Chapter 19

Ten LinkedIn Do's and Don'ts

In This Chapter

Managing setup and maintenance to get the most out of LinkedIn

Following netiquette to keep from alienating contacts

Keeping your LinkedIn activity more personal and less mechanical

I cover a lot of ground in this book — so much that it might be hard to remember it all as you're going about your daily use of LinkedIn. So here are ten essential do's and don'ts to help you build relationships and get the most value out of LinkedIn.

Do Keep Your Profile Complete and Current

Even though LinkedIn has many features, your profile is still one of the most compelling reasons to use the Web site, which is why LinkedIn is one of the best searchable databases of businesspeople available. And if you want to be found by others, you need to make sure that your data is complete and current. Here are a few of ways to do that:

• List all your former employers and schools. Several features help users find and connect with former colleagues and classmates (see Chapter 6). Including your complete work and educational background in your profile can help you reconnect.

  If you've had a lengthy career, you don't necessarily need to include details about positions early in your career — just the companies and titles will suffice. A good guideline is to include details on just the past 7–10 years. Additionally, consider including only those positions relevant to your current work. I seriously doubt that my first job at a McDonald's is relevant to my current work as an author (except if I want to write the sequel to Fast Food Nation). I've also grouped a lot of my contract work under one experience heading with my own consulting company name, because many of the consulting jobs were similar in nature. It's up to you how you want to present your experience to the LinkedIn community.

• Update your profile (and headline) any time you achieve a new position, complete a major side project, or receive a special award or recognition. Your direct connections will be notified (assuming they haven't turned off the feature) of the change. This is a subtle, unobtrusive way to notify your network of your career changes. And you never know when someone is going to be looking for what you have to offer. Make sure that if you have a new position, you update your e-mail address with your new corporate e-mail address so people can still reach and invite you. You can also provide status updates that go out to your network.

Don't Use Canned Invitations

There is never a good situation in which to use one of the default invitation text messages LinkedIn provides when you send someone an invitation to join your network on LinkedIn. Nothing says “You're not really worth a few extra seconds of my time” quite like the all-too-familiar “I'd like to add you to my professional network” message.

That doesn't mean every invitation has to be a lengthy personal epistle. Here are a few tips for keeping invitations efficient but personal:

• Keep it short when you can. With people you know well and have been in recent contact with, the canned messages are actually too long. The message can be as simple as this:

  Great to see you last night, Jerry — let's connect.

• Make sure you know whether the person is already a LinkedIn member. Someone who's already a member doesn't need to be convinced of LinkedIn's benefits. Maybe it shouldn't be annoying to him that you're explaining something he already knows, but it's just an indication that you didn't really put any thought into making the connection.
• If the contact isn't already a member, offer to help with the registration process. You can try to explain the benefits of joining LinkedIn in an e-mail, but no matter what you do, it's going to come across as a sales pitch, or at least a bit evangelistic. The best way to persuade people is to offer to spend a few minutes on the phone explaining it and how you're using it. That also turns the invitation into an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with that person by offering your time to bring her something of value.
• You can still personalize a batch of invitations. You can give the invitation a personal touch even if you're sending it to multiple people. For example, you can send the same invitation to all the people you met or ran into at an event. Or you can send one invitation to everyone in your chamber of commerce. Just remember to write it as if it were going to one person, not the whole group.

For more on invitations, see Chapter 2.

Don't Expect Everyone to Network Like You Do

Setting rigid networking expectations can be a source of needless frustration and can actually prevent you from building relationships with some pretty great people. Here are some of the common issues that arise:

• Different people have different standards for connecting. Some people use LinkedIn to connect only with people they know very well. Some connect only with people with whom they share some common points of interest. Others connect with anybody. None of these approaches is wrong. If some people don't have the same standard for a connection that you do, don't take it personally, and don't judge them — they're doing what's right for them.
• People might have perfectly good reasons not to allow other people to browse their LinkedIn connections list. Don't hold anything against people who don't enable it. People may be concerned about client confidentiality, and thus be required to keep their connections private. Or they may be connected to a competitor and not want their bosses and co-workers to know about it. Or they may just be concerned about their time commitments and not want to handle a growing number of introduction requests if all their friends see their long list of connections. However, even if a person has disabled connections browsing, you can still get introductions to people that person knows. Frankly, if you're just browsing other people's networks, maybe you should think about a more focused approach.
• Not everyone responds in a timely manner. If your request doesn't get forwarded or you haven't gotten a reply to your InMail after a couple of weeks, don't take it personally. It doesn't mean that you're unimportant; it just means the people you're trying to contact are busy. If it's really urgent, pick up the phone, or consider sending another e-mail acknowledging that the other person is likely very busy but you were checking in one more time to see if he or she would be willing to set up a time to talk or converse online. Don't underestimate the power that a friendly and understanding note can have on the other party.
• Some people are bad with names. Just because you remember somebody's name doesn't mean that she remembers yours. Unless you're 100 percent certain that she will recognize your invitation, contact her via e-mail or phone or a LinkedIn introduction request before sending a connection request. Otherwise, don't be surprised when she declines your invitation or clicks the I Don't Know This Person link.
• Relationships aren't always reciprocal. For example, if you were someone's client, you might be able to provide a great recommendation for him. That doesn't mean he can do the same for you, so don't expect it.
• Not everyone networks just to network. Some people are extremely busy and not receptive to “I'd just like to meet you” requests. It's nothing personal, and it doesn't mean they're bad networkers. It just means that the demands on their time exceed the supply.

Do Your Homework

People provide you with all kinds of guidance, both direct and implicit, regarding what to contact them about and how. If you're the one initiating the communication, it's your responsibility to communicate on their terms. And showing that you took the time to do your homework about them demonstrates a certain level of commitment to the relationship right from the outset.

The most basic rule of good conversation is to listen. In the context of LinkedIn, that rule means simply this: Pay attention to what's on a person's profile. Any time you contact somebody, review her profile first as well as her contact settings. Respect what you see in her profile and contact settings.

For example, suppose you have a business deal or a job inquiry that you want to contact John Smith about, but his profile says he's not accepting such inquiries right now. Don't think that you know better than John does about whether he might be interested, and definitely don't try to pass off your deal or job inquiry as a mere “expertise request” or a “request to reconnect” and then tell him why you're really contacting him.

When you send an introduction request or an invitation to someone you don't know very well, don't put the burden on her to figure out what the common areas of interest or potential opportunities are. You took the time to read her profile and determine that it's a worthwhile connection. Save her the trouble of figuring out what you already know and put your common areas of interest in your introduction request or invitation.

Do Give LinkedIn Messages Equal Importance

Many people have a tendency to treat LinkedIn communications as less important or less time-sensitive than an official e-mail or phone call.

Nothing could be further from the truth. People get jobs, hire employees, gain clients, and make deals as a result of LinkedIn-based communications. They are every bit as much a part of your essential business correspondence as the rest of your e-mail. (If they're not, you're connecting with the wrong people!)

Here are some tips for managing your LinkedIn communications:

• Don't turn off e-mail notifications. Missing time-sensitive communications is one of the worst things you can do. If the volume of e-mail seems overwhelming, you can use e-mail rules to move LinkedIn requests into a separate folder, but as a general productivity practice, you want as few different Inboxes as possible.

  To make sure you have e-mail notifications set up correctly, log in to your LinkedIn account and either visit the Communications section of the settings page, or go to www.linkedin.com/settings/email-frequency.

  You see the Email Frequency screen, as shown in Figure 19-1. By clicking each category, such as Messages from Other Members (see Figure 19-2), you can set up what comes to you as an individual e-mail, a weekly digest e-mail, or no e-mail so you can decide what is most important.

  

  

• Check your LinkedIn Inbox every day. Or at least every couple of days. You wouldn't go a week without checking your e-mail at work — don't treat LinkedIn messages any differently. (See Chapter 9 for more on how to manage your LinkedIn Inbox.)
• Do it, delegate it, defer it, or delete it. This technique from David Allen's book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (Penguin, 2002) will help you keep your Inbox organized. As you're going through your Inbox, if you can handle a request in under two minutes, go ahead and do it. Or you can delegate it by sending on the introduction request or recommending one of your contacts as an expert to answer the person's question. If something in your Inbox takes a little more time, you can defer it by putting it into your work queue to handle later.

For additional tips on e-mail organization and productivity, check out David Allen's book Getting Things Done, and also take a look at 43 Folders’ Inbox Zero collection at www.inboxzero.com.

Don't Spam

One person's networking is another person's spam. Better to err on the side of caution. There are plenty of ways to use LinkedIn productively without getting a bad rep as a spammer. Here are some basic rules of etiquette:

• Don't post marketing messages or connection-seeking messages as Status Updates. All these will get your message flagged and fairly quickly removed. Don't waste your effort. There's a fine line between market or product research that calls attention to your company and an advertisement.
• Don't automatically subscribe your connections to your newsletter. This is admittedly a gray area. Connecting with someone indicates a certain level of receptivity to receiving communication from him, and it's reasonable to assume that should include something more than just LinkedIn introduction requests. After all, he's supposed to be someone you know and trust, right? Well, that's not necessarily the same thing as signing up for a regular bulk newsletter.

  I think it's better to be safe than sorry, so I don't recommend auto-subscribing folks to your newsletter. People can get ticked off if they suddenly start getting some newsletter they didn't subscribe to.

  The best approach is simply to ask permission to subscribe your individual contacts to your newsletter. If you get their permission, even if they do complain later, you can politely point out that you asked first.

• Don't send connection requests to people you don't know. Unless they've given some kind of explicit indication that they're open to receiving invitations (for example, announcing it on a forum, stating it in their profiles, or being a member of an open networking group), you have to assume that most people don't want to receive LinkedIn connection invitations from strangers. LinkedIn has taken measures to curb such rampant inviting behavior, and it will get you suspended soon enough. Again, there's a simple solution: Ask permission first. Send an introduction request, or contact the person via e-mail or his Web site, and ask whether it would be okay for you to send him a connection invitation.

Do Be Proactive About Making New Connections

If you just set up a profile, connect with a few of your contacts, and then expect business to come your way, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. That's not to say that it can't happen, but being a little bit proactive goes a long way:

• Search for people who can help you with your goals. If you want to meet people in a particular city, industry, or target market, search for them specifically and make introduction requests. Some people are receptive to corresponding or talking just for networking purposes, but you'll get a better response if you have a specific need or opportunity as the basis of your contact.
• Introduce people to each other. LinkedIn's basic introduction paradigm is reactive. For example, an introduction is made when person A wants to connect with person C via person B. But an essential practice of a good networker is identifying possible connections between people in your network and introducing them to each other. You can do this by forwarding one person's profile to the other and Cc'ing the first person (see Chapter 5). You can send a LinkedIn message to both connections introducing them and telling them why you think they should get to know each other.
• Get involved. The Groups section is the main form of public group interaction on LinkedIn. You can come together with other people to talk about a shared interest, or as alumni of a school or university, or as former or current employees of a given company. After you join a LinkedIn Group, you have access to the other group members just as you do a first-degree connection or second-degree network member on LinkedIn, and group involvement is a great way to expand your network and further your education.

Do Cross-Promote

Your LinkedIn profile is just one Web page of your total Web presence. It should connect people to your other points of presence, and you probably want to direct people to your LinkedIn profile from other venues as well. Here are some good cross-promotion practices:

• Customize your LinkedIn profile links. As described in Chapter 3, you can create up to three links on your profile that you can use to lead people to your business site(s), personal site, blog, book, event, and so on.
• Include a link to your LinkedIn profile in your signature. You can use this both in your e-mail signature and also on discussion forums. If you don't have a centralized personal professional Web site, your LinkedIn profile is a good alternative. I cover how LinkedIn can help you create your e-mail signature in Chapter 10.
• Link to your LinkedIn profile in your blog's About page. Why rehash your entire bio? Put a couple of paragraphs that are relevant to the blog and then refer people to your LinkedIn profile for more details.
• Install the LinkedIn app for your smartphone. LinkedIn has added a lot of functionality to their mobile app, which is available for the iPhone or Android operating system. Using the mobile app will allow you to access LinkedIn when you're out and about, networking in person.
• Put your LinkedIn URL on your business card. More and more people are starting to do this.

Do Add Value to the Process

LinkedIn is based on the idea that existing relationships add value to the process of people meeting each other. If all you're doing is just passing the introduction “bucket” down the virtual bucket brigade, you're actually getting in the way of communication, not adding value.

To add value, you have to give those introduction requests some thought. Is it an appropriate fit for the recipient? Is the timing good?

Add your comments to the introduction request. Do you know the sender? Saying, “I worked with Michael Bellomo for several years as a co-author, and he was hard-working, trust-worthy, and ambitious” goes a lot further than saying, “Hey, Francine, here's this guy Michael to check out.” For additional guidance on how to handle this tactfully, see Chapter 5.

Don't Confuse Quantity with Quality

Just because you're doing a lot of something doesn't mean you're doing something well. And when you think about it, is more networking activity what you really want? Or do you really want more results with less activity?

If you want to track your real progress using LinkedIn, don't measure it by meaningless metrics like number of connections, endorsements, or questions answered. Use metrics that you know directly tie to business results, such as

• Leads generated
• Joint venture/strategic partner prospects generated
• Qualified job candidates contacted
• Potential employers successfully contacted
• Interviews scheduled
• Speaking opportunities garnered
• Publicity opportunities created