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A generation ago, if you felt restless in your job and weren’t sure what to do next, you could ask your boss or friends for advice — or you could visit the local fortune-teller. Now however, an intriguing new LinkedIn tool provides some pretty good guesses about what you’ll do next.
LinkedIn’s data-visualization team has created a giant sphere that’s speckled with nearly 300 types of jobs, ranging from actors to firefighters, insurance agents and Oracle database administrators. Click on any one of those categories — and an animated version of connect-the-dots will spring forth, showing you the most common career moves of people in those fields. This link will let you test the system yourself.
To create these forecasts, LinkedIn research consultant Sohan Murthy explained in a blog post, the company’s data scientists culled through the career histories of more than 300 million people with LinkedIn profiles. Researchers focused on cases where people switched to at least a slightly different category, instead of simply moving up the ladder in their chosen specialty. LinkedIn’s analysts also discarded cases involving people who had switched careers multiple times, or whose current careers straddle multiple categories.
Many of the career paths are exactly what you’d expect. Financial consultants tend to become accountants and data analysts. Psychologists end up as social workers or university professors. And when today’s job becomes unbearable, just about everybody is willing to give sales a try.
But in an intriguing number of cases, LinkedIn’s mapping system unearthed job hops that are far from obvious. Among them:
Soldiers and military officers, when they transition to civilian life, may pick new jobs as diverse as corporate strategists, business owners or police officers.
Geologists sometimes end up as information-technology support specialists or environmental specialists.
Pharmacists cross over to the other side of the counter and become medical representatives.
People who start out as political staffers can end up as everything from lawyers and judges to public-relations offices.
Another oddity: fields that offer very little mobility. As LinkedIn’s Murthy points out, people who become web developers, paralegals or physicians have hardly any common career options beyond staying in their current field. Bad news? Not necessarily.
In Murthy’s words, “this is a classic sign of specialization,” and that’s nothing to weep about. If demand for these skills stays strong, and the work is enjoyable, people in such aspects of law, tech and health care may never feel the urge to switch.
The rising importance of data to companies (organizations in general and marketing departments in particular) is changing the perception of marketing’s value. In fact, marketing is now so important that CMOs will make the best next-generation CEOs—thanks to their understanding of data and the customer.
Meet Dan Siroker, a new kind of marketer.
As the Obama campaign’s director of analytics in 2008, one of Siroker’s key responsibilities was optimizing the campaign’s website, a critical fundraising tool. Using sophisticated A/B testing, which involved comparing the results of 24 combinations of visuals, copy and calls-to-action, Siroker and his team identified the most effective combination for raising campaign funds from Obama supporters. Not only did this winning combination raise an extra $60 million for the campaign, as Siroker explained in this blog post, but the A/B testing also generated the data to prove it.
Marketing teams have historically found it hard to be considered a revenue center vs. a cost center. But when you generate $60 million—and show exactly how you did it—there’s no longer any doubt.
Only the marketing department has a clear window on the behavior of the prospect during 90 percent of the buyer’s decision making—the time spent doing research via visits to websites, reading online reviews, connecting with peers on social media and conducting online searches.
With the data created by this online behavior, marketers possess tremendous insight into their companies’ potential customers. “When I tell people that we can know, in real time, every single visitor when they arrive on our site and know what company type they are from and that we can target specific titles or regions or individual companies, they’re blown away,” says Bill Macaitis, former CMO of Zendesk, describing the company’s ability to understand their prospects in real time.
Marketing now holds the key to sales commissions
Marketing’s possession of this insight into the customer represents a huge shift from the past when the sales department played a much larger role in shepherding the prospect through the sales process. But now, the sales department has little direct knowledge of 90 percent of the buyer’s journey. It is now the marketing department, using data gleaned from the digital footprints left by prospects, that has the insight into this major portion of the sales process. And marketing can supply salespeople with exactly what they need: the qualified leads that are their lifeblood.
So data brings marketing and sales together. And because data can also identify deals that were marketing-sourced, the finance team also gains a new respect for marketing and its contribution to revenue. And finally, these changes have brought marketing closer together with the IT department, which helps install the marketing automation software, analytics tools and dashboards it needs to read the digital body language of customers and prospects.
Marketing is now at the nexus of business
The CMO’s team has the clearest window into customer and prospect behavior. To sales, the CMO delivers the leads most likely to buy to sales. To finance, the CMO shows his or her team’s revenue contribution. And with IT, the CMO helps built out the marketing technology stack that mediates critical interactions with customers and prospects.
The winning companies of the future will be data-driven and customer-focused. No one is in a better position to lead this kind of company than the CMO—the executive who is eminently qualified to be your next CEO.
With 313 million users worldwide and counting, you’d be a fool not to be on LinkedIn. But according to an infographic from LinkedIn, you might be overlooking one of the networking site’s key features. Having a profile on LinkedIn is all about telling the world what you’re good at. So why aren’t more people using the Skills feature? Perhaps because they’re not sure what to add. The people who are using that feature, however, offer an interesting look at how job seekers are presenting themselves. Here are a few of the unusual findings from LinkedIn’s analysis:
Health Care Skills Remain Popular…
But food preparation and knowing your way around a cash register are also popular skills to show off. In fact, cash register operation is the second most popular skill across LinkedIn’s network.
Non-IT Skills Matter
American LinkedIn users are all about downstream oil, forklift operation, and medical-surgical skills, according to the infographic. But if you head south to Mexico, you’ll find adult education is big (in addition to architecture, which is also popular in Turkey, Italy, and Argentina). The fastest-growing non-IT skills include CPR instruction, Zumba instruction, and being a barista. Who knew?
Gadgets Gain Traction
Why list your professional skills when you can flaunt your mastery of Xbox One? According to the infographic, some users have taken to adding the gadgets they use to their professional skillset, including Google Glass, Rasberri Pi, and GoPro. If you have a gadget obsession, why not flaunt it?
Bosses, do you like to see these kinds of extra-curricular skills on applicants’ resumes?
It’s a valuable networking tool, helping professionals connect for jobs and advice. But many LinkedIn members aren’t taking full advantage of the networking features of the site. When used to its fullest, LinkedIn can be an even more powerful social media tool than Facebook and Twitter.
Setting up your LinkedIn profile is only the beginning. Here are a few mistakes you may be making on LinkedIn that could cost you important business connections. By knowing about these mistakes, you can make your profile more powerful and reach more of your industry peers on the site.
Not Completing Your Profile
When LinkedIn members look at your profile, what do they see? Is your entire career outlined in your profile or just your current position? Do you have a current photo that would help your peers locate you at a networking event or conference? Your LinkedIn profile should give a full overview of your experience, including as much background as possible. A position you held early in your career could connect you with a colleague from those days who could benefit your business now.
Failing to Join Groups
LinkedIn offers Groups as a way for members to find other people within their industries or areas of interests. These groups are a great way to share ideas and troubleshoot issues, but at their core, they offer a way to network with other business owners. LinkedIn occasionally suggests groups you may like, but you can also browse the directory or search for a group using the search box at the top of each page.
Not Endorsing Others
Endorsements are an easy way to let your colleagues know you support them. You simply endorse other professionals for specific skills you know they have under the Skills & Endorsements section of each person’s profile. Not only will that person be notified of your endorsement, your picture and name will appear next to that skill under the person’s profile as having endorsed him. You can also write recommendations for colleagues who have worked with you in the past.
Failure to Connect
You can create a LinkedIn profile, but without connections you’re missing out on the “networking” part of the site. Start by connecting with people who are in your professional circles and expand from there, adding past colleagues, others within your industry, and people you meet while networking in groups on the site. You’ll see your connections’ updates on your newsfeed and be alerted when they change jobs or celebrate a work anniversary. Be sure to congratulate them when you see these items to keep your name fresh on their minds.
All Take, No Give
As with other social media sites, one of the top mistakes professionals make is in only posting when they need something. If you’re inactive most of the time, only using the site to ask a colleague for a favor or to market something, you’ll likely be disappointed by the results. Make an effort to interact by posting links to useful articles and commenting on other people’s posts on your newsfeed. Then when you do post about your exciting new product or upcoming event, you’ll find that others are more willing to support you.
Unprofessionalism
While it may be a social networking site, it’s important to remember at all times that LinkedIn is a professional social networking site. Your profile picture should capture your spirit while still being professional, whether it’s a shot of you at your favorite coffee shop or a standard business headshot. Every word on your profile should be grammatically correct and typo-free, even if it means asking a friend or colleague to proofread it. Most importantly, when you post status updates or comment in groups, every post should represent your brand in the best light possible. Resist the urge to engage in arguments with those who are inciting drama by always keeping in mind that others could be judging you by your comments.
LinkedIn is an important networking tool for every professional. The site has many tools designed to help you connect with those you’ve worked with in the past and suggesting those you can work with in the future. When used correctly, it can help you bring in new business and get the support you need as you grow your company.
The last time John Fischer sought resumes for an open position at his company, StickerGiant, he received more than 200 — a list that took precious time to condense to interview-worthy candidates. Today, StickerGiant uses online surveys to find the best and weed out the rest. Indeed, companies are using a variety of tools—chief among them social media platforms—to move beyond resumes to match the right people with the right jobs.
Resumes are not obsolete, but the concept of them has changed tremendously, said Josh Bersin, principal of Bersin by Deloitte, a human resources research firm owned by Deloitte Consulting.
“Now your resume must be online, and linked to your LinkedInLNKD+1.87% profile, which you have to make sure is always current.”
And because there’s so much data available about people on the Internet, companies are mining job candidates’ social media footprints to find out about them, evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and assess whether they’re a good cultural fit. Bersin noted that a number of startups–including Gild, Reppify and TalentBin–aggregate information about people via their social media profiles for recruiters to use when seeking talent.
The way that companies recruit can itself be a test of potential employees’ savvy in specific areas–including social media. For example, when Enterasys, a network infrastructure firm in Boston, recruited for a social media marketing position last winter, it posted the listing solely on Twitter. The firm promoted the position via tweets, and accepted applications only from candidates who tweeted their interest using the hashtag #socialCV. In addition, candidates had to have more than 1,000 active Twitter followers.
These criteria enabled Enterasys to quickly narrow down the field and hire “an award-winning social strategist.” Vala Afshar, Enterasys’ chief marketing officer, said the experience convinced him that Twitter recruiting is the way to go: “The Web is your CV [curriculum vitae], and social networks are your references.”
Optimizing resumes with online insights
If your company isn’t quite ready to hire someone via Twitter, don’t worry. There are plenty of organizations that still use the on-paper CV as a primary method for evaluating potential employees. But to reduce the woes that hiring managers like StickerGiant’s Fischer faced–too many resumes from under- or over-qualified people–Bersin of Deloitte’s Bersin recommends that companies ask all applicants at least one open-ended question that must be answered in long form.
“A good [question] will hone in on a person’s real work experience,” he said. “Like, ‘Describe a work experience in which you were successful: Why did you succeed? How did you do it? And how did you measure that success?’ The answer will tell you a person’s capabilities, experience and his or her interest in the position.”
Looking at it from the perspective of potential employees, Bersin recommends that job seekers spend as much time on their Internet presence as they do on their resumes.
“Recruiters are going to look at your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profiles, so you have to think about all those as your marketing tools,” he noted.
While jobs in communications, marketing or social media may benefit most from a candidate with a star online presence, taking the time to craft a digital profile for recruiters can benefit anyone in any industry. As proof of social media’s power in the job search in an increasingly connected world, Bersin described a recruiter scouting for an engineer who worked at nuclear power plants and was familiar with the failure of the Fukushima power plant in Japan after it was hit by the tsunami in 2011. He searched LinkedIn’s forums and found someone who had started a chat on that exact issue. The person obviously had some good qualifications, but it was his interest in the topic that made him the recruiter’s top candidate.
Social media do’s and don’ts
To effectively leverage social media in your job search, there are some things you should do and some things you definitely shouldn’t do.
Do set up accounts on the major social networks: Twitter, Facebook, and, especially, LinkedIn. Also, follow the companies you want to work for in the future.
Don’t let your accounts sit idle. It’s not enough just to establish presence on these sites; potential employers will be looking for productive activity on these sites, as well–ask questions, make comments, share. This is especially true for fields in which social is heavily leveraged and valued.
Do ask for people to write you references on LinkedIn, and write references for others yourself.
Don’t forget that everything you put online stays there–somewhere–and that anyone from prospective employers to former bosses and coworkers can find and see it. Questionable photos, potentially offensive comments, criticisms against current or former employers, etc., will come back to haunt you.
Not so long ago, employers and potential employees relied almost solely on resumes to, respectively, fill positions and demonstrate the ability to fill those positions. Today, a company’s Twitter presence could be the thing that attracts the next employee, while that blog you’ve been writing faithfully could be the thing that gets you that dream job.
You know those short summaries at the top of LinkedIn, where the person describes themselves and what they do? Like this:
Connecting Talent With Opportunity At Massive Scale
or this:
The “Mad Scientist of Online Recruiting” – Specializing in Talent Acquisition, Employer Branding & Social Recruiting
or just a simple:
Public Relations Director, Human Resource Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Well, a new tool will help companies and employees put those summaries together. It’s just one of many new technologies in the talent acquisition field. Read on.
Brand Amper is a creation of Jason Seiden, whose previous company was called Ajax Workforce Marketing. This new company, and new tool, he says, “takes employees through the process of reconciling their profiles.”
What he means by that is by having employees put together a summary of themselves and perhaps their company or their role in it on LinkedIn, and in shortened form on Twitter, it gives employees a bit of a blueprint for who they are and how they’ll be posting and tweeting and updating and sharing. “This is the key to the kingdom,” Seiden says. It’s not just a summary for a LinkedIn, but a proverbial “elevator pitch” summarizing their work/life.
This Brand Amper tool is one of many that’ll be unveiled at an event this month in Las Vegas called the HR Technology Conference & Expo. Some of the tools have been written up on ERE, but some of the new hiring tools you may not have heard of include:
10Rule, to figure out what’s driving your top 10 percent of performers, and help you hire people like them. I just talked to a healthcare company who’s been piloting 10Rule, and is quite pleased with the results its getting.
MosaicTrack, to look through resumes and predict who’s going to fit your jobs and culture. Something uncommon: Its pricing ($177/month) is clearly listed on the home page.
Great Hires, to keep track of who’s interviewing who, and when, and how it went. Among its customers: Intuit. A recruiting leader at Intuit tells me its Great Hires pilot is working well; people can jot notes into the app after an interview, and can even quickly “pivot” if a candidate would not be good for the job they were interviewing for, but would be good for another job. Whether Intuit adopts the tool more permanently may depend on how well it integrates into other parts of Intuit’s hiring process (for example, whether it would work smoothly with employee assessments) throughout the company.
Meanwhile, I’m hearing that at least one and maybe two major applicant tracking systems are working on creating a tool like Great Hires.
An effective LinkedIn summary makes people want to know more about you and ultimately connect with you one-on-one, so congruence is critical. You need make sure the bio you present online matches your real-world self.
How can you create a summary that stands out from the crowd while still being true to the real you?
Over the past few years, I have worked with career-minded professionals and executives at many of the world’s global brands to help them build compelling bios for LinkedIn and their corporate intranets. The approach we use is part of a comprehensive day-long workshop, but I have created a simplified, three-step version that you can use to make your profile pop:
Step 1: Set the scene
Before putting pen to paper or finger to key, it’s important to know what you want your summary to communicate and what you want to readers to do. Before writing your bio, answer these questions:
Who do you want to reach with your summary? Who is your ideal audience?
What do you want them to learn or do?
How do you want them to feel?
When you’re clear about your intentions and goals, it’s time to pull together the content.
Step 2: Gather your raw content
Think of your content in terms of these buckets, and then fill them to the brim:
Your most important accomplishments. Write a sentence for each one in terms of the value you create/created (“I saved my company $500k in returned products by ensuring customer satisfaction on the front-end of the transaction; I built our first world-class customer service team from the ground up.”)
Your values and passions. Articulate your operating principles and the things that energize you (for example, optimism, creativity, yoga and meditation).
Your superpowers. Describe the things you do better than anyone else (“I can assemble seemingly disparate facts into a cohesive, tangible story,” or “I inspire and engage even the most skeptical client.”)
Fact, figures and stats. List interesting points that are quantifiable. (“I ran five marathons in five different countries; I speak three languages and travel to five continents every year; I worked in six different areas of the business before becoming the head of sales.”)
Differentiation. Cull the things that make you YOU and help you stand out from your peers (“I do my best work from 6 a.m.-8 a.m. before anyone gets to the office.” “Acknowledging others is important to me, so I like to type personal thank-you messages to team members and colleagues on the typewriter I was given on my 16th birthday.”)
External validation. Include testimonials from others while showcasing all the awards and accolades bestowed upon you (for example, graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Michigan, was named top 30 under 30 by the Chicago Chamber of Commerce).
Step 3: Put it all together
Before writing your summary decide if you would like to write in the first or third person. Either is acceptable – it’s a personal choice. Put yourself in a creative place – literally and figuratively so you can produce your best work. Then:
Start with a bang. You want the reader to want to know more, so you need to start with something enticing. It could be a question, statement or even a few words with punctuation, like: High-Energy. Results-Driven. Focused.
Next, fill in the details, weaving elements from the various Step 2 buckets into a compelling narrative about the brand called you. Mix up content from the different categories to enhance the storytelling style. Here is how I did it with my summary.
Then close with a call to action: tell your audience what you want them to do or where they can go to get more information.
Remember, your summary needs to be 2,000 or fewer characters.
The success or failure of a company always depends upon the talents of the people who work there. If you want to recruit and retain the very best employees, you’ll need to provide them with what they want, not what you think they need.
As I explained in “Where to Find Top Sales Talent,” I was recently asked to co-host a free webinar that will present groundbreaking research based on LinkedIn’s huge database of personnel and recruitment activity.
LinkedIn surveyed 11,813 non-managerial employees to determine what they value the most in a job. The surveyed employees fell into two groups: technical (4,658 engineers) and non-technical (7,155 salespeople). Here are the results:
The two groups were in broad agreement about the importance of most aspects of the work environment. As I predicted in “10 Things Employees Want More Than a Raise,” both groups put a very high value on work-life balance.
Employers would do well to heed this and stop requiring unpaid overtime (which is unproductive anyway, as I have explained in “Stop Working More Than 40 Hours a Week”).
There are three areas in which the opinions of salespeople and engineers greatly differ:
Having a good relationship with your colleagues. Salespeople see the ability to work with other people inside as a crucial part of their ability to make sales. Engineers, by contrast, don’t care nearly as much, probably because their work tends to be more solitary.
Challenging work. Here’s where we find the greatest disparity. Engineers want interesting projects that push them as individuals. Salespeople, by contrast, aren’t all that motivated by job difficulty, probably because they see selling as enough of a challenge on its own.
Having a long-term strategic vision. Engineers aren’t much interested long-term strategy, probably because they know that in five years everything (from a technology standpoint) will be completely different. Salespeople, however, want to work for a company that knows where it’s headed, probably because it’s easier to sell a company’s products if they fit within an overarching strategic vision.
Are you a lurker on LinkedIn? Eighty percent of us are.
We watch and read what’s on the network, but we’re not proactive. We don’t use LinkedIn’s newest and best features to our advantage.
If you’re in the business of creating new business, start using these 12 secrets:
1. Message people in groups for free.
This is like having unlimited InMails. Just search for a person’s name in a group, and click “message.” However, use this function very judiciously. I’m not condoning spam. Your message must be relevant, useful and add value to the recipient.
2. Follow second- and third-degree connections from groups.
When you follow second- and third-degree connections in the same groups as you, you’ll see their updates on your homepage like they were first-degree connections. Strategically following group members is incredibly useful when you’re looking to start conversations with prospects or prospective business partners. Like, share and comment on their updates, and interact in ways that will spark new connections and business relationships.
3. Upload multimedia content to your profile.
Upload videos and presentations to your profile, or provide links. Multimedia can be much more compelling than words. Plus, people can view this content without leaving your profile.
You can also load all kinds of calls-to-action within your content to get people to contact you for your services or products.
4. Track your links.
Wouldn’t it be great to know if someone clicked on a link you sent him? It’s possible with bit.ly. Create a free account and send each prospect a custom link.
5. Collect leads directly from your profile.
Do you collect leads directly from your LinkedIn profile? It’s easy. If you have a white paper or eBook that you or your company uses to produce leads, why not use it on your profile?
Build a free Web form with Google Drive. Place links to the form in your Summary section, and share the links as updates.
6. Congratulate contacts when they appear in the news.
Congratulating your connections on appearing in the news is a nice ego stroke. I use Newsle (which LinkedIn recently acquired) to monitor first-, second- and third-degree connections.
Connect your LinkedIn profile with Newsle.com to quickly see if your prospects have been in the news. If they have, message them your congratulations.
Gagein.com is also useful for tracking people and companies in the news. It includes many custom filters to choose from.
7. Share valuable news with your network.
Custom sections on Google News are a powerful way to curate news your network will find useful. Once you build a custom section, you can get industry and competitor news to easily share on LinkedIn. All you need to build a custom section in Google News is a Gmail account.
Share the news you curate as status updates, and send them to individual connections.
8. Stay organized.
The more active you are on LinkedIn, the harder it will be to track everything you do and stay organized. That’s why you need a tool like FiveHundredPlus. FiveHundredPlus connects with your LinkedIn account to track who you need to contact and when.
9. Get a premium account.
People ask me all the time whether a premium account is worth the money. If you’re in sales or business development, the answer is an emphatic yes. All you need is the basic premium account. It has everything you need, including advanced search.
10. Teach, don’t sell.
A Corporate Executive Board survey of more than 1,000 IT leaders found that people who teach and provide insights were perceived as far more valuable than people pushing a new product or service.
Stop leading with your services, and lead to your services. Targeted content curation is an effective way to move your prospects into a sales funnel. Create free Paper.li and Scoop.it accounts to easily find content to share. You should also set up a custom news section on Google News (tip No. 7) to find relevant industry research and competitor news.
11. Don’t be afraid to connect with people.
It’s essential that you connect with as many new prospects as possible. In a recent comScore report titled, “The Social Bridge to the IT Committee,” two out of three IT professionals are open to connecting with vendors on LinkedIn. (That means people who look and sound professional.) You should also focus on connecting with people in finance, operations and marketing.
12. Make your profile your professional website.
Far too many professionals don’t care about or pay attention to their profiles. Consider this: Nine times out of 10, your LinkedIn profile is where prospects, customers, partners and future employers will go to find and judge you online. Use it to your competitive advantage.
When LinkedIn debuted in 2003, it was merely an online resume and an entree to e-networking. Since then, LinkedIn has continuously enhanced its offerings – transforming into a complete career management resource. Our mindset about how to use LinkedIn, however, has not evolved as quickly as the product. If you haven’t changed your approach to LinkedIn, you’re missing out on some of the biggest benefits. Here are five elements of LinkedIn that most executives I know are not using correctly – or aren’t using at all – along with suggestions for maximizing them.
1. Headline. Your headline has the same function as the headline of an advertisement; its primary purpose is to get the target audience to want to read on. Yet most LinkedIn members think “headline = job title.” If you don’t write a headline, LinkedIn uses your current job title as a default, and that’s a real snooze. To have your headline work for you, it should say what you do and entice people to learn more about your services. Don’t make it all about you; make it about the people you serve. Tell viewers what you can do for them. The second crucial function of the headline is to serve as an online “magnet.” If you want to be found in a search, you have to pack your headline with the keywords for which you want to be known. Making this an even greater challenge, you need to accomplish all that in just 120 characters. Here are some excellent examples of headlines from LinkedIn trainer and coach Anne Pryor:
Amanda Klein, MBA: Director of Strategy & Marketing at Star ★ Creating + Building Lasting Impressions for Exhibits & Events
Gordon (Gordy) Curphy, PhD: #1 Leadership Author | Coaching & Consulting Leaders, Teams & Organizations on Improving Efficiency & Effectiveness
Dustin Wellik, PHR: Talent Acquisition Lead – Consumer & Industrial Business Groups | Recruiter at 3M | Be part of what’s next!
Anne Elizabeth Denny: End-of-Life Speaker, Blogger, Author and Software Innovator Inspiring Thoughtful Advance Care Planning
And one more thing. If you’re looking for work, don’t use hollow headlines such as “Seeking my next big adventure” or “Currently open to new opportunities.” Those will work against you in a search (where are your keywords?) and the implication that you’re not being productive right now makes you less attractive to some prospective employers.
2. Groups. Most LinkedIn members I know spend their time on connections – sending requests and adding people to their network – yet the real value of the site is found in the groups, a powerful resource hidden under the Interests menu Groups serve three functions:
They amplify your message. Many groups have tens of thousands of members or more. Yet according to Craig Smith in “By the Numbers: 100 Amazing LinkedIn Statistics,” the average number of groups to which members belong is just 7. You can belong to 50. An infographic prepared by Brandon Gaille revealed that over two thirds of LinkedIn members have fewer than 500 1st-level connections. If you post to your network you can reach a few hundred potential people. With groups, you can amplify that by 100 or even 1,000 times. LinkedIn groups provide one of the best personal branding opportunities you have with social media.
They help you build and nurture your network. When you join groups related to your area of expertise, you can easily connect with like-minded professionals and leaders who can help you reach your goals. Think of groups as professional associations with no geographic limits and meetings that are available to you 24/7. Try out a few groups to see if they are right for you. Ask yourself: Are these my people? Do I want to connect with these people? Do I have content and value to contribute? Am I willing to be a regular part of their conversation?
They enable you to do your job better. Groups provide a type of on-the-job learning that you can’t get anywhere else. You see which topics are hot, you get introduced to new resources, and you learn and grow each time you take a look at the conversations. They can challenge your thinking or provide data that helps reinforce your beliefs. You can also use groups to source staff, build partnerships and open doors to prospective clients.
3. Multi-media. LinkedIn allows you to integrate images and video directly into your profile, yet most profiles I see don’t contain any multi-media content. Thanks to technology, a picture really is worth a thousand words. With this new feature, you can add tens of thousands of words without turning your profile into a huge, boring whitepaper on the brand called you. According to a study by W.H. Levie & R. Lentz, published in the Educational Communications and Technology Journal, visuals impact us cognitively and emotionally. Cognitively, images speed up and expand our level of communication and increase comprehension, recollection, and retention. Emotionally, visuals engage our imagination and heighten our creative thinking by stimulating other areas of our brain – which translates into deeper and more accurate understanding. By embedding images and video into your summary and your experiences sections, you go from being boring to being a compelling brand. And, because most people aren’t using this feature, it helps your profile stand out. When I added a video reel of my public speaking to my summary, views of that video increased by 25%.
4. Endorsements. Let’s face it. Endorsements seem silly. Yet we make judgments about people based on the skills for which they were endorsed, and LinkedIn showcases those skills in a way that delivers tremendous visual impact. Whether they admit it or not, people are evaluating your expertise this way, so you must work to get your key skills endorsed so that the top ten are displayed in the order of importance to your career success. Yes, LinkedIn gives you control over that. To make it happen, choose the skills for which you want to be endorsed. Pick the ones that bolster your personal branding and will help you advance your career. Be willing to delete endorsements for skills that just muddy the waters.
Giving targeted endorsements is a great way to acknowledge others. Giving them randomly – whenever LinkedIn suggests you should, whether you actually know about the person’s expertise in that area, has little value. It can even undermine your perceived integrity. It’s best to give endorsements when they are timely, such as when a colleague demonstrates her project management skills or an employee of yours makes a great leadership decision. Endorsements like these mean more to the recipient.
5. Headshot. In a world where most people meet us online before they do in person, people want to connect a face with a name. In addition, your headshot can get you noticed. According to LinkedIn Career Expert Nicole Williams in a NY Post article “You’re 11 times more likely to have your profile looked at if you have a photo. ” Your headshot should add credibility to your profile – so make it professional. It’s not just about having a photo. It’s about having the right photo. To make your mug work for you:
Have your face capture about 80% of the space. Remember that the shot will be used as a thumbnail, far beyond the top of your listing. Whole body shots are too small to see – especially in sections like endorsements.
Face forward or to the left, looking into your LinkedIn content. Don’t look off-screen.
Be professional and engaging – save the selfies and vacation shots for Facebook. Make the viewer want to get to know you.
By mastering these five oft-misunderstood LinkedIn features, you can strengthen your personal brand and expand your success!
In fact, I believe that in the next 5 years, the humble resume will fade away into the dustbin of history, to join the iPod, Internet chat rooms and (hopefully) the Kardashians.
This means that LinkedIn will become your primary job search tool and mastering the platform should become one of your top priorities. Here are 10 ways you can get a head start on your competition.
1. Fill out your profile completely.
Sounds very basic, doesn’t it? Yet, you’d be surprised how many profiles I see which are missing critical sections.
Pay particular attention to your summary, title and employment history—they’re the first items which a potential employer will look at.
2. Highlight your expertise.
What differentiates you from everybody else on the job market? Who are your ideal customers / employees? Your summary is the perfect place for this information. Back up your claim with examples of concrete achievements.
For example, “I’m a digital marketing manager for startups. I specialize in scaling $100K businesses into $1M territory” is an excellent, succinct way to define what you do and what you don’t.
3. Create a call to action.
Most people will contact you by either sending you an InMail or a connection request.
However, you can guide the right people to find out more about you by providing a link to your website, other social media assets and content you’ve created on 3rd party websites.
4. Include a photo.
It’s no longer the 1990s, when having a photo of yourself online was a reason to be worried about privacy.
As far as today’s employers are concerned, a photo on your LinkedIn profile is not a “nice to have” option—it’s a must. Don’t give recruiters and hiring managers the reason to think “Why is there no photo—does she have something to hide?”
5. Optimize your profile for search.
To improve your profile’s visibility in LinkedIn search results, ensure that your LinkedIn profile contains relevant keywords throughout.
For example, if you’re interested in job opportunities as a corporate lawyer, then your job title is the obvious keyword to include in your main job description, summary, job titles and descriptions of your job history.
However, recruiters won’t always search for you purely by your role. That’s why you need to think outside the box when constructing your LinkedIn profile. For example, if you were the project manager above, you could include keywords such as:
litigation
financial services law
mergers & acquisitions
IPO
oil & gas industry
6. Post consistently.
LinkedIn is not Facebook, so your updates can’t be photos of your breakfast.
I suggest you get into the habit of setting aside some time a few times per week to curate and read interesting content from the Internet. This will allow you to post interesting content as status updates.
Don’t forget to put your own spin on the topic. For example, if you post “check out the latest article about the financial sector New York Times,” you’ll sound just like everybody else.
However, an update such as “The New York Times just predicted that finance industry is dying. What do you believe?” is likely to spark debate and create more exposure for your profile.
7. Create and participate in LinkedIn groups.
Which aspect of your career are you most passionate about? Chances are, there’s a lively discussion happening right now in one of LinkedIn’s groups on that topic.
The best thing is, being part of a group allows you to bypass LinkedIn’s standard requirement to be connected to someone in order to reach out to them. If you and another professional are part of the same group, you can communicate without limitations.
8. Be savvy about who you connect with.
It’s great to have 500+ connections; however, not all connections are created equal.
Engagement with your network is far more important than its size.
Requesting connections with people you don’t know and can’t find common ground with has little benefit—it only robs you of your most precious asset: time.
9. Make your messages personal.
How many times a week do you receive the stock standard “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” message?
Most influencers, heads of departments and business owners receive hundreds of such requests.
Remember that LinkedIn is primarily a relationship-building platform. Not many great relationships start with sending a cold, pre-formatted template.
10. Dive deep with content trending tools.
It’s no secret that producing original content is one of the best ways to build your personal brand.
However, creating blog posts and videos is just half of the story. The trick to getting the most out of your content is to make it shareable.
How do you know which topics are shared often and which aren’t? LinkedIn’s new Content Marketing & Trending Tools allow you to do just that. There’s no more need to fly blind.
Simply research what content is popular among your audience right now, create it, then monitor its performance in real time.
If you’re like me, all you want to do after a long day at work is kick off your heels, grab some greasy chinese food, and slip into your favorite sweatpants. It is, after all, your “you” time, and you should spend it relaxing and doing “you” things (like catching up on House of Cards with a glass of wine – or two!).
Those precious hours of freedom are cherished, and no one wants to give them up to do more work. I mean, you work hard all day! You deserve a break.
That said, if you’re serious about advancing your career, you have to put in a little extra effort. It’s just like making time for exercise – if you want to lose weight, sure, you can go on a diet. However, if you want to lose weight and get toned, you need to put the extra effort in and participate in daily exercise.
Okay, so we know you’ve got to make time during your free time to advance your career. But how? You’ve got a life, friends, and family to think about. How can you make time for everything? How can you make time for networking?
5 Ways To Network In 30 Minutes Or Less
Here are some quick tips for working networking into your busy lifestyle (without cutting too much into your spare time!):
Find lunch hour networking events in your area
Hop on a virtual networking event for 30 minutes, once a week
Talk to someone on the bus/train ride to work
Reach out to three LinkedIn connections each week to check in or share a relevant article
Browse through the “People You May Know” page on LinkedIn and reach out to people you think would benefit from your network (Watch this video to learn how to do this appropriately)
It’s important to make a little extra time for your career. If you want to get ahead, you’ve got to put in the time. However, you don’t have to invest too much of your free time for it to give you a boost. If you can take 30 minutes to watch a rerun of Friends, you can take 30 minutes a day to fit in networking. Think of it as career exercise!
Too many job seekers expect an employer or recruiter to carefully evaluate their LinkedIn Profile and figure out where the person might fit into the organization.
Most employers and recruiters have way too much to do to provide you with mind-reading and/or career coaching services, even if they could.
Unless you have extremely scarce, highly technical skills, that’s not going to happen.
Applying for a job is not rocket science, but the process HAS changed substantially. This is what works today…
Know What Job You Want
Be clear about the job you want, and make that clear in your communications with the employer. “Oh, I could do anything in finance” is probably not true (really, anything in finance?!) and not communicating your value.
Being specific accomplishes two important things for job seekers:
1. The specifics trigger mental connections to opportunities in people’s minds. “Oh, I know someone looking for help with that…” or “Ahhh, this person could fill the job for…” Vague or general responses don’t often help make those connections.
2. The specifics provide the all-important keywords that lead to being visible in resume databases (like Indeed, CareerBuilder, etc.)
Networking contacts, no matter how well-intentioned, won’t be able to connect you with a job without knowing what you want to do. They can’t read your mind any better than an employer or recruiter. Make it easy for people to help you by helping them know what you want.
If you don’t know what you want to do, spend some time figuring it out first. Buy or borrow a copy of the classic book, What Color Is Your Parachute? — if there’s only one “career book” in your library, this is the one. For a reason.
Clearly Align Your Experience With Their Requirements
When you are submitting your resume or application for a job, don’t make the person reading it wonder why you applied for their job. Tell them why. You do that two ways:
1) Only apply for jobs for which you are a good fit.
Look at the job’s requirements and the skills, experience, and education they they want in an applicant. Don’t waste your time, or the recruiter’s, applying for something that’s not a good match.
When you apply for a job that’s not a good match –
You’re thinking: “Why not give it a try, just in case?”
They’re thinking: “Can’t this idiot read?”
Apply poorly often enough with the same recruiter or employer, and you’ll be training them (and — maybe – their applicant tracking system) to ignore you. Not a good thing…
2) Tell them how you are a good match in the cover letter, and show them in the resume.
In the cover letter, list the job’s requirements and match those requirements specifically with the skills or experience you have that are appropriate. (See the “Catching the Recruiter’s Eye” article on Job-Hunt for a great cover letter format).
Yes, many cover letters are ignored, but, for some recruiters, a resume submitted without a cover letter demonstrates a lack of true interest in the opportunity and/or a lack of professionalism. So, on the better-to-be-safe-than-sorry theory, include a carefully-written cover letter.
Customize your resume so that the relevant skills and experience are highlighted. Leave out the things that aren’t relevant to this job, unless your resume is only one page long. If you haven’t had much response to your resume, have a friend look at it, or get professional help. (For more help with your resume, read Job-Hunt’s Guide to Effective Resumes by resume experts Martin Yate and Susan Ireland).
Follow the Directions
Duh! Who doesn’t follow directions? You’d be amazed! Job seekers in a rush, apparently…
Recently, a recruiter put a sentence in a Monster job posting asking applicants to include a one-paragraph description of their most significant accomplishment of the past year.
Only 20 percent of the applicants included an accomplishment, and only 25 percent of those described an accomplishment that was relevant to the job they were seeking.
So, only one out of every 20 applicants got through the initial screening. By actually reading the entire posting, following the directions, and aligning their response to the needs of the job, they jumped over 95 percent of their competition!
Provide Good Contact Information
Be easy to contact. Create an email “signature” that provides the following information:
Top line: your name, as it appears on your resume and LinkedIn Profile
Next line: your private cell phone number with a professional voice mail message – NOT related to your work!
Last line: a link to your LinkedIn Profile. Use the custom link specifically for you found in the edit profile screen – like http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname or http://www.linkedin.com/pub/yourname/123/ab/087…
This information should appear below your closing at the bottom of the message, and it should be easy to read.
Be sure that the information you have submitted agrees with what is visible on your LinkedIn Profile because it will be checked! By including your LinkedIn Profile’s URL in your email signature, you’ve made it easy for the employer to find the right LinkedIn Profile, in case there are others who have the same name you have.
Polite Persistence Is Powerful
After you have had a job interview, ask for permission to stay in touch, and for the name and contact information of the person you should be in touch with. Then, when you have permission to stay in touch, DO stay in touch. Politely. When you said that you would, or when they told you you could.
Follow up. But NOT daily! And, for many employers, not weekly either. Find out what’s happening with the job you want. Remember filling a job almost always takes longer, sometimes much longer, than the employer thinks it will. (Read After the Job Interview, 10 Reasons They Haven’t Called You for why.)
Keep things in context — tell them your name, the job you applied for (job title and requisition number, preferably), the dates of your job interviews, and who interviewed you in every contact. Don’t expect them to remember you, although by the third or fourth phone call or email with the same person, they may.
If you liked the people and the place, ask them for other similar opportunities if this one falls through. (Read “The Biggest Mistake After a Job Rejection” for how and why.)
Bottom Line
It always seems to take too long to land a job, but it will happen. If you have a good network and LinkedIn Profile, you many not need to go through the job application and resume submission process again – your next job may find you.
In fact, I believe that in the next 5 years, the humble resume will fade away into the dustbin of history, to join the iPod, Internet chat rooms and (hopefully) the Kardashians.
This means that LinkedIn will become your primary job search tool and mastering the platform should become one of your top priorities. Here are 10 ways you can get a head start on your competition.
1. Fill out your profile completely.
Sounds very basic, doesn’t it? Yet, you’d be surprised how many profiles I see which are missing critical sections.
Pay particular attention to your summary, title and employment history—they’re the first items which a potential employer will look at.
2. Highlight your expertise.
What differentiates you from everybody else on the job market? Who are your ideal customers / employees? Your summary is the perfect place for this information. Back up your claim with examples of concrete achievements.
For example, “I’m a digital marketing manager for startups. I specialize in scaling $100K businesses into $1M territory” is an excellent, succinct way to define what you do and what you don’t.
3. Create a call to action.
Most people will contact you by either sending you an InMail or a connection request.
However, you can guide the right people to find out more about you by providing a link to your website, other social media assets and content you’ve created on 3rd party websites.
4. Include a photo.
It’s no longer the 1990s, when having a photo of yourself online was a reason to be worried about privacy.
As far as today’s employers are concerned, a photo on your LinkedIn profile is not a “nice to have” option—it’s a must. Don’t give recruiters and hiring managers the reason to think “Why is there no photo—does she have something to hide?”
5. Optimize your profile for search.
To improve your profile’s visibility in LinkedIn search results, ensure that your LinkedIn profile contains relevant keywords throughout.
For example, if you’re interested in job opportunities as a corporate lawyer, then your job title is the obvious keyword to include in your main job description, summary, job titles and descriptions of your job history.
However, recruiters won’t always search for you purely by your role. That’s why you need to think outside the box when constructing your LinkedIn profile. For example, if you were the project manager above, you could include keywords such as:
litigation
financial services law
mergers & acquisitions
IPO
oil & gas industry
6. Post consistently.
LinkedIn is not Facebook, so your updates can’t be photos of your breakfast.
Think carefully before you post and make sure that everything you say is consistent with your personal brand.
I suggest you get into the habit of setting aside some time a few times per week to curate and read interesting content from the Internet. This will allow you to post interesting content as status updates.
Don’t forget to put your own spin on the topic. For example, if you post “check out the latest article about the financial sector New York Times,” you’ll sound just like everybody else.
However, an update such as “The New York Times just predicted that finance industry is dying. What do you believe?” is likely to spark debate and create more exposure for your profile.
7. Create and participate in LinkedIn groups.
Which aspect of your career are you most passionate about? Chances are, there’s a lively discussion happening right now in one of LinkedIn’s groups on that topic.
The best thing is, being part of a group allows you to bypass LinkedIn’s standard requirement to be connected to someone in order to reach out to them. If you and another professional are part of the same group, you can communicate without limitations.
8. Be savvy about who you connect with.
It’s great to have 500+ connections; however, not all connections are created equal.
Engagement with your network is far more important than its size.
Requesting connections with people you don’t know and can’t find common ground with has little benefit—it only robs you of your most precious asset: time.
9. Make your messages personal.
How many times a week do you receive the stock standard “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” message?
Most influencers, heads of departments and business owners receive hundreds of such requests.
To rise above the noise you must personalize your connection requests.
Remember that LinkedIn is primarily a relationship-building platform. Not many great relationships start with sending a cold, pre-formatted template.
10. Dive deep with content trending tools.
It’s no secret that producing original content is one of the best ways to build your personal brand.
However, creating blog posts and videos is just half of the story. The trick to getting the most out of your content is to make it shareable.
How do you know which topics are shared often and which aren’t? LinkedIn’s new Content Marketing & Trending Tools allow you to do just that. There’s no more need to fly blind.
Simply research what content is popular amongst your audience right now, create it, then monitor its performance in real time.
Linkedin have offered premium accounts to the greater public for some time now. These have been popular with salespeople and others for years. Congratulations to all the job seekers out there, the time has cometh for to get your credit cards out.
Pay for LinkedIn, surely not?
Have LinkedIn gone nasty and exploiting the people that need it most? Not really, they will still allow you to use it for free so upgrading is optional.
There is definitely an online trend to charge for services at the moment. LinkedIn are hopping on the same band wagon as The Ladders, CareerBuilder and other platforms aimed at job seekers. They have all noticed that there is no great shortage of cash out there, however definitely a shortage of jobs. This could very well be due to layoffs.
As long as the value you are getting from a paid account outweighs the cost, it could be worth considering paying a little to speed up your job search.
Why get it?
First off, you and your profile will be bumped up to the top of the pile when applying for a particular job. This is very much like a sponsored link on Google, your name will come up highlighted in the applicants list which is likely to get you some attention from the hiring manager (along with the other paying applicants of course).
You will also be able to send InMails straight to employers that aren’t in your network. This is particularly useful when you don’t have any contacts in common and it’s impossible to obtain emails for direct contact outside of LinkedIn.
On top of that, there’s the Profile Organizer feature which lets you track the contact you have with others, save favorites and even add your own notes to others profiles. A good old spreadsheet can probably do the same but this one is automated for you.
Finally, there are some webinars with Lindsey Pollak that act as video tutorials on how to use the new functions and how to search for jobs on Linkedin in general. Lindsey definitely knows her stuff so this could be useful.
What’s the dollar?
Your brand new and shiny job seeker premium account comes in three versions; basic, job seeker and job seeker plus.
As you can tell from the image, they vary a bit on price, the only difference in service is the amount of ammunition you will have for each feature.
Basic: With this option you get five folders in your Profile Organizer and you get 100 profiles in your search results. You get 10 introductions to inside sources at companies.
Job Seeker: Here we get five InMails which you can use to contact any employer inside or outside your network. Your search results expand to 250 profiles, you get 10 folders for your Profile Organizer and you get 15 insider introductions.
Job Seeker Plus: The top of the line deal lets you send 10 InMails, 25 folders in your Profile Organizer and your search results of hiring mangers go up to 500 profiles.
Is it really worth it?
If you use LinkedIn daily and have hit a wall where you have run out of InMails, can’t seem to get yourself organized enough and think insider introductions will help you – go ahead and try it. As long as you get useful incremental results, stick with it until you get that new job. This is assuming that you have the money to spend, check your budget and ideally cut back on something else instead.
Personally I was never convinced of the ‘regular’ premium accounts, I can live through not having 500 people coming up in my search results (the more precise search, the better anyway). I don’t really see the need for InMails as I tend to get the proper emails of people, more often than not you can guess it.
I think it’s a shame there are no free trials for the job seeker premium account but I can understand why. Job seekers are not long-term customers for any business, as soon as they get a new job they no longer need the service. LinkedIn have decided to milk it from day one which is probably the right decision from a business perspective.
LinkedIn may be the best source of sales intelligence on the planet for finding and reaching out to a prospective customer.
This is definitely the month of LinkedIn with my fellow columnist George Anders‘ Forbes cover story telling the latest in the LinkedIn story. And when you are done here, Susan Adams, a Forbes Staff expert on LinkedIn, gives you four more tips and here is a link to 31 LinkedIn Tips for B2B Prospecting.
From our perspective in the inside sales industry, we have found LinkedIn has become one of the leading tools inside sales reps use to connect to and meet qualified prospects.
In fact, we get so many requests for tips on how to use LinkedIn efficiently, we’ve compiled a sales LinkedIn eBook with 42 tips (some the same as listed below, but some new ideas, too) on how to use LinkedIn for sales intelligence.
Here is what works:
1- Use CEO clout through LinkedIn to close deals: Dave Elkington, our CEO, just shared a great technique he learned from Josh James, of Omniture/Adobe fame. Often the CEO or sales executive can reach out to prospective clients and resolve last-minute issues holding up signing a sales agreement. They can push it over the edge. (And I’m writing this on the last day of the quarter. Any of you in sales knows the pressure to finish out a quarter with great results.)
LinkedIn helps reach out quickly.
2- Grab your names: If you haven’t already done this, get on LinkedIn and grab your name and your company name. Edit the URL on your profile so it reads with your actual name like this: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenkrogue. If you leave what LinkedIn automatically does for you there will be lots of extra numbers and characters which confuse people.
3- Complete your profile: Nothing screams “Rookie” like an unfinished profile. Take the time and get it done, both for yourself and your company. There are a few other essentials to getting started. A new book called The LinkedIn Essentials by Asia Bird is helpful, as is the eBook How to Use LinkedIn for Business by Hubspot.
4- Connect to your warm market: If you can’t figure out who to connect with, start with friends, colleagues, and family. The average wedding planner knows that any given person knows about 250 people to invite to a wedding. Make your wedding list. If you are an old timer, make your funeral list.
5- Use LinkedIn to follow up after other communications: Don’t make the mistake of trying to connect with lots people you don’t know. LinkedIn will warn you, and then shut you down if too many people don’t respond to your connection request. Whenever you receive an email, business card, or leave a voicemail; put a “PS” that you are going to also connect by LinkedIn right at the end. Then people make the connection as someone they know and approve your connection request.
I also recommend that you change the standard connection request message that LinkedIn puts in to something you write that is more personal.
6- Select your “Doorway” people: LinkedIn lets you see two levels deep of connections for free (and more with the premium version – highly recommended). I’m a Doorway person in my company because I connect to nearly 3000 sales people, managers, and executives. If all my sales reps are connected to me, when I connect to people in companies, they can see them also.
7- Teach LinkedIn strategy and tactics to your employees: Get your people together and coordinate your efforts and strategies. Years ago, my business partner Dave Elkington, started a company-wide Friday morning meeting where we constantly share new approaches and ideas with each other as part of our culture. We even started a Social Media group of super users who really push the envelope.
8- Expand your LinkedIn reach with Twitter: There is a little checkbox at the bottom of your “Share an update” box that copies everything you share with your Connections to all of your Twitter followers.
9- Use your “3 Free Backlinks” with all employees:Google uses backlinks to drive search engine results. Every LinkedIn account has a place for 3 Free Backlinks, and LinkedIn leaves these links open to indexing by Google. We have 110 employees, times 3, that’s 330 potential backlinks to drive your website up the search engine results list, hmmmmm.
10- Freely give and receive recommendations: The Internet is a world of views, likes, shares, and comments. But best of all is a heart-felt recommendation, which you can do on LinkedIn. Nothing boosts morale, loyalty, and friendship, like an unsolicited recommendation. Try it. And don’t be afraid to ask for it from co-workers, friends, and even customers.
11- Define your offensive sales strategy: As an old football coach, I know you need both offense and defense. Offense on LinkedIn is sales, marketing, and recruiting. Defense is preventing your best employees from being recruited away and your customers stolen by the competition. Everything you learn to do here and elsewhere, recruiters and your competition are learning as well. Keep that in mind when accepting invitations to “connect”.
13- Teach 3×3 analysis to all inside sales people: Before your sales reps make a call to a prospect, have them spend 3 minutes and find 3 things on LinkedIn to talk about. It’s much more compelling than talking about the weather. Steve Richard of Vorsight shares this LinkedIn technique with clients.
14- “Test and Invest” in premium services: I have tested the value of Premium Services on LinkedIn (the packages that cost money for Sales, Recruiting, and Job Seekers.) We have found it to be one of the lowest cost, highest return values for lead generation.
15- Use InMail strategically: InMail is a great service LinkedIn provides where they guarantee a response through a request for introduction, or they give you a credit to use another InMail.
I recently interviewed an industry training consultant by the name of Jamie Shanks, of Sales for Life who uses LinkedIn InMail to generate leads for himself and clients for about $20 a lead. He gets a 12% contact to meeting ratio on the first attempt with an increase to a 20% rate with a multi-contact approach.
In a world where Google Adwords leads often cost well over $100 (speaking from experience), LinkedIn is proving to be highly effective.
16- Knock response rates out of the park through LinkedIn: At InsideSales.com we constantly test different media through which to send messages to prospects, in addition to testing the content of the messages themselves. In terms of response rates, emails range between .1% and .3%. The exact same message sent by LinkedIn in our early in-house tests responded 300% better. Recent tests are much better (but I have to keep a few aces up my sleeve.)
17- Have sales reps join industry and local LinkedIn Groups: The old days of lunch clubs and breakfast networking groups are being replaced by online groups. I wrote a while back about Trish Bertuzzi, the Founder and CEO of The Bridge Group, in Boston. She formed a LinkedIn industry group called Inside Sales Experts. When I first joined there were 8,000 members. I checked today and there are 17,755. I don’t know anywhere else on the planet where that many inside sales professionals congregate. Over the years I have now met hundreds of them and I count them as friends. I got involved in their discussions and made friends and acquaintances.
Trish’s only rule? No self-promotion.
18- Use advanced search to target specific titles and industries: Besides Groups, you can search for the exact title of people and industry of companies that fit your perfect target prospect. The Premium service lets you see many more profiles when you search, and it provides more powerful filters to search by. The Premium service pays for itself in saved labor costs alone.
19- Follow your customers: Using the LinkedIn company accounts feature, post your own company information, but also follow other companies. Follow your customers. LinkedIn ties you into news feeds. It helps you meet the right people to offer a better experience.
20- Follow your prospects: Information and sales intelligence often provide “trigger events” that help you know when your prospects may be expanding or growing and thereby needing more of what you sell.
21- Use “Tags” to categorize your connections: Tags are like Circles on Google+. They are categories you can use to organize your Contacts or Connections. Add Tags in the Contacts section of LinkedIn. I use them to differentiate friends, partners, prospects, large prospects, customers, students, press, etc.
22- Use LinkedIn in your trade show strategy: [KEN"S NOTE: LINKEDIN HAS KILLED LINKEDIN EVENTS!] LinkedIn Events can be invaluable to promote your own events and to gain more value from events you will be attending. We have a rule at InsideSales.com never to go to a trade show unless we can set enough appointments before the show starts to pay for the entire show. Shows like Dreamforce by salesforce.com, LeadsCon are exceptional at this.
The American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP) is just starting to find success with this.
LinkedIn Events list hundreds or thousands of attendees that you can reach out to and arrange meetings with prior to the show.
23- Ask for referrals through LinkedIn: Salespeople all know that the best way to do business is with referrals. The problem is people can seldom think of someone to refer you to. Now you can spend a few moments in their LinkedIn Contact list and find just the right people you want to be referred to. Ask each contact for the referral connection and give the specific names of the contacts you have in mind.
24- Set up your defense: In an earlier article I have warned that all of these great tools can also be used against you.
25- Manage recruiter connections carefully: If you are a Doorway in your company, be careful who you connect to.
27- Never SPAM! Don’t send out mass sales messages by LinkedIn. This is another word for SPAM. Marketers zealously overused direct mail, the phone, fax, predictive dialer, and email by sending SPAM and driving people nuts. If someone does that to me I actually respond and let them know that only rookie salespeople do that in LinkedIn.
