I had someone on LinkedIn the other day tell me they hate social networking. I replied to them by saying, “You realize that LinkedIn is a social networking site right?” I did not get a return response. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The major difference between LinkedIn and all of the other social networking sites out there is that it is business oriented from the beginning. LinkedIn doesn’t even pretend to be oriented to friendships, and believe it or not, people can be banned for trying to connect with others they do not know.
Your First LinkedIn Experience
For many, your first experience with LinkedIn was probably an email that you received from someone you work with or have done business with inviting you to join. Maybe you shrugged it off thinking that it was junk mail like the ones asking you to update your contact information. But then you got another, and another, and before you knew it you had a few invites from people you know all asking you to connect with them on LinkedIn so you gave in. Now what? I have 3 contacts of people I already know, work with, or do business with. I have read a little about LinkedIn and have heard how people are using it to network and get new business, but I am not sure where to start.
The Profile
First things first, set up your profile. Like any other social networking site one of the first things you are asked to do is tell everyone else about yourself. The LinkedIn profile page reads like a resume. So much so that many recent grads and younger job hunters have forgone paper resumes for links to their LinkedIn pages. Here you can list your education experience, work experience, specialties, etc. Including a professional avatar photo is important. Unlike sites such as Facebook or Twitter which one could get away with using a Polaroid beach photo, that is not what you want to use here as you are trying to make a business impression. Finally be sure to link to your website and/or blog in your profile. You can go into the settings when you do this to change it from “blog” to read “Architecture in the Midwest”. Anything that helps search engines do their thing. By adding these links, people who don’t know you will find out more information about you and what you do outside of LinkedIn.
Invite Your Existing Contacts
The next step is to import people in your contact list to LinkedIn and invite them. This is where you start connecting with your existing colleagues, coworkers, clients, and consultants to build your base network. There are other resources out on the web that tell you how to extract a .CSV or similar file from your contact list and import it into LinkedIn. You might have some extra people in your list, but after it’s imported, you can go back and take out people like your third cousin whom you probably are not going to do any networking with in the near future. One final thing to note about invitations, I highly recommend clicking on the “Edit Invitation Text” and writing a more personal note than the cookie cutter one that LinkedIn would send. Even saying that you are just getting introduced to LinkedIn, or something similar is better than sending without modifying this text at all.
They Like Me, They Really Like Me
Eventually you will start getting responses from people who have accepted your invitation. This is great. If you want you can touch base with them once more thanking them for the connection, which could also be a great time to get back together and catch up. At this point you can also see all of their connections if they were already on LinkedIn. The more direct connections you have, the larger your potential network is. This is especially true if you have connections with many of their own connections. This is also your base network. They are people you already know outside of LinkedIn. At this point you might already be making other connections just by seeing who others have in their contact lists. Maybe you also knew them before you joined but didn’t have their contact information. You can easily add them to your network by clicking the appropriate icons.
Are you an Open or Closed Networker?
There is much debate about open networking versus closed networking on LinkedIn. Open networkers will accept invites from anyone (or almost anyone) and will also work to invite others they don’t particularly know to be a connection also. Closed networkers are the opposite. They only accept invites from people they know directly outside of LinkedIn. If you are out at an event trying to network, do you only talk to people you know, or do you try to meet many new people? The answer to this may also tell you what kind of networker you would be on LinkedIn. I personally accept invites from many different people to make my extended network as large as possible. This allows me to perform searches within LinkedIn to find people of interest in my extended network. You will not get the same results in a closed network as your search will be more limited.
Other LinkedIn Features to Facilitate Networking
Some other powerful features of LinkedIn would be the Recommendations and Groups. Any one of your connections can request a recommendation from you and vice versa. Recently the recommendations have been flying which has degraded the value of having many recommendations on your profile. This is not to say that you shouldn’t request or give recommendations, but do so with value. One good recommendation is better than 10 bad ones. If people visit your profile, it’s almost a guarantee that they will read your recommendations from others. Groups are great in that you can immediately connect with many people that you don’t typically follow. By being part of a group you can start discussions, share information, and connect with like-minded people who share the same topic. There are groups for many different things, many of which are not business or industry related. By being part of these groups and adding group users to your network you increase your chances of being seeing, and of seeing someone that you might want to connect with. This is where we meet the new potential clients, colleagues, and Consultants. As a case in point if you are interested in teaming up with someone who uses Revit, there are Revit groups out there. I have personally used it to find consultants who use the MEP and structural versions of Revit for future co-marketing opportunities. Other times I will research particular clients on LinkedIn to get more background on them prior to going into a meeting. Any time you can get more information on a client before the meeting, the better chance you have of making a connection.
Finally, LinkedIn has an “Answers” section where anyone can ask a question that can be answered by any other user. If enough users find your answers valuable they can choose you as an expert on that particular subject matter. By others electing you as an expert, people outside of your network are more likely to search you out to solve similar. These people could turn into your next client.
How should I use LinkedIn?
No matter how you use LinkedIn, you are better off being a part of it than not. By just having a profile out there you have instantly made yourself more accessible to potential clients and consultants. That being said, it’s what you do with the information and contacts you get from LinkedIn outside of the site that matters most. LinkedIn is not a solution to your networking problems. It is merely a tool in your networking toolbox.
