, gives us a valuable key to managing our online identities, both for our individual careers and for our brand or company, and
I’ve spent more time than I care to think of learning about how LinkedIn works and I love sharing from that experience

So in this post I’m basically:

promoting the idea of LinkedIn being good for all or most businesses and
doing a bit of shameless, but hopefully not excessively intrusive, self-promotion of my LinkedIn-related services.

A Must for Business

It’s my belief that just about any business, from large corporations to solo professionals, should have a developed, optimized presence on LinkedIn.

As the Chief Marketing Officer for industry giant HP, Michael Mendenhall said recently:

“LinkedIn is a pioneer in harnessing the power of social media and brands can benefit tremendously from participating in this networking of leading professionals.”

And indeed I see increasing signs that business people are recognizing that LinkedIn may well provide fresh opportunities for market development, reputation-building and even real live deals.

One of those signs is that over the past eighteen months or so I have been getting – and accepting – invitations to speak about LinkedIn for business, such as a webinar for the Australian Businesswomens’ Network and as speaker for a sold-out networking breakfast in the nearby city of Brisbane.

Much, Much More Than a Resume Posting Site

For all the growing interest in LinkedIn among business people, I have to acknowledge that there are still some who ask me questions that show they do not understand the power of the network.

Questions like “Isn’t LinkedIn just a site where you put your resume if you are looking for a job, and maybe somewhere recruiters check to see who is available? I’m not looking for a job and I don’t need staff, so what use would LinkedIn be for me?”

Well of course it can be, and indeed is, a job-seeking/candidate-sourcing site. But it is much more.

That “much more” is why every business owner and executive needs to pay attention to LinkedIn, and especially to the ongoing efforts by LinkedIn to enhance the site’s features as a key social media site for business.

For example:

Company profiles: as well as the individual profiles many people (over 100 million actually) have on LinkedIn, you can also add your company profile and to that you can add information about products and services
LinkedIn Groups: there is a plethora of groups for all sorts of professional and personal interests and some people use those very effectively to promote themselves and their companies – and if you want to set up your own group, you can do that with a few keystrokes
LinkedIn Answers: I am continually amazed at how much information and business wisdom is shared through responses to questions posed on LinkedIn Answers – and asking as well as answering questions there is another way of building your profile and your company’s.

Linked Leverage

The short story then is that LinkedIn is an effective way of gaining leverage in the marketplace, a way of standing out, especially – although not exclusively – for professional services companies and practitioners.

But after doing a lot of presentations, webinars and individual coaching about LinkedIn, I do understand that some things that seem clear enough to me are not at all clear for people new to the platform.

That’s why I produced my short, complimentary ebook, 5 Simple Steps for Getting Started with LinkedIn.

And for people who want to get real value from their LinkedIn membership I cover all the main issues and share tips and guidance, in my range of LinkedIn coaching and workshop packages, under the headings:

LinkedIn profile makeover
LinkedIn profile Done For You
Personal LinkedIn strategy
Corporate workshops on LinkedIn

It’s hard to find good case studies

As a speaker and a coach, I’m always on the lookout for case studies showing how companies, especially in the field of professional services, have been able to use social media to good effect. I’ve had some success in terms of social media generally, but it’s been a harder call for LinkedIn specifically.

When Bill Vick and I wrote the recruiting industry guide, LinkedIn for Recruiting, we were able to find and share a number of case studies for that industry. But that was several years ago and those stories were specific to recruitment.

Right now, I am especially interested in stories from the financial services and legal sectors.

So if you have a case study from one of those professions or some other that you can point me to, or share here in the comments (or send me the info via the Contact page) – or maybe not even a “case study” but just a success story, that would be very much appreciated.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Business, career, LinkedIn, professional services, Social networking

Law Firms and Social Media Success Stories 1

March 26, 2012 By Des Walsh Leave a Comment

I’ve long maintained that there are some serious challenges for professional services firms wanting to engage effectively with and through social media, as I wrote about earlier this year in relation to financial advisers.

The flipside is that there is a lot of opportunity for those professional services that make the effort to develop a good understanding of the social media sphere, create a workable strategy and take action determinedly and consistently.

But it’s not easy to find appropriate case studies against which to benchmark, as I discovered when I went looking for some in the financial advising industry and discovered also applies in the legal industry. when I went searching recently as part of my preparation for an upcoming seminar for lawyers in Brisbane, Australia.

So I thought that rather than go for case studies I would make the search simpler and look for something less rigorous, namely success stories.

As I often do with such searches, I turned to the LinkedIn community and placed a question on LinkedIn Answers. I asked the question ”Does anyone have direct experience of successful social media engagement by a law firm or firms?” As the answers show, a number of people weighed in with links to people who would know or to individuals who seem to be using one or other social platform, say blogging, effectively.

There were only a few examples of evident integration across platforms: i.e. being active on more than one platform and having the activity on the different networks linked. Two of these that stood out for me were the UK’s Chrissie Lightfoot and the California firm Allen Matkins.

Chrissie Lightfoot has very clear links from her website home page to her blog, Facebook page, LinkedIn profile and Twitter account, and takes advantage of features providing for cross-posting across platforms.

For anyone interested in implications of the intersection between technology and the legal profession, I recommend reading her blog post (with link to a fuller version) The iCyborg Lawyer is Near?

Allen Matkins have prominent links to their several blogs on specific practice areas. Links from their web home page to their presences on various social platforms – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – are not obvious (they are at the bottom of the page, as far below the “fold” as can be) but there is a clear integration. I was especially impressed by their very professional videos, using YouTube and embedding the videos also in their web site.

More to come soon

In addition to the above and other success stories linked in the responses to my question on LinkedIn Answers, I plan to post some further examples here of successful social media engagement by law firms, under the heading of Law Firms and Social Media Success Stories.

If you have such a story to share, either for your own firm or another, do please share the information in the comments here.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: lawyers, legal profession, Social Media, Social networking

My 1,000 LinkedIn Contacts Give Me a Network of 15 Million But That’s Not a Strategy

August 8, 2011 By Des Walsh

I noticed today that at 951 the number of my direct connections on the professional networking platform LinkedIn is seriously nudging 1,000 and the total network, including second and third level connnections, has more or less overnight topped 15 million.

A bit of a milestone that 15 million, so I thought I should not let the moment pass unremarked.

But does that number make me a better person?

Or more successful in business?

Hardly.

At the most basic level all it does is illustrate how a relatively small number of direct connections on Linked can translate into a very large network.

And as anyone knows who has heard or read my comments on LinkedIn over the years, I am definitely on the conservative side when it comes to making direct connections on the LinkedIn professional networking platform.

Some of my “super connector” colleagues would think 1,000 direct connections a very modest number indeed!

But the approach I’ve followed suits my social media strategy.

My general principle is to follow the official line of LinkedIn, to only connect with people I know: (see LinkedIn’s “Accepting or Declining Invitations” page and the advice “We strongly recommend that you only accept invitations to connect from people you know”). In recent times I have stretched my concept of “knowing” somewhat, but I still need to have some contact, whether face to face, or via phone, Skype or – it those options prove too challenging, via email. Some who invite me to connect clearly find that approach uninteresting or unacceptable and I never hear from them again.

Which is ok.

There is a lot more to leveraging LinkedIn for business or career effectiveness than acquiring a large number of connections.

What that “more” will be depends very much on the business or career objectives of the particular user. For me the “more” is about such objectives as:

raising my profile and being readily “findable”, for specific industry sectors, as well as geographically and regionally, as a social media strategist, LinkedIn specialist and business coach
attracting more clients
supporting my existing clients by helping them with their own business or career development, e.g. by making introductions through my LinkedIn network

That in turn requires that I both analyze my existing network, including its geographical, industry sector and “influence” aspects and identify areas where I need to put more effort into building my connections.

Getting some numbers, even very big numbers like, say, 15 million, is just the start.

Others will have different strategic objectives.

If you care to share some of your strategic objectives with LinkedIn (and your LinkedIn profile link by all means), that would be very welcome.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Des Walsh on LinkedIn, LinkedIn, Social networking

LinkedIn: Building Networks not Collections

June 1, 2010 By Des Walsh

For first level connections on LinkedIn to happen, I need to first have some form of personal contact

In all the time I’ve been on groups where LinkedIn is discussed, including the Linked Bloggers group I co-moderate, the great staple of discussion has always been what some refer to as the Quality vs Quantity debate.

The discussion revolves around the question of how well you should know someone before you connect with them at the “first level”.

Sometimes the discussion is conducted in fairly either/or terms: either you connect with as many people as possible, or – in the words LinkedIn provides under the box from where you send an invitation – “only invite people you know well and who know you”.

In one of the LinkedIn groups to which I belong, I picked up today on another iteration of this Great Debate. In that instance it was framed in terms of whether you would establish a direct connection with someone you had never actually met (with the implication of having met “in real life” as distinct from just online).

My contribution to that discussion was that I believe there is a sensible line which does not involve either never connecting with anyone you haven’t met or going the open slather of connecting with everyone possible.

I acknowledge the point of view of colleagues and others who argue that you should build the biggest possible network of first level connections, on the basis – as I understand – that this gives you more reach and influence. There are more complex arguments advanced, which I have personally found either too arcane in their theoretical frameworks or simply not convincing enough for me and for where I focus my business activities.

When Bill Vick and I wrote LinkedIn for Recruiting, we devoted several pages to outlining this Quality vs Quantity discussion and included quotes from people with a range of views on the subject. (LinkedIn for Recruiting is now available as a free download.)

My approach is that I check out the credentials of the person wanting to connect and then offer at least a virtual meeting, preferably a Skype call but sometimes I am ok with an email exchange.

Most of the people I offer this to do not even have the courtesy to respond, which to me says that it would be quite unrealistic to see them as potential business connections. And I never cease to be amazed at the number of people with whom I have had no prior contact and who send me a boilerplate “invitation” with no explanatory info or other courtesy included.

Is that how the butterfly feels when the fellow with the net turns up?

That said, I am privileged to be connected to a group of what I would call high quality people, all 644 of them (today’s count), who in turn can connect me to 363,400 other professionals at two degrees removed and then to 12,934,100.

In my book that’s a pretty good network. YMMV

By the way, in the four hours that elapsed since I started drafting this post, my total LinkedIn network grew by another 700 – not quite 100 an hour, but getting there.