3) To Acquire Expertise
LinkedIn has many Groups that are open for professionals to join. By joining these Groups, you are not only able to directly contact experts in your industry, you can also engage in Group Discussions and read Group News that is specific to your interests. Most industries are covered, with the largest of these Groups containing anywhere from a few thousand to one hundred thousand members! I know of executives who have landed new jobs in new markets who use these Groups to acquire new expertise. LinkedIn also provides a great Q&A functionality that you can use to ask the network of 40 million professionals any question you like. I have asked questions like "What is the best CRM?" and "What CMS Do You Recommend for First-Time Web Developers?” The Answers section is completely searchable, so you can learn a great deal and feel comfortable knowing that the information is coming from real professionals, not just your standard Internet message board. On these message boards, the majority of these entries are anonymous, displaying usernames that have no profiles attached to them. With LinkedIn, there is an entire profile attached to anything you do on the site.
4) To Further Your Career
If I titled this section "Looking for a Job,” you would miss a crucial point: Even if you are not currently looking for a job, a network should be your insurance for your future career growth. Companies are organic entities whose needs change. Few companies can guarantee your job will be there 10 years from now, next year, or even next month. For this reason, you need to be on LinkedIn to expose yourself to potential companies and recruiters. Even if you are happy in your job, there is no harm in having a minimal profile on LinkedIn. You may receive contacts from recruiters in your industry or specialty who may help you out in the future.
LinkedIn is free career insurance! “Buy” into it!
5) For Sales & Marketing
LinkedIn is not a forum to directly sell your product; you will be removed from LinkedIn should you decide to spam people. You will also be banned from Groups should you fill message boards with advertisements; however, there are many companies that are finding new business or receiving referrals by adapting to and utilizing the functionality that LinkedIn provides. They combine this adaptation with Windmill Networking. From a personal perspective, I have used LinkedIn for sales & marketing to a) find potential customers, b) map out their organizations, c) request introductions inside the organizations, d) look for potential partners or distributors, and e) look for potential service providers. In fact, I found a lawyer to consult with me while writing this book on LinkedIn! Why start from scratch looking for a service provider when you can utilize your network of real professionals to help you find them?
6) To Extend Your Trusted Network of Advisors
One of my four older brothers is particularly good at helping me map out and execute my professional goals. He once asked me, "Neal, do you have a Trusted Network of Advisors?" In other words, for anything in life, do you have a trusted person who will give you advice? Do you have a financial advisor? A legal advisor? A career coach? A reliable internet marketing consultant? These advisors are essential to not only bounce ideas off of regarding your professional career; they can also advise you about personal affairs. Through Windmill Networking on LinkedIn, I have met and cultivated relationships with people who have become a part of my own Trusted Network of Advisors. I have done so by meeting many through Windmill Networking and following up where possible with face-to-face meetings.
7) To Connect
I recently read a book called The $100,000 Career by John Davies. It claimed if you meet 100 people and meet 100 people whom they introduce to you, you will definitely be able to find a job. I have not personally tried this exercise, but the whole idea is that you never know how someone, or someone they know, may be able to help you out when you need it. This is the premise of Windmill Networking. I openly connect with anyone on LinkedIn because you never know how you can help them or vice-versa. Case in point: I recently accepted an invitation from someone who was interested in relocating to Asia and looking for job advice. Six months later when I was looking for advice from him, he was able to guarantee an interview from the lead recruiter of a very large enterprise software company. This could not have happened if a) we never connected and b) I did not offer to help him in the first place.
The real key to all of the above is in building out your virtual network and Windmill Networking with the attitude that, whenever you help people, it will return to you, increasing your bank account of karma. If you do not believe this and start heavily contacting people without offering to help them out, you may not be as successful on your LinkedIn journey. If you are helpful to others even when you don't need to be, believe me, more people will respond to you. You will then be able to ask them for advice when you really need it, and, chances are, they will respond favorably.
I hope I have opened your eyes if you are not currently a LinkedIn user. If you are a LinkedIn user, I hope this information helps you become a more effective user of the platform to meet your own objectives.
What is Your LinkedIn Objective?
You now have some key background information about social networking and what LinkedIn can potentially do for you. It is time to ask yourself what you want to achieve using LinkedIn.
This is by far the most common question that I reply with when someone reaches out to me with any sort of LinkedIn question. If you are still asking yourself why you should be on LinkedIn, I hope the previous chapter answered that question for you. If you are currently a LinkedIn member but don’t know where to go from here, I also hope the previous chapter gave you a taste of what is possible. If you are already a LinkedIn user who knows your objective, you are ahead of the game and will be able to quickly implement the strategies I outline in this book.
Many LinkedIn users fall into the following categories. I hope seeing these categories will give you some new ideas for creating your own objective:
Am I on LinkedIn? What is My Password Again?
Many people joined LinkedIn after receiving an invitation, and that’s it. They signed up, accepted the one invitation (or maybe a few invitations from friends) and put it aside. If this is you, I hope the preceding chapter has given you more ideas as to what your objective should be and how you can utilize this book.
Clueless!
These are people that have been on LinkedIn, connected with their friends when requested, but haven’t done anything else with it. They want to do something on LinkedIn after hearing a lot about it, but really don’t know how to utilize it. If you are one of the clueless, no need to despair! There are a lot of people in this category; you will find great value in this book once you decide on your objective and pursue it!
Just Checking It Out
There are a number of social networking sites out there, and it seems that every time one of your connections joins them, you get an invitation to join their network. Every social network wants to naturally extend their reach, so there is often a default “send an invitation to everyone in your address book” option that seems harmless and is often utilized. A lot of people from other social networking sites (Facebook and Twitter come to mind) may sign up for LinkedIn just to check it out. Especially if you are in college or have recently graduated, everyone is saying you need to be on LinkedIn. So, you are checking it out! I believe that people in this category are either early adopters of technology or are already familiar with the concepts of social networking sites. That being said, LinkedIn is unique in its demographic and functionalities (as well as in its limitations), so I hope after you create your LinkedIn Objective (as opposed to an objective which may be different for other social networking sites) that you will be able to fully understand and maximize your presence on the site.
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