Linked Intelligence

Although LinkedIn has become best known for recruiting and job search, angel and venture funding has more quietly been one of the most successful applications of LinkedIn. Even knowing that, in reading this story about how web collaboration startup Goshido used LinkedIn to raise capital I was amazed at just how strong the results were:

Limerick-based Goshido went about raising that funding in a novel — although we imagine soon-to-be-repeated-by-others — method. They turned to a selected list of Enterprise 2.0 investors who are present on LinkedIn, offering 10 small slots of investment for a total of 20% equity for around US$ 230,000.

For those 10 slots they received 200 responses and soon picked the most appropriate investors, turning around in a week a fund-raising exercise that can take some months or years.

200 responses in less than a week? That’s unheard of! On top of that, $230K for 20% = $1.15M valuation for a company that’s pre-revenue (presumably, since they’re currently in limited private beta)? Pretty impressive, especially considering it’s a fairly crowded market they’re entering.

Take not of that “soon-to-be-repeated-by-others method”. With results like this, it seems that tools like LinkedIn may not just be facilitating the fund-raising process, but completely disrupting the old model.

The following is a recording of the webinar I did as part of the Vertical Response Social Media Webinar Series:

Feel free to embed it on your blog, share it with friends, etc.

You can also view the first few webinars…

• Making More Money with Your Business Blog – John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing
• Get Business Exposure by Hosting or Speaking on Podcasts & Radio – Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends
• Twitter for Your Business – Chris Brogan, New Marketing Labs

or register for the rest of the series…

• Why & How to Use Social Bookmarking for Your Business – Danielle Strle, StumbleUpon
• How to Easily Use Web Video to Get More Customers – Andrew Lock, Help! My Business Sucks!
• How to Make Social Media & Email Work Together – Janine Popick, CEO of Vertical Response

Yup, the economic news for the new year isn’t what any of us had hoped. U.S. unemployment held at just under 10%, but only because 661,000 workers have “removed themselves from the workforce”, a euphemism meaning they’ve given up looking for a job because they believe none are available. The picture’s not particularly brighter in the rest of the world either.

This hits close to home. Odds are good that you personally know at least 10-20 people who are currently unemployed, or as is increasingly common, under-employed, i.e., they have some part-time work, freelance work, or a full-time position at significantly lower pay than they’re accustomed to.

Sue Connelly wants to do something about that. As founder of KIT List, “an email job posting service where employers and recruiters advertise permanent or consulting job opportunities to over 58,000 high-quality professionals,” she knows that the jobs are there – she sees them come across the list every day.

So what’s her big idea? Simple, really – a “pay it forward wave”, this week – a concentrated effort to be proactive about getting our friends back to work. Here are some suggestions she has for simple ways to help:

• Forward a job lead
• Write a LinkedIn recommendation
• Review a friend’s resume and give objective feedback
• Set a time to meet for coffee or a drink (heck, we all need one these days!). In-person meetings are important, it buoys spirits and sparks ideas and energy – plus it’s fun!
• Make some calls on a friend’s behalf
• Pass on a link to a good job site or a great article on job search
• Make an introduction to a friend in a company he/she is interested in
• Reach out to a colleague who has been laid off from your company to see how he/she is doing and offer to make connections for him/her
• Become a “Job Buddy” – commit to meet on a regular basis to set goals and provide gentle accountability (if you are both looking for jobs, there’s a double benefit)
• Offer to do some role playing for a job interview
• Tell (and write down!) four strengths/qualities you see in your friend
• Review or help write a strong cover letter
• Invite a friend to connect to you on LinkedIn with the purpose of giving them access to your network so he/she can see if you have contacts in companies on their wish list
• Help with career ideas, brainstorm on other ways to use their skills, suggest good companies to target, how to transition into a new industry

And, of course, you can share about this on email lists, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.

If we each just did 1-2 of these things every day, we may not end unemployment completely, but we might at least help the people we know and care about get back to work sooner rather than later.

Image credit: Photomish Dan

Automation run amok:

Any time you change your company name or title on a position, LinkedIn thinks you’ve changed jobs. The algorithm obviously needs tweaking. If you’re editing an existing position, odds are you’re just correcting or rewording something, not making a career change.

As part of Vertical Response’s Social Media Webinar Series. I’ll be presenting Opening Doors and Closing Deals on LinkedIn on Friday, December 4, at 10am PST / 1pm EST. This will be focused entirely on using LinkedIn to grow your business, not for recruiting or job search, so all you entrepreneurs and sales & marketing professionals, this is for you! The webinar is free, but registration is required. A free playback will be available afterwards.

You can view the first few webinars…

• Making More Money with Your Business Blog – John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing
• Get Business Exposure by Hosting or Speaking on Podcasts & Radio – Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends
• Twitter for Your Business – Chris Brogan, New Marketing Labs

or register for the rest of the series…

• Why & How to Use Social Bookmarking for Your Business – Danielle Strle, StumbleUpon
• How to Easily Use Web Video to Get More Customers – Andrew Lock, Help! My Business Sucks!
• How to Make Social Media & Email Work Together – Janine Popick, CEO of Vertical Response

First off, let me say that it’s ludicrous that this even merits a blog post, but LinkedIn has so obfuscated the process that it takes a lot of digging to find it. If you just want the link, here it is:

http://linkedin.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/linkedin.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php

If you’d like to see how to find it for yourself, read on. Also, if you don’t get any response at the link above, there are some ideas on how to escalate your issue at the end of the post.

I had my attention called to this issue on Twitter today:

It actually took me a couple of minutes to figure out. I won’t bore you with all the dead-ends I tried that didn’t work…let me just show you what did:

1. Scroll down to the bottom of any page on LinkedIn:

2. Click on the Customer Service Link. This takes you to the LinkedIn Customer Service Center, where they invite you to first try to help yourself:

3. At this point, click on any of the FAQ entries – doesn’t matter which one. Once you do, now at the top of the page there will be an Ask Customer Service tab (why it’s not there on the first page is a mystery to me, but it isn’t):

4. That will finally put you on a contact form that will allow you to submit your question to customer service. You can even attach a file if needed, such as a screenshot of the problem:

What happens then? Well, LinkedIn isn’t known for their customer service — nice enough people once you get to someone, but they’re massively understaffed and overloaded. If you don’t get the response you need, here are some additional ways to try to escalate your issue:

1. According to ContactHelp.com, LinkedIn’s phone number is 650-687-3600, then press 5 to reach a live person. Based on the comments, though, good luck actually talking to technical support.

2. Try customerservice@linkedin.com or customer_service@linkedin.com.

3. Try @linkedin or @mariosundar on Twitter. There’s also a list of LinkedIn employees on Twitter.

4. Try community support. If something’s actually broken, that won’t help, but if it’s just a matter of figuring out how to do something, or if it even can be done, other LinkedIn users are pretty helpful. Try GetSatisfaction.com or the Using LinkedIn category on LinkedIn Answers.

Good luck!

Current.tv takes a humorous look at people’s perception of LinkedIn:

This Wednesday, 9/23, I’ll be conducting a 90-minute webinar on how to use social networking and social media to grow your business.

Most of my recent webinars have focused on a particular tool (e.g., LinkedIn) or a particular business function (e.g., recruiting). The primary focus of this program will be how to do more with less, i.e., how to get the highest returns from your virtual social interaction with the least (or at least a manageable) amount of effort.

As much fun as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, blogging and so on are, it’s easy sometimes to get lost in all that activity and lose sight of the fact that if you’re devoting all that time, you’re hoping for some kind of results!

As we put it in The Virtual Handshake:

People who know how to leverage their networks are called successful. People
who just know a lot of people are called socialites. Do you want to be a successful person or a socialite?

All cocktail parties come to an end, but on the Internet there is always another person with whom you can connect. This can be both healthy and hazardous; it’s very tempting to spend far too much time chatting with far too many people. We recommend focusing only on building your network to the extent that your marginal benefit equals your marginal cost. Otherwise, you will be so busy maintaining your relationships that you will have no time to leverage those you have formed.

So if you find yourself spending a lot of time in social media, but are still wondering when the payoff is going to come, you’ll want to be sure to attend this webinar.

Your investment is 90 minutes and $99, which includes a few cool bonus items and comes with a risk-free money-back guarantee if for any reason you’re not completely satisfied.

Register now

Elaine Fogel has written one of the best pieces I’ve seen about LinkedIn recently. She explains the background behind it:

On August 25, 2009, I created a blog post on Marketing Profs Daily Fix entitled, “Help! I Have Social Media Rejection Syndrome!” I had intended this tongue-in-cheek piece to stimulate discussion on an experience I had when one of my LinkedIn invitees clicked, “I don’t know this person,” ultimately rejecting my invitation and essentially putting me on notice with the LinkedIn program – i.e. requiring me to enter someone’s e-mail address during the invitation process.

Here is the White Paper that resulted from this experience. (PDF download)

Related posts:

• Why Use LinkedIn?
• Why Apply Different Rules of Connecting on LinkedIn?