Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn. Neal Schaffer

Yet another reason I am writing this book!

      •“Blog” is a real blog with some interesting content about LinkedIn and how people are using it. You should pay attention to the “Categories” title on the left side which lists blog titles in “New Features,” “Tips & Tricks,” “In The News” and “Success Stories.” Recently “Engineering” and “Recent Grads” have been added to the mix. RSS feeds for all of these are available via an email notification subscription to the blog itself.

      •“Overview” in the “Tools” section shows off tools that LinkedIn has developed to embed LinkedIn into your PC applications. All of these are accessible on this page. It is a shame their two toolbars are useless to a personal user (i.e. me) who uses neither Outlook (I use Gmail) nor Internet Explorer/Firefox (I use Google Chrome). They have a handy email signature tool, which once again is tied to Outlook/Outlook Express/Thunderbird, which I cannot use. A Google Toolbar Assistant requires a Google Toolbar, which doesn’t exist in Google Chrome. Finally, there is a Mac Dashboard Search Module, but I utilize Windows. Needless to say, I have found zero use for any of these tools, so they are not by any means necessary to implement what I teach you in the rest of this book; however, I have heard rave reviews from those who use the Outlook Toolbar, as it could make your time spent on LinkedIn much more efficient. The email signature tool is definitely a helpful feature to have if you are using Outlook. If you are interested, they appear easy to download and install from this section. These tools can make your Windmill Networking more efficient while helping promote your LinkedIn Brand.

      •“Upgrade Your Account,” should you wish to change from a free to a paid account. We will cover this topic in Chapter 14: Putting it All in Perspective in the “To Pay or Not to Pay?” section.

      Now that you understand what is available on your Home Page, it is time to actually start navigating LinkedIn, connecting with others, and building up your LinkedIn network. It is time for you to embark on your journey of Windmill Networking.

      PART II:THE WINDMILL NETWORKING APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING LINKEDIN

      You will be able to register and implement your LinkedIn Brand once you understand the mechanics of LinkedIn. A thorough review of LinkedIn’s main features, along with unique, additional insight I have included, will put everything in the context of Windmill Networking. As a result, you will be able to use the strategies and techniques I present to achieve your LinkedIn Objective. The chapters in this section will cover the following topics: invitations, connections, Introductions, Recommendations, Groups, Answers, Applications, jobs, and companies. It will also look closely at settings that can help customize your LinkedIn experience. I will not waste time on things I deem unimportant; instead of being a comprehensive introduction to LinkedIn, this section of chapters will take a thorough and detailed look at the most frequently used functionalities along with their potential restrictions. When finished with this section, you will have started building your network, sending and receiving Recommendations, joining Groups, and answering questions. My goal is to provide you with a roadmap to help you realize the power of Windmill Networking. It will be instrumental in helping you achieve your LinkedIn Objective.

      Chapter 3: Invitations & Connections

      •Your First Invitations: How to “Add Connections”

      •Connecting with People: The Invitation Mechanism

      •Finding People to Connect With Using Advanced Search

      •Navigating Through Profiles

      •My Top Five Tips to Write a Great Invitation

      •Managing Your Invitations

      •The Dreaded “IDK”

      •I’m Out of Invitations?!?! Help!

      •Dealing with Spam? On LinkedIn?

      •The Disconnecting Option

      •Emailing Your Connections: What You Need to Know

      •How Do I Contact 2^nd and 3^rd Degree Connections?

      Your First Invitations: How to “Add Connections”

      Since you have come this far, I assume you are ready to roll up your sleeves and begin making connections, starting with those in your immediate physical network. LinkedIn has made this very easy for you by providing the “Add Connections” functionality. You can access this function by clicking on the big green “Add Connections” button, which is near the bottom of the left-hand sidebar. Upon concluding this exercise, based on the size of your physical network, you will already be on your way to building a network of tens and perhaps hundreds of connections!

      If you are new to LinkedIn, your profile will display that you have no connections here when you access this screen. The following options appear under four different tabs on this page:

      Invite Contacts

      If you know the first and last name, as well as email address, of someone you want to add, you can directly input this information here. This is not the most efficient way of adding people as it is extremely time consuming. Imagine if you have a database of several hundred contacts. You would need to input their first name, last name, and email address, all in separate fields, for several hundred contacts! It is also far from error-proof, as email addresses of people you know may have changed. I do not think this option is used very often, unless you wish to invite only a few people at a time.

      Import Contacts – Check Webmail

      This is the tab you will find the most useful. If you have a webmail account from Microsoft (Hotmail/WindowsLive), Yahoo, Google, AOL or a select group of “other” providers, LinkedIn will log into your account after you enter a valid username and password. LinkedIn will then present you with a list of your contacts in alphabetical order, giving you the option to immediately invite everyone in your address book. This is probably how you got that initial invitation to join LinkedIn!

      Before you get excited about finding a few hundred potential connections here, be warned that LinkedIn is looking at your entire address book. If you are a Google Mail user, for instance, this will include pretty much anyone you have ever emailed, regardless if they are a LinkedIn member or not!

      You may not want to invite all of these people (or companies that you have contacted in the past) to your LinkedIn network, depending on your LinkedIn Objective. Be extra careful, as LinkedIn will show you current LinkedIn members as well as those who are not yet on LinkedIn. Only those with the blue “in” symbol on the far right are active LinkedIn members. For reasons we will discuss later in this book, if you are tempted to start inviting people, I highly recommend that you start by only inviting those in your address book who already have a LinkedIn account. If you don’t have many contacts to go through, I suggest right clicking and visiting the profiles of these people to see how active they are on LinkedIn. If they only have a few connections, they may not be very active on LinkedIn, and thus your invitation may be “wasted” or underutilized. You may want to save the invitations for these people for a later date when they (I hope) get more active on LinkedIn. You will learn later in this book that your invitations are a limited resource, so learn early to use them wisely!

      Import Contacts – Other Address Book

      If you have your contacts in a database or contact management application such as Outlook, Act!, Palm Desktop, etc., AND if you can export these contacts into a .csv, .txt, or .vcf format, you can easily import your contacts into LinkedIn just as you did with Webmail. The same warning about being somewhat selective with your invitations applies here.

      Import Contacts – Enter Contacts Manually

      Sends you back to the “Invite Contacts” screen.

      Colleagues

      For every company you listed in your profile (whether