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 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? Can this happen to you? YES!

Immediately I visited the FAQ in LinkedIn and 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?

After reading the FAQ portion I quickly submitted an email through the web form in the 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 account 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 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 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 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 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 profile.

”Would You Like to be a LinkedIn Marketing Star? 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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Don’t forget to review the LinkedIn For Marketing, Sales and Self Promotion presentation by clicking this link 

WHY be an open networker on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a professional network – a social network for grown ups

It has 30 million professionals

It is a great way of self promotion

You can use it to get a job or sell products or services or get funding

First of all you need to join the following groups:

-LinkedIn For Marketing Group

-GON Global Open Network

-TopLinkedIn Group

-All of the LION groups

-OPEN NETWORK

Joining these groups will allow you to add people at random and most importantly, others will find you and add you to their network.

Automation of your profile

-If you want automation of your profile join the paid subscription at Open Networker Site

-This will add a few thousand subscribers to your network by sending emails to several thousand people informing them that you are a paid member.

Profile

Make sure that you announce on your profile that you are an open networker by writing the words “Open networker accept all invitations” and your email address on your network.

Do a good job at finishing your profile and adding a photo as it will increase your changes of getting invitations.

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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Lean how to add thousands of connections to your LinkedIn profile without doing anything but clicking a few links and adding keywords to your profile.

Being an open networker on LinkedIn is one of the most powerful strategies for adding 3,000, 6,000, even 10,000 connections in just a few months.  Your first 4,000 connections can come as fast as 1 or 2 months.

Remember, these are strategies for self promotion for you, your job and your business.  Being an open network can accelerate your job search and help you get more leads for your products or services.

These social networking strategies can be used in any social network, but in LinkedIn you will get the most results in the fastest way.  Remember, LinkedIn is the social network for professionals.

Don’t forget to read my book “The Unselfish Guide to Self Promotion” to learn more strategies on job hunting, sales, marketing and self promotion.

LinkedIn for Marketing Teleseminar – Radio Show Details

Thursday March 26 at 3 PM PST 6 PM EST

Listen on the Web: www.BlogTalkRadio.com/LinkedInForMarketing

Listen over the Phone: Phone: (646) 200-4444

Show ID: 422973

If you decide to listen over the web you will be able to ask question as we have a chat tool!

If you miss the live event come back to listen the recordin

Listen to other LinkedIn For Marketing Tele-Seminars on Job Hunting, Marketing and Self Promotion at http://linkedinformarketing.com/training/

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

Why do YOU want to compare job hunting to a sales process?

1: Sales Process has best practices. In other words, they have steps that you can follow and repeat and get the same results over and over again

2: Confidence. When you compare a Sales Process with Job Hunting you have expectations and it will help with your morale

-A Resume is a Sales Letter
-A Call to a company is a Cold Call
-An Interview is a Sales Meeting
-A follow up call is a Sales Call
-A follow up note is a Sales Thank You Letter

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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Learn how to get a job NOW using the social network LinkedIn.com Learn how to treat your job or employment hunt like a sales process and get your dream job today. After you identify the perfect job for you don’t forget to follow up. It is not enough to send a resume or an email. Try to find a connection in the company, follow up with a phone call, be active, and make sure your resume goes to the “A” pile and not to the “B” or “C” pile or resumes.
LinkedIn for Marketing Teleseminar - Radio Show Details

Tomorrow, Thursday March 12 at 3 PM PST 6 PM EST

Listen on the Web:
www.BlogTalkRadio.com/LinkedInForMarketing  

Listen over the Phone:
Phone: (646) 200-4444
Show ID: 422973

If you decide to listen over the web you will be able to ask question as we have a chat tool!

If you miss the live event come back to listen the recording

You can find Part 1 of the teleseminar here http://linkedinformarketing.com/how-to-get-a-job-now/

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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LinkedIn is one of the best places online or offline to find a new job. You just need to navigate this professional network so you don’t waste your time.

LinkedIn is full of Hiring Managers and Head Hunters. What is the problem? Most of them don’t post jobs in the job section of LinkedIn. You have to find them and their jobs.

Fill out your profile completely including
-Photo
-Job History
-Education
-Ask for Recommendations

Join Groups
-Join Local Groups
-Join HR Groups where headhunters are
-Join Industry Groups by Industry and Position
–Industry like Construction, or Retail
–Position like Architects, or Programmers, or Financial Analysts
–Your can apply directly from LinkedIn

Be an open networker
-Put “open networker’ on your profile
-This will allow hiring managers and recruiters to contact you

Use the Job section to find jobs in your area
-Search by location or position
-Contact the hiring manager
-Contact other people in your network in that company

Look for job postings in Groups
-Enter groups and click on Discussions and Jobs
-Contact the job poster directly

Contact Recruiters in your network
-Look at your connections
-Look at your groups
-Look for jobs in their profile

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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This week our free teleconference will be on how to use LinkedIn to get a new or a better job or simply network to make your information available to recruiters and hiring managers.

It is not easy finding a job in a down economy. This is why you need an edge, you need visibility to the right people, as many people, in order to get the most exposure to your skills and your resume.

We will go over how to use LinkedIn for Self Promotion in the job marketplace with easy usable strategies you can apply in 15 minutes after the teleconference.

As you probably heard already the social network, or professional network LinkedIn.com has a very large concentration of hiring managers and headhunters. The problem is not all of them post jobs on this or other job posting networks. How can you contact them? How can they contact you? We’ll cover very active and passive approaches to finding a job NOW.
LinkedIn for Marketing Teleseminar - Radio Show Details

Tomorrow, March 5 at 3 PM PST 6 PM EST

Listen on the Web:
www.BlogTalkRadio.com/LinkedInForMarketing

Listen over the Phone:
Phone: (646) 200-4444
Show ID: 422973

If you decide to listen over the web you will be able to ask question as we have a chat tool!

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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Reid Hoffman, the CEO of Linkedin.com was on CNN yesterday talking about LinkedIn and giving tips on how to use it. The interview lasted about 15 minutes and covered social network, professional networks, and job hunting.

Most impressively the CNN announced that LinkedIn currently has 36 million members around the world. That’s incredible if you consider a few months ago it only had 28 million members. How is this possible? Simple, LinkedIn has a new signup every single second.
gle second

The CEO says LinkedIn is perfect for finding information or to find a job. You can also post question on business strategy. For example, Mr. Hoffman asked on LinkedIn where he should open his European office. He got good tips like cities with multiple international flights.

To find a job he says “Applicants with complete profiles, recommendations and connections are getting highest response rates when applying for jobs. You can get an edge when finding a job by connecting to the hiring manager”.

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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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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Are you using the internet to market yourself, your products and your company? Is your strategy based on value and not advertising? Do you follow up weekly with customers, leads, end users and partners? I’ve been interviewed a few times for blogs and radio stations on the subject of social media, networking, web 2.0 and LinkedIn and now on Success Magazine.

The article talks about how to use the new generation of technology and the internet to market and sell yourself and your products and to stay relevant and keep your business in front of the competition and to make relationships with your prospects, leads and customers.

“Entrepreneur, author and speaker Jorge Olson says such online resources can help a salesperson add a few hundred leads to their database every month. After reading a few articles or case studies by the salesperson, these potential customers tend to qualify themselves by pursuing more information from the salesperson if they’re interested.  After that initial qualification, “you’ll have leads that consider you an authority on the subject,” Olson says. ”

If you don’t subscribe to Success Magazine you can read the article online at their website http://www.successmagazine.com/Connecting-the-World-/PARAMS/article/566/channel/16#  

Don’t forget to check out my new book, “The Unselfish Guide to Self Promotion” available at Amazon.com and book stores.

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