4

LinkedIn: Networking on Steroids

No, this isn’t some creepy dream. (Although the money thing would be pretty cool.) It sounds funny but this is how LinkedIn builds your personal brand.

LinkedIn is an in-person network that uses the power of computer algorithms and data analytics to connect you with people you know and suggest people to meet who share your interests and career. Erik calls it “Facebook for Grown-Ups,” and Kyle calls it the “White-Collar Connection Point.”

It’s like playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but without the bacon.

Click here to view code image

@edeckers:  Mmmm, bacon…
@kyleplacy: Not that kind of bacon.

LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to connect with people who can push your personal brand to new heights. It’s a social networking site much like Facebook, but with 630 million fewer people and higher incomes.

LinkedIn boasts a membership of approximately 500 million users,¹ and 75 percent of them earn $50,000 per year or more in salary.² Talk about a professional networking site.

What makes this site valuable? LinkedIn is exactly what it sounds like: A networking site that helps you “link” to other professionals and build a web of ultimate personal branding domination through new connections. LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to connect with people who can connect you with other people who can connect you with other people, and so on, such as a connection to a former co-worker, which leads to them connecting you to a potential employer.

To start in the world of LinkedIn, you need to understand some of the basics.

The Basics of LinkedIn

Your LinkedIn profile is the window into your professional soul. You can technically view the profile as your online résumé, but it is so much more than that. Résumés can be extremely boring, but a LinkedIn profile allows you to shine.

It’s a way to promote the professional side of your personal brand. It’s the link to your best skill sets, the recommendations of your peers, your professional personality, and a place to share your knowledge. It’s the ideal place to demonstrate every aspect of what makes you valuable to an employer or a client. We have talked extensively about how your personal brand builds trust and tells a credible story. Your LinkedIn profile is another chapter of that story.

What Are Degrees of Connectedness?

We’ll discuss this later, but just understand that LinkedIn—all of networking, in fact—is based on knowing someone who knows someone. Those are the degrees of connectedness.

Let’s say Kyle and Erik are connected on LinkedIn. That makes us 1st degree connections. And Sarah is connected to Erik, but not to Kyle. That makes Kyle and Sarah 2nd degree connections—there are two degrees of separation between Kyle and Sarah. Then, Ernesto is connected to Sarah, but not to Kyle, which makes Kyle and Ernesto 3rd degree connections.

Or, to put it another way, Kyle and Erik are friends. Sarah is the “friend of a friend,” and Ernesto is the “friend of a friend of a friend.”

One of LinkedIn’s strengths is that Kyle and Sarah can connect through Erik, and then Kyle and Ernesto can connect through Sarah. (We’ll talk more about the real-life application of this in “Chapter 12: How to Network: Hello, My Name Is…” We mention it now because everything you’ll do on LinkedIn is built on making these connections to build your network.)

What’s in a LinkedIn Profile?

The first step to establishing your presence on LinkedIn is creating a profile. After that, you can start connecting to people you know who are also on LinkedIn.

The Employment Section

The profile usually focuses on employment and education history (see Figure 4.1), not a list of your hobbies or your favorite movie. We’re going to leave that to Facebook. Remember, this is for your professional brand.

To fill out your profile page, begin by filling in information for your current and former jobs. The entries will include job title, employer, industry, dates, and a short description of what you accomplished at the job.

But don’t simply list your job responsibilities; that’s not very interesting, and it doesn’t set you apart from everyone else. List your accomplishments instead. (And if you can assign a number or dollar value, that’s even better.) For example, write “Grew sales by 23 percent in two years”; “managed $2 million accounting software system overhaul”; or “led marketing campaign that increased web traffic by 200 percent.”

Set aside at least 60 minutes to fill out your LinkedIn profile, and then tweak and adjust it for a few days afterward. It’s easy to fill out, but it needs to be completed fully to do its best work for you.

Figure 4.1 This is an example of a completed LinkedIn profile with all the information associated with your personal brand.

LinkedIn also looks up your employer to see if they’re in the LinkedIn database. That can help you find people who used to, or still, work at the company. This way, you connect with people you already know and start building your network.

After you have filled out your professional information, upload a professional picture, and then fill out your educational experience.

Your Photo/Avatar

We can’t stress enough how important your photo (also called an avatar) is to your social media profile, not just LinkedIn. And it’s important to use the same picture on every social network site on the Internet—it’s part of your personal brand.

If you don’t want to use a photo, at least use something that absolutely looks like you. Not your company logo, not a group photo, and not you standing on the beach with the sun behind you. Not your dog, not your kid, not you as a kid.

If you’re meeting someone for coffee or at a networking event for the first time, they need to be able to know how to find you. What’s the point of having a bad picture on a professional networking site? It’s like going to a networking event with a mask on.

You can decide to take a professional head shot yourself or hire a photographer to take it for you. We recommend the latter. We also assume you understand your photo should not involve a swimsuit or a keg stand.

Education

After you figure out your picture situation, you need to fill in your educational experience. List the different schools and institutions you attended after high school, including their names, degrees earned, years attended, awards won, additional activities, and any awesome accolades you’re able to add.

Click here to view code image

@kyleplacy: Knock it off with the alliteration.
@edeckers:  Awww…

Remember, the more information you list, the better. You never know when you’ll have something in common with a potential employer.

The employment and education information make up the basics of your LinkedIn professional profile, but you also have the chance to fill out a short summary to help people understand exactly what you do and why you do it.

The Summary

This is basically a short description of your professional experience and skills. Remember your personal brand story discussed and built in Chapter 2, “How Do You Fit in the Mix?” This is a great place to use your medium or long story. It’s the traditional career objective you would put on a résumé, but you get to add a little more and make it more thorough than you have room for on a paper résumé.

(Also, don’t put a career objective on your résumé. It’s always some variation of “I want a job using my skills.” Of course you want a job! Save the space for something else. Depending on how much information you have on your résumé, you’ll need every inch you can get.)

LinkedIn uses keywords to track and categorize profiles for use in searching. An employer may use LinkedIn to search for job prospects, or a fellow networker may be searching for you. Be sure to use keywords you want to be known for or found under. And don’t overload the career summary section by using the same keywords over and over. Instead, use words that describe your position, your field, and any useful skills:

“Creative and hardworking young professional focused on corporate public relations. Led two 80+ student organizations while also studying as a full-time student. Worked at two different internships with a PR firm in Washington, DC. Strong written and oral communication skills with a passion for public speaking.”

What makes this an effective summary? It describes what makes the individual special and unique, “who they are, and what they like to do.” They used keywords like public relations, PR, communication, and public speaking.

Your Websites

There’s also a section to list any websites that you’re associated with: personal and professional, your blog, your RSS feed, and your creative portfolio (see Figure 4.2). There’s also a place for you to list interests, affiliated groups, and honors. This lets people find out more about you beyond your LinkedIn profile.

Figure 4.2 This is an example of what someone sees when he searches for your profile. You want him to connect with you outside of LinkedIn using your website or a blog.

Figure 4.3 Don’t just select “Company” or “Blog” on your profile. Select “Other,” then specify what that other thing is. Customizing the name of that particular site is so much more interesting than just plain old “Blog.” Blurg.

After you fill out your profile, check whether it’s 100 percent complete. LinkedIn shows your status for completion, and it’s not difficult to hit 100 percent. Just follow their suggestions, and you’ll complete it before you know it. If only life were this easy!

If you haven’t hit it yet, you need to figure out what needs to be done to reach that mark. A complete profile shows that you mean business, and that helps with LinkedIn searches. It shows potential connections that you’re using LinkedIn properly, and it isn’t just some half-finished, rarely visited network to you.

Cool LinkedIn Features for Personal Branding

LinkedIn is a powerful tool. It’s more than just a résumé or network-building site. It isn’t just a set-it-and-forget-it social network. You actually need to use LinkedIn if you want to benefit from it. Just like every other social network, you get out of it what you put into it. So, use the full range of features to make the best of your efforts and connections.

LinkedIn offers some cool features to help you build your personal brand. The company was bought by Microsoft in 2016, and it has undergone several dramatic changes since then. Focus on these features as you first get started.

• Personal URL—You can personalize your LinkedIn URL. So rather than having a long URL filled with all kinds of letters and numbers, you can have one with your name in it, like “www.linkedin.com/in/WinstonChurchill” (assuming your name really is Winston Churchill).

• Groups and Subgroups: Look under the “Work” tab at the far right of your screen. Join a few groups to build deeper relationships and gain new connections. You can find groups for your community, your industry, or even your job function. You can find some of the best discussions and most influential contacts within your groups. They’re great resources for announcements, sharing upcoming events, starting discussions, and finding valuable information. But only join groups and subgroups because you have a genuine interest in what the group is about; it’s easy to get overwhelmed by them.

• Jobs: We really like the “Jobs” function on LinkedIn, because you have a better shot of networking your way into a job. LinkedIn will show you how many first and second degree contacts as well as fellow school alums work at any given company. If you know one of those people, they might be able to refer you to the right person. Or at the very least tell you if it’s a company worth applying to. Also, you can customize your job searches for certain cities and industries, and you can even save those searches as email alerts.

• Articles: If you’ve read Chapter 3 on blogging, then you understand the importance of publishing your work online. We highly recommend you publish on LinkedIn, too. However, we recommend you publish on your blog first, wait a few days, and then republish the same content on your LinkedIn profile. This way, your blog content is canonical, or recognized as the original source material. The same is true with the blogging platform, Medium.

Making Contacts on LinkedIn

Of course, a networking tool is not much good without a network. And although you can search for people on LinkedIn, there’s an easier way to make connections.

We all have personal contacts who can expand our LinkedIn network, so it’s time to build that database and connect with them. There are a couple of ways you can build your list, and it starts with your email contacts list. You can also find contacts by searching for names, companies, schools, and cities. Finally, LinkedIn has advanced search functionality to reach people you don’t know directly.

After you find your people, invite them to connect. Afterward, check out the people they know and connect with them. Just ask your newly minted connection for an introduction, or peruse their list, click on someone’s profile, and hit the “Connect” button.

Using Your Email List

Of all the tools you have at your disposal, your personal email list is the most important one you have. It’s your initial contact list, filled with people you have already communicated with. They’re the people who already know why you want to connect with them.

The easiest way to start is to download your email database from your email client (like Outlook or Apple Mail) or use your Gmail or Yahoo! email. LinkedIn can connect automatically, or you can upload your list yourself. LinkedIn will then find every address connected to a LinkedIn account. The only thing you have to do is connect. It’s that easy.

Just connect your email account, and LinkedIn pulls in your contacts and shows those who have already joined (see Figure 4.4). This allows you to connect with friends, colleagues, co-workers, vendors, and so on. The same process happens when you upload your email list.

However, you have a chance to confirm any connections before they’re automatically made. That allows you to avoid connecting with someone you’d rather keep at arm’s length.

After you connect to someone, remember to take a quick look at their connections. These are people you may not know but they could be valuable to your network. Remember, your connections can be your best marketers. They’re the ones who spread your message and brand faster than anyone.

Figure 4.4 By allowing LinkedIn to connect with your email address book, you can build your network with personal connections.

Other Ways to Connect: Colleagues and Classmates

After you fill in all your education and work history, LinkedIn can find other people who shared these experiences with you. Whether it’s the woman who worked in the cube next to you, the guy who sat behind you in Psych 100, or even someone you never met from your graduating class, LinkedIn gives you the tools to easily connect with all of them.

When you upload the address book or database to LinkedIn, you can check or uncheck the names of people you’d like to connect with. You can bulk connect with every person in your database automatically, or pick and choose.

You’re also asked to invite nonmembers to the site by email, although we don’t recommend it. The only time you should invite nonmembers is when you’re sure they will appreciate the invite. If they’re the type of people who might freak out that you “sent another email,” it’s probably best to keep from sending that or any other message. And keep in mind that they may be on there under other email addresses. Do a quick search before you invite them via the email addresses you have.

You’re making some great progress. You’ve created a profile and connected your email list. The next step is growing your network into something that can help your overall brand. You can ask your LinkedIn network for introductions to people you do not already know. Remember the second- and third-degree section from the party at the beginning of the chapter? Let’s get this party started.

Building Off Your Second- and Third-Degree Network

Building your network on LinkedIn does not stop at your first-degree connections. The power of LinkedIn lies in connecting with people outside of your immediate connections. It would defeat the purpose if you attended a networking event and chatted only with people you already knew. By connecting with people you know, you can build a platform to reach their connections. This is where the second- and third-degree connections come into play.

• Second-Degree Contact: This is the more important connection. Being connected to a person by a second degree means there is only one person between you and the other individual. LinkedIn allows for second-degree connections to contact each other.

• Third-Degree Contact—A third-degree contact is a harder shell to crack because you’re not directly connected to that person through one other contact—two people are between you and that contact, and you can be third-degree connected to literally tens of thousands of people. “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to achieve.”³

The second-degree contacts on LinkedIn are the more important connections to you in this web of networking. LinkedIn puts the degree of connectedness—first, second, third—next to a person’s name when you’re looking at his profile or at a connections contact list.

By connecting to second-degree contacts, you can build your network past your initial contact list to people who could be extremely helpful to you. You can build an army of people who could become powerful evangelists for your personal brand.

Transforming Your Contacts into Connections

So, why should you turn your contacts into connections? What does that even mean? What is the difference between a contact and a connection? And can we squeeze one more question into this paragraph?

A contact may be less important than an actual connection, because it tells you how closely you have connected.

• Contact: A contact is someone you have met (online or offline) at least once, so they know your name and occupation. They may appreciate the initial connection on LinkedIn, but would hesitate to share their entire client list with you. Remember, the entire point of LinkedIn is to build your network to get introductions to individuals who are second and third degrees from you. To do that, you need to get each of your contacts to become a…

• Connection: A connection is a cheerleader. Not the pom-pom kind, but the rabid fan kind. There’s a level of trust and a relationship there, something you don’t get if you’re a LION (LinkedIn Online Networkers; see the “Do’s and Don’ts about LinkedIn” below). A connection is someone who will share your message whenever asked and will connect you with the necessary people to make your goals a reality. You want to try to turn every contact into a connection. It may not happen, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

So, clearly, the important question is how do you turn contacts into connections? Here's how.

1. Build Trust

LinkedIn was built to create connections between trusted contacts. So how do you do that? Offer them information they think is valuable. Share content through your status updates that helps them. Rather than trying to connect with anyone and everyone—that’s what LIONs do—you should build a smaller, more valuable network by connecting with people who will actually benefit from your content.

2. Recommend Your Friends

You must give to receive. Write recommendations, and you will receive them in return. By recommending people you have worked with, your relationships with your contacts will grow deeper. People put greater stock in recommendations because they’re sincere.

3. Get Involved in Your Contacts’ Groups

Get involved with groups that share your common interests. This introduces you to more possible contacts, and you can identify your relationship with people as part of a shared group. The more groups you join, the more opportunity there is for you to make contacts. But don’t just join to join; be selective. Participating in a group builds the deeper connection points that can strengthen your relationships.

4. Stay in Touch

LinkedIn offers the opportunity to connect with people who may not use sites like Twitter and Facebook. Remember, LinkedIn is made up of professionals who (usually) use it to connect only with other professionals in their industry. LinkedIn is great for staying in touch.

The Importance of Recommendations

Out of all the features LinkedIn offers, recommendations are one of the most important. Recommendations give you additional credibility with people—they’re open letters of reference. And the best way to dominate with your personal brand is to get qualified and stellar recommendations.

If you’ve had a good business relationship with another LinkedIn member, ask them for a recommendation. Don’t ask just to rack up a bunch of recommendations, though. This isn’t a contest. You want people who know you and can honestly write a good one. (We have both been asked for recommendations by people we didn’t even know. We very politely declined.) Then return the favor; writing recommendations also helps complete your LinkedIn profile.

Look for ways to give and receive the appropriate recommendations that can help further your personal brand. Do you want to be known as a good speaker? Ask for recommendations from people who have seen you speak. Do you want to be known as a strategist? Ask clients who have been successful because of the strategy you created. And remember, you must give before you receive. Give recommendations to the people who have helped you over the years, and they more than likely will return the favor.

So what makes a good recommendation? Remember our friends from Chapter 1, “Welcome to the Party”? Our four heroes are devoted LinkedIn users, and they each have gathered recommendations that are useful for their personal branding objectives.

• Allen (influencer) is looking for a new job after working at the same ad agency for 14 years. Allen should ask his supervisor, a co-worker, and a client he worked with for recommendations. Here is an example of a recommendation for Allen from one of his clients:

“Allen has been nothing short of extraordinary at managing our projects with our company. They were continually delivered on time, on target, and on budget, with every detail covered. Thanks, Allen, for being such an asset to our company!”

Notice that the recommendation feeds into Allen’s strengths as an account manager and strengthens his commitment to managing customer accounts the right and successful way.

• Beth (climber) wants to move up the ranks within her company to become CMO. How should Beth use recommendations? She needs recommendations from her superiors and co-workers to show upper management that she is fulfilling her company goals.

Recommendations can help her get past the manager who may not share positive information with the higher-ups of a company. Here is an example of a positive recommendation for Beth:

“Beth has been extremely effective at building marketing platforms that help our team at Company X. She is a go-getter and has consecutively hit her goals and helped our team meet its expectations.”

Beth has a recommendation that feeds into her ability to meet her goals, which is extremely important when climbing the ranks of any company. Remember to include information that can help in your internal promotion meetings. Also, do not hesitate to ask for recommendations from individuals of different departments within the same company. They could end up being extremely powerful for your personal brand development.

• Carla (neophyte) is a former pharmaceutical sales rep who left after eight years with her company. She is interested in working for a nonprofit, either as a program director or a fund-raising specialist.

Carla has an interesting problem because her previous job was as a pharmaceutical sales rep, which has nothing to do with being a program director. There are two things Carla could do. She could ask her sales manager at the pharmaceutical company to give a recommendation based on her ability to create relationships with doctors and other medical professionals, which could help her get a position as a fund-raising specialist. Or she could ask him to talk about her ability to manage several different clients and projects, which could speak to a program director position. Here’s an example of the former:

“Carla was extremely effective in creating strategic relationships with doctors at private practices and helped in securing those relationships over an extended period of time. The relationships she handled have resulted to an increase in sales at our company!”

• Darrin (free agent) is an IT professional who leaves his job every two or three years in pursuit of more money. He’s a free agent because he’ll stay at roughly the same level of job, regardless of where he goes, but he can make more money because there are bigger companies requiring his expertise.

Darrin should follow the same path as Allen when asking for recommendations. He should ask a client or co-worker to discuss his ability to deliver for high-level clients. It is important that he get recommendations from bigger companies because they are his target market; smaller companies will probably not help him in his personal branding endeavors. Here is a good example:

“Darrin is a skilled IT professional who provided me with quality service when I knew very little about the field or my software. He was patient and knowledgeable and communicated well in explaining to me what his plans were in designing my software and internal communication solution. He listened well and provided choices for me based on the type of systems I was going for at the time.”

You may feel overwhelmed because there are so many useful tools to use for LinkedIn and personal branding. But if you want to choose one of the top features to further your personal brand, it’s Recommendations. You are giving people the opportunity to tell their story of interacting with you as an individual and how you helped them. Now that’s powerful!

Ten Do’s and Don’ts of LinkedIn

Don’t you love the do’s and don’ts section of books? We do.

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@kyleplacy: This is the only part of the book I'm actually going
            to read.
@edeckers:  But isn't this your chapter to write?
@kyleplacy: Yeah, so?

There are plenty of rules to apply when building your personal brand with LinkedIn. These are the top 10 we share with our audiences. They are the ones you should take extremely seriously if you want your personal branding campaign to be a success.

1. Do Upload a Professional Picture

This should be self-explanatory, but it’s surprising how many starfish, cars, sunflowers, people standing on the beach at sunset, and dogs we see on LinkedIn profiles. Honestly, who puts a picture of their dog on a professional networking platform?

It’s bad enough when people do it on Facebook and Twitter, but this is a professional network.

The point of LinkedIn is to further your networking ability online as well as offline. You want people to recognize you when you walk into a networking event. And that doesn’t happen with a picture of your dog, you in a group, a picture of your kid, a picture of you as a kid, or you at the beach.

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@edeckers:  Ooh, I hate the "standing on the beach" photos.
            They're too small and they're backlit so I can't see who they are.
@kyleplacy: What about the photo of people standing in the
            mountains?
@edeckers:  Those too. They try to show the entire mountainscape,
            but the person is the size of a gnat in the photo.

Upload a professional picture to all the platforms you join. We know you’ll want to be fun and creative on those other sites, but don’t do it if you’re trying to create a professional image. (That means no selfies either.)

2. Do Connect to Your Real Friends and Contacts

Just like we tell children not to talk to strangers, the same applies to your LinkedIn profile. It’s crazy to see how many people connect with strangers all over the world because they want to build up their network.

Connecting to hundreds of strangers will not help your network in LinkedIn. They don’t care about you! They will not help build your brand. Why would you build a network of people you don’t know and will never know? Remember, you want to create connections (deep relationships), not contacts (someone whose email you just happened to get).

The value of your network comes from the quality of your relationships, not the quantity. Although LIONs abound on LinkedIn, they don’t actually add value to their network. They just have a lot of people they’re connected to.

As a test, Erik has asked LIONs for referrals to one of their connections, only to be told, “Oh, I don’t actually know them; they’re just in my network.” LIONs don’t actually provide any real value to the people they connect with, so don’t become one!

3. Do Keep Your Profile Current

Here's a hypothetical. Erik is hanging out with Kyle, and there is a funky smell coming from somewhere. Kyle asks Erik where that smell is coming from, and Erik nonchalantly says he hasn’t changed clothes in three days. Does that change the way Kyle interacts with Erik? Of course!

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@edeckers:  What the hell? Why did you pick that example?
@kyleplacy: See what happens when you leave me alone with the
            manuscript?

Just like Erik neglected his appearance (hypothetically, dammit!—Erik), the same idea applies to your LinkedIn profile. If you neglect your profile, people will tend to forget and avoid you. Neglecting your profile doesn’t help you in the least, and at worst, it shows you’re lazy.

4. Do Delete People Who Spam You

In life and in LinkedIn, there are bad apples. Sometimes contacts or connections abuse the system and spam your Inbox with some new multilevel marketing scheme or a new product or service they’re selling. It’s polite to ask them to stop and rethink their strategy. They could be new to this, and maybe they made a mistake. But if they continue to abuse your connection, delete them. They’re wasting your valuable time by making you wade through their mess. Get rid of them.

The latest trend has been for salespeople from web development firms to connect with dozens, if not hundreds of people, who immediately pitch their web company (with nearly identical emails). Erik disconnects with those people when it happens and often reports them as spammers. If only a few people do that, LinkedIn may suspend their account.

5. Do Make Your Summary Look Its Best

Do you ever read an email, newspaper, or blog post with a terrible headline? Of course not. Your summary has the same effect on your LinkedIn profile. Be extremely concise and specific when writing your summary. Get people excited about reading your profile and connecting with you. Express what you are passionate about. It may even be helpful to have a co-worker or close connection review your summary.

6. Don’t Use LinkedIn Like Facebook and Twitter

There’s a time and place for professional and personal content when building your brand. LinkedIn is a professional network, and although it’s important to share some personal content, don’t use LinkedIn as a personal network. And certainly no cat videos or animated gifs. That’s what Facebook is for.

7. Don’t Sync LinkedIn with Twitter

Similarly, don’t automatically blend LinkedIn with Twitter. There are tools that will automatically repost your Twitter messages to LinkedIn.

Don’t do this ever. If you’re using Twitter correctly, you’re communicating with people, asking and answering questions, giving shout-outs to people across the country, and even making plans for lunch. People on LinkedIn don’t want their feeds filled with your constant tweets.

The same is true of Facebook: Don’t push your Twitter feed into your Facebook account.

8. Don’t Decline Invitations—Archive Them

When a stranger asks you for a connection on LinkedIn, archive the invitation instead of deleting it. There could be a time when you meet this person, and you can refer to the previous invitation to connect with them. When a connection is archived, it’s easier to keep track of.

9. Don’t Ask Everyone for Recommendations

There’s no hard and fast rule about the number of recommendations you should have. There’s no minimum, and some people think there’s no maximum. Just remember that not every recommendation is important.

You do need to have at least two recommendations to reach 100 percent completion of your profile, but they need to be valuable recommendations. Here are a couple tips to follow:

• Make sure you know the person: This seems obvious, but unfortunately it’s not. If you don’t know the person who’s asking for a recommendation, send a nice note that says, “I'm sorry, I don’t know you well enough to do it justice.” You don’t need to give a recommendation to someone you don’t know; similarly, you don’t need to accept one either.

• Ask your best clients: Happy clients are the best referral and recommendation sources for you. Make a list of 10 people to ask for a recommendation. You don’t need 20 or 30, because 10 people talking about you is more than enough to strengthen your personal brand.

10. Don’t Forget to Use Spelling and Grammar Check

Do you check the spelling and grammar on your résumé? Your profile is technically a résumé, and we’ve all been taught that our résumés have to be laser-perfect. Spell-check everything! If you lose a job or a position because you misspelled a word, you have to buy five more copies of this book.

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@kyleplacy: Ooh, and attend one of our seminars!
@edeckers:  Yeah, at full price!

1. https://blog.linkedin.com/2017/april/24/the-power-of-linkedins-500-million-community

2. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/09/demographics-of-key-social-networking-platforms-2/

3. Take THAT, Walter Scott!