linked101.com

If you would like to grade your linkedIn profile the following tool will do that for you.  Go to http://linked101.com/review.html and see how you score relative to the average LinkedIn user.

I was just looking at my connections and noticed a new link that appears below each connections name…”View and Edit Details”.  This is currently in beta, but it appears that you can add details such as phone number, address, email and notes to your contacts.  Sounds great, right?

First let me say that I like that LinkedIn is adding functionality.  The notes option could be interesting and a great way to track information to particular contacts.  Now for the downside.

First, anything you add can be deleted if the person removes you as a connection.  That may not be important since if the person removes you, you probably will not be contacting them in the future.  This is a minor issue.

The real downside is that I already have all of my connections contact information in Cardscan, outlook and my Blackberry. (Because I usually have their business card before I send out an invitation.)  I’m really not going to take the time to renter 250+ connection contact data into another application.

A better solution would be for LinkedIn to allow me to add this information to my profile and choose whether or not my connections can view this information.  This is what Plaxo does and it’s one of the features I like about it.  I still don’t really use Plaxo, but they at least have laid out the groundwork for a better way to handle this.

Another option (that Plaxo has) that I would like to see is the ability for me to classify my connections as a friend, business colleague, client, etc.

This is currently in beta so there is still the potential that this feature will be improved.  For now it is a step in the positive direction.

A week or so ago my wife and I woke up at 1AM to the sound of a seal coming from my son’s room.  For those of you with children, you may have experienced the joy of Croup.  Croup is simply a virus that causes swelling in the throat, making it hard to breathe.  My wife, the more detail oriented spouse, took my son to the emergency room and I stayed home with my two daughters.

Since I didn’t want to go back to sleep until they were home and I knew all was fine, I decided to catch up on adding some blog posts.  Writing at 2 AM in the morning is not something I necessarily recommend. 

Today I finally made it back to re-read the posts and I can’t say that they were the clearest posts I have written.  And grammatically they were somewhat below par.  The moral of the story is what you publish online, in emails, in letters, etc. is a reflection on who you are as a business professional.

I highly recommend that you read what you have written before sending or posting and that you spell check your work.  So in this case do as I say not as I did.  When you update your LinkedIn profile or make changes, copy what you have written and paste it in Word and run the spell check.  Make any corrections and then copy and paste back into LinkedIn.

After all it’s your brand and if you don’t care enough to get it right, why will anyone else care.
(Spell checking this before posting found 4 errors)

LinkedIn has seen significant growth over the last year and the numbers keep climbing.  As of last week there were over 25 million members.  That’s an impressive number even if it does trail Facebook (50 million plus) and MySpace (65 million plus).  Being a business networking site, it’s likely to not reach the saturation of the other two.  That’s ok, since from a business perspective it has the ability to be more productive to your average professional.

Where LinkedIn struggles is in the ability of members to monetize their presence.  Sure there are people who have made money as a direct result of being on LinkedIn.  I have.  But given the fact that there are over 2 million people in my network, there is room for improvement.

If I were to assign a grade to LinkedIn’s ability to help me

• Enhance my network:  10
• Expand my Network:  8
• Identify Prospects:  4
• Identify Potential Partners:  7
• Research:  7
• Build Online Brand:  10
• Secure Introductions:  8

The biggest hurdle is the ability to conduct a blind search to identify prospects.  Part of this is because LinkedIn doesn’t really want the site to be a tool to identify prospects that you you don’t know.  The downside is that even though you have an extended network, there is no effective way to search beyond your first degree connections.

I would like to see LinkedIn come up with a solution that allows me to drill down throughout my entire network providing more opportunity to identify potential partners and clients.

For now LinkedIn may have a lot of members, but until those members find value in interacting, it will lag behind it’s potential.  And members will continue to think more in terms of the number of connections they have and not the monetization of their connections.

LinkedIn has four main featured sections on the site.  Up until recently it was People, Jobs, Answers and Service Providers.  In a recent update LinkedIn Service Providers was replaced by Companies.  The Service Providers content is now within the Companies section.

Service Providers was probably the least utilized of the four main sections and if one had to give way for a new section I guess this was the smart choice.  Still, other than the People section I personally believed the Service Providers sections provided me the most relevant value.

The section consists of a group of job categories that list the top recommended members based on client recommendations.  I would have liked LinkedIn to do a lot more to promote the section.  Recommendations from your client’s are a great way to build your online brand.  It’s a powerful statement to be one of the top people in your job category within your geographic location.

The Companies page is focussed more on researching companies.  The section is still considered in beta testing and should evolve over time.  For now it’s interesting, but if they put in the functionality to search by more variables than just company name it maybe a really useful tool.

This is almost a case of the self-employed verses small to large businesses.  The Service Providers section allows the self employed person to gain notice by placing high in the rankings, while the Companies section allows companies to gain notice from being in search results.  Being a self-employed person, I admit I’m more partial to Service Providers.  But since I target small businesses I may grow to like the Companies section.

For now, just be aware that each may serve a useful function to help you grow your business.

One of the ways that I use LinkedIn is to connect with people in my local Chamber.  Many of the meetings have anywhere from 45 to 70 people.  It’s simply imposible to meet everyone.

I assume that most people attending have the same goal as me…to meet and network with as many people as possible.  So after each meeting I send a LinkedIn invitation to those that I am not connected to.  I’ve found that most often this connection (where I don’t personally know the person and have not had a prior conversation with) usually leads to a conversation at the next event.  In fact I make it a point to introduce myself personally at the next meeting.  LinkedIn can be a great ice-breaker.

Yesterday I sent out about 6 invitations to people that attended the same event yesterday morning.  Two people chose to not connect, but it’s how they chose to not connect that impressed me. 

Not everyone accepts the invitation, but Bill McDermott and Mitch Copman both took the time to email me back their reason’s for not accepting the invitation.  That says a lot about them as a person.  The reason’s for not connecting are irrelevant.  Some people are Lion’s, some ar Closed networkers and some like myself are what I would call a Networker (someone who uses LinkedIn to connect to those they know and meet and to those they would like to know or meet).  Each person has to choose the strategy that best works for them.

Do you respond to every connection request?  Or do you sometimes ignore and archive requests that you choose to not accept?  What you do says a lot about you as a person.  I’m not connected to Bill or Mitch, but because they took the time to respond to my invitation, I will keep them in mind if I ever come across someone that would be a great lead or introduction for them.

I woke up, work got crazy, and the next thing I new it had been three weeks since I wrote a post.  During this time LinkedIn released a quick tutorial produced by Common Craft.  IF you’ve never visited their site I would recommend that you do. They have created a style of explaining ideas that simplifies any subject so that my wife could even understand subjects such as blogs, RSS feeds, or even LinkedIn.  For the record my wife is intelligent but has no understanding of technology…and doesn’t have a desire to do so.

If I was a big dog, I would do whatever was possible to have Common Craft create and ad for what I do.  They have a creative way of taking a complex (to the masses not the geeks) concept and presenting it in a non-tech manner.  Rather than link directly to the LinkedIn tutorials, I am going to link to their site so that you can see all of their creativity.  The LinkedIn explanatorial can be viewed here.

For the record, Common Craft is the brainchild of the Sachi and Lee LeFever.

A couple of weeks ago I talked with Vincent Wright who previously ran the MyPowerLinkedIn forum. He related that after years of evangelizing for LinkedIn he was asked to remove the reference to LinkedIn due to trademark infringement. At that point, I assumed that as a little fish the gotlinkedin.com domain was living on borrowed time.

Thus I bought this domain and begin planning the switch. Last week the email finally arrived asking me to cease and desist using the trademarked LinkedIn in my domain. Now, even though I think there is no possibility anyone would confuse my site with LinkedIn, I understand the reasoning behind LinkedIn enforcement of trademark law.

If they fail to protect their name now, it could be harder to do so in the future. So immediately I stepped up the conversion process. The first thing I did was hit “reply” to the email to inform them that I would do as they asked. Unfortunately the email bounced back, saying there was no such email.

So even though they asked me to respond to the email, I have yet to find a way to communicate my compliance, other than to place a blank page up on gotlinkedin.com to allow folks the opportunity to go to the LinkedIn site or to my blog.

So if you’re wondering why yhe name and domain name has changed, there you go. And with the domain name change, my linkedin book name has be changed as well to “LinkedIn 101“.

I try to read as many LinkedIn blogs each week.  It’s getting harder as some of the best are disapearing.  My favorite, LinkedIntelligence stopped posting on a regular basis about a month ago.  MyPowerLinkedIn forum no longer covers linked in the same, as it was asked to stop using the word LinkedIn as part of the name.  These are sites that talked and evangelized LinkedIn well before it was cool to the masses.

There are still a few that are worth reading…Imonlinkedinnowwhat, The Executives Guide to LinkedIn, The LinkedIn User’s Manual, and of course LinkedIn’s own blog.

I would expect that LinkedIn would use their blog to communicate with their 22 plus million users, but instead it seems to be aimed at developers and people in the tech industry. I get the feeling that it’s more important to them to talk about how cool they are in using the latest technologies that the average user could care less about.

Us users want to know how to use the site better, how other people are benefitting from LI, and what are you working on that will help us network better and grow our businesses. Every now and then a post touches on a user oriented topic, but they are few and far between. We don’t care what conference you recently presented at or how your interns first day was.

At a minimum, if LI is using their blog to shine their image with the tech and venture world, then they should create a second blog that is dedicated to it’s users. The techies and venture folks may be what pays the bills, but the users are what establishes the value.

Jason Alba recently wrote a post talking about recommendations and made some good points. You can read his full post by clicking here.

Having read his post I started looking at recommendations in the Service Providers section (Service Providers used to be a main category, but is now listed under Companies). The most important thing in a recommendation is its authenticity. Truthful recommendations add value. Misleading or false recommendations subtract value. Also of equal importance is the basis for the recommendation which can be one of the following:

1. Colleague: You worked together
2. Service Provider: You have a pay for service or product relationship
3. Business Partner: You have worked with but not while at the same company

The best recommendation is as a Service Provider.  These recommendations are what gets you listed in the Service Providers directory. 

As I was reviewing some of the top people and their recommendations I came across someone who was listed as the 2nd most recommended person.  Here are a couple of the recommendations:

“I’ve only known XXXX for a few weeks. In that time he has referred many projects to me and offered to make some introductions to a contact of mine.  In my experience it is rare to come across such an enlightened individual and even rarer for the person to be an YYYYYYYY. If XXXX treats all of his clients like he treats me then I highly recommend him to anyone in search of a great YYY professional.”
 hired XXXX as a YYYYYYYY in 2008

“I’ve met with XXXX on different occasions , his professionalism and his knowledge on our matters, were always consistent. His work ethic and personality is very reliable and incomparable.”
hired XXX as a YYYYYYYYY in 2008

“XXXX was one of my students in business school. He worked on a strategic analysis project with two other students. The project was executed so well that I am still sharing this today with my current students as a benchmark of the quality, thoroughness, analysis and execution that I expect. XXXX was a great team leader and as you would expect, his analysis was excellent. I highly recommend him. He is an asset to any project.”
hired XXX as a YYYYYY in 2003

The basis for each recommendation above is as a Service Provider.  Maybe I’m being picky, but none of the recommendations appear to be based on someone having provided a service.  They appear to be recommendations of character which would be either as a colleague or business partner.

The classification doesn’t change the authenticity of the recommendation but the recommendations do appear to be mis-leading.  They help this person appear higher than others who are relying on actual Service Provider recommendations to rank in the Service Providers section.  If everyone did the same, there would be no value in looking at the Service Provider directory.

I can’t say definitively that this person was not hired by the people making the recommendations, which is why I have eliminated any personal references.  Just keep in mind that when giving and accepting recommendations that you either add to the Service Providers directory value, or subtract from it.