Linked Intelligence

As I mentioned last week, the b5media Business Apprentice Contest has now become a solo competition, and my Best Business Advice I Ever Received post managed to get me through to the next round. Here’s this week’s challenge:
Everybody loves a success story. New business owners find them inspiring. Tell Kay a success story that [...]

Any time you take the complexity of real human relationships and try to break them down into very simple codification, you’re bound to have some challenges. In LinkedIn, you’re basically either connected or you aren’t — in or out. Some people let everyone in, others only let in those that they know well.
But what [...]

Over the past few weeks here in the b5media business channel, we’ve been having a little contest — sort of our own version of The Apprentice. We were divided into two teams, "The Aces" (my team) and "The Pros", and given the following initial challenge:
Kay just started a new business marketing aprons and chef’s [...]

I gave a presentation for ERE Media Tuesday entitled “Professional Networking – Beyond Sourcing”, which focused on the many ways that recruiters can use professional networking sites to support their business and their own career, not just for sourcing candidates. The way I see it, any hack can figure out how to type a [...]

I’ll be giving a free webinar Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2-3pm ET, entitled Professional Networking – Beyond Sourcing, sponsored by ERE Media and LinkedIn. The event is intended for recruiters, and the gist of it is this: any hack recruiter can figure out how to search LinkedIn, Jobster, ZoomInfo and the blogosphere to source candidates, [...]

Photo by CogDogBlog via flickr. Lolcats text by me.

One of the most common questions I get asked is, "How can LinkedIn help me sell more?" LinkedIn isn’t just for job seekers and recruiters. And while trying to use LinkedIn as a cold-calling tool may not be very effective, there are several ways that you can use LinkedIn to support the entire sales [...]

Darlene McDaniel over at Interview Chatter has created a great 10-part series on LinkedIn, as seen through the eyes of a new user:

What is LinkedIn? – Darlene starts with a brand new LinkedIn account, sets up a profile and connects to some people that are already on the system, all in about 90 minutes.
One [...]

You’ve probably heard the old saying, "Dig your well before your thirsty." It was the title of a great book on networking by Harvey Mackay.
I’ve found, though, that many people use it to justify the idea of "networking just to network". They network without any specific goal in mind, other than to grow their [...]

LinkedIn doesn’t record age and gender information in their profiles, and if they’ve ever done a demographic survey that included it, they’ve been tight-lipped about publishing that information. But some new social networking user statistics from reputation service Rapleaf revealed some rather startling results.