What’s up with my LinkedIn account! I have 12,000 + connections

Oh my! How did I get 12,000 connections on LinkedIn without doing much?

Here’s a little update on my LinkedIn Connections… More next week…

I write to you from my living room sofa as I’m watching the Golden Globe Awards on a Sunday night. I grabbed my laptop and started un-procrastinating (is that even a word) to write about the status of my LinkedIn account…

Last month i wanted to post a milestone on my LinkedIn account. I reached 12,000. I forgot to post and when I finally decided to write the post I saw, for my surprise that I had another 767 for a total of 12, 767 as of tonight. It seams that my account is growing exponentially in contacts even though it’s inactive for large stretches of time. As a matter of fact I have not done anything significant to get traffic, connections or new business in more than one year.

Remember, you don’t have to spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. You just have to spend some time. Make sure you have 100% of your profile completed, read this blog to get a step by step “to do” list to get lot’s of contacts and business from LinkedIn and most importantly, make sure everyone knows you’re an open networker.

Next week I’ll go over the new changes on LinkedIn groups including the look and feel, open groups and new management features.

Thanks and good night.

Jorge Olson

5 Things You Should Be Doing On LinkedIn But Likely Are NOT

Don’t you love it when people tell you what you are doing wrong?

Well, if you’ve read the book “how to win friends, and influence people” you’d know to avoid this tactic, for making friends.

However, in the blogging world, we get the benefit of skipping some of the practical rules of the world.
So let’s get to it. You absolutely should be doing these 5 key items:
1) Use the Widget and Links on Your Profile Page to Maximize Exposure. Getting people to visit your profile is half the battle with LinkedIn, however once they are there are you inviting them to go where you want them to go? Using the website links as well as widgets such as “Wordpress” to add your blogs post to you profile are a great way to engage people. These people are already interested in you, they are reading you profile. Don’t limit their engagement to what you can type on LinkedIn, take them to other places that can educate them further and/or promote your brand or your products.
2) Respond to Questions and Answers. This is often encouraged to gain expertise and “rank” within communities as an expert. This is very true, however there is also a very important aspect of engagement when you provide value to a conversation in this format. You automatically engage a targeted audience who all have a certain mindset. If you’re savvy, you cannot just build expertise, but you can weave in relevant self-promotion that is usually highly effective.
3) Provide research to a community. This is basically providing a group with interesting data and topics as news or discussion. Similar to the reasons above, this type of engagement will not only provide you an audience and build your rank within a community, it will also make people more receptive and engaging when you lead them to self promotion. People don’t mind being “pitched” or getting some level of promotion from folks as long as they first get value from them.
4) Figure out what you want, then build a group to accomplish it. Most people feel intimidate to start their own group on LinkedIn or feel like it’s going to be a hassle to maintain. Before you dismiss it, give it a try. It’s not that hard and you may be surprised by how many professionals out there are interested in same goals or topics you are. Owning a group has several advantages, perhaps the largest is you can communicate directly to them at any time.
5) Use LinkedIn. Ok, this one sounds a bit dumb. However a majority of people we train do not login and interact frequently. They use it more as a repository for their online resume, which they update once every few months, then happily go about “facebooking” several times a day. This is ok if you’re 18 or if you have no current professional goals or needs. However, if you need a job or have a business objective that requires others, get on LinkedIn! It’s overlooked often, but truly is one of the most effective and powerful networking tools today.
For more information, join one of our linkedInformarketing.com webinars and subscribe to our newsletter.
Dave Albertson
Small Business Growth Expert

Can you please help me with LinkedIn!

Is Private Equity Back?

Is Private Equity Back? Are Deals in the Flow? Tell us your experience.

How is business? Are you getting more deal flow, better access to investors and capital? What is the change from last year?

Visit the group here: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=875017   

Jorge S. Olson
Group Manager 

Your LinkedIn Profile Has Been Suspended

I tried to log in to my LinkedIn account as I do every day and to my surprise I read “Your LinkedIn Profile Has Been Suspended”.  Oh my god!

My LinkedIn Profile was Suspended Without Notice!

My account, my contacts, my groups, my business and my marketing are all suspended.  Yes, I do a lot of business on LinkedIn and use it every single day. How what?  What happened? Did I do something wrong? Did I use my LinkedIn Profile incorrectly? Can this happen to you? YES!

I needed to get my LinkedIn Profile back online pronto!

Immediately I visited the FAQ in LinkedIn and searched under “suspended accounts” I read every single question and answer.  No, I did not send unrequested emails or invitations, no, I did not spam, no, I did not do anything wrong.  What happened to my LinkedIn Profile?

After reading the FAQ portion I quickly submitted an email through the web form in the LinkedIn profile suspended account section of the professional social network.  I waited 2 days and nothing.  No account and no response.  Now I visited the social network again and read all pertinent information I could find.  Finally, I found a customer service email.  I quickly send an email explaining my situation and asking for clarification, an explanation or any response.  Even apologizing for whatever unintentionally I could have done to merit a suspended account.

Next day I received a response and my LinkedIn Profile was activated.   What happened?

New Rule!  You may only use the “First Name” and “Last Name” section of your LinkedIn profile for your first name and last name.  You can’t add anything else.  What does this mean?  Well, as a marketing tool I wrote clever messages after my last name on my LinkedIn profile. This is a marketing headline strategy to get more attention, more click-troughs and more exposure.  This is what I had:

Jorge Olson – Just Published a Beverage Book

When you do a search on the site for “beverage”, or “book” my name always came up. Furthermore when someone invited me to join their network or just browned my name they would know I just published a beverage book.  I did this by simply going into my LinkedIn profile and writing the text after my last name.  Now LinkedIn does not permit any messages at all; just your name.

How can this affect you? Simple, you can’t use this strategy on your LinkedIn profile anymore. It also affects “open networkers”, the people who accept all invitations and want to expand their network as they can’t announce they are open networkers anymore. May people belong to groups like LION or TopLinked and other groups of open networkers who require you write their name after you last name; you can’t do it anymore.  Many more of you might write your email after your name to invite people to network, remove it.  These are some of the common uses of your LinkedIn profile name that are being cracked down:

Jorge Olson – jorge@ jorgeolson.com

Jorge Olson – LION

Jorge Olson – TopLinked

Jorge Olson – Phone: (619) 852 6942

Jorge Olson – Any marketing message

If you have something after your last name remove it today before you get a surprise next time you log in to your LinkedIn profile. To learn more about how to have a great LinkedIn Profile visit all the other great post on the LinkedIn Marketing Home-Page.

What is The Big Deal With Open Networkers?

Have you ever seen “I’m an open networker” and wondered “what is that?” Especially after you see it 5, 10, even 20 times on LinkedIn.

So what is the big deal with open networkers? What is an open networker?

An open network on LinkedIn or any other social network is someone that is willing to accept your invitation if you send one. Yes, even if they don’t know you and or know someone you know they will accept your invitation.

Why would anyone accept all invitation?

If you accept all invitations and are an open network you want to grow your network as fast as possible. Many people really don’t understand why you should expand your network in this way and I’ve received many emails asking “why should anyone accept people in their network if they don’t know them”.

Expanding your network is not difficult and I think not the real question. The real question is “what can you do with your network once you have 7,000 in it?”

I spoke with 5 people last week that have more than 3,000 and don’t know what to do next. This is s typical problem, it is one thing to accept all invitations and expand your network and it is another to leverage them.

If you are not super marketing savvy chances are you don’t have a funnel to point your network. You don’t have a blog, or a newsletter or a way to get people from your linkedin.com network to your own private network.

What is the key? They key is value! The key is “Unselfish Promotion”. If you add value to your network you will easily get them to subscribe to your blogs or newsletters and down the line offer you a job, or buy your products or whatever you are promoting.

Some important advice, adding value does not mean telling people about your great products or letting them know about what incredible features and benefits your products carry. That’s advertising, not unselfish promotion.

You need to create value with real, usable, free information and yes, at the end feel free to plug your website, job, product or company.

Don’t forget to sign up for our LinkedIn For Marketing Newsletter to get free videos, audios and strategy once per week.

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