How My Blog Turbo Powers My LinkedIn Connections
This week we’re having some fun in the b5media Business Channel doing a “blog scramble”, with everyone doing guest posts on another blog in the channel. My guest blogger is the inimitable Liz Strauss of Successful Blog, explaining how a well-done blog can enhance your network.
How My Blog Turbo Powers My LinkedIn Connections
a guest post for Linked Intelligence by Liz Strauss
I’ve been on LinkedIn for more than 2 years now. I’ve got my fair share of connections, though you would never call me an Open Networker. I’m belong to a forum for LinkedIn members from Chicago and will be attending my first event next week with that group. Yet, If you ask, I’ll tell you the most powerful connection I have to LinkedIn is sitting in my profile in this section.
It’s my blog.
If you want to know who I am, what I look like, what I know about business, marketing, social media, my blog is a 3,000 page organized archive library that serves as an interactive resume. It’s by no means a writing project or a magazine. Blogging is relationships. People stop in for a conversation in the comment box we get to know each other well and deeply enough that often we find ways to do business.
Most of the connections and all of the recommendations on my LinkedIn account are folks that I’ve met though my blog. Blogging offers a chance to share thoughts about business and get responses from intelligent readers. It’s a share something I know and have a conversation about it. The people I meet on my blog often become friends and colleagues. I find them daily on the other end of telephone conversations. They are the folks who are my LinkedIn connections.
When I look at LinkedIn, I see a powerful tool for leveraging connections. That leverage is so much more powerful when first-level connections all have been part of a shared conversation. Then when I ask for an introduction or a recommendation, the folks in my network know who they’re sending and what to say to highlight my best impressions.
My blog has extended the number of my authentic relationships exponentially. I’m talking about people I know and people who know me — not Vcards. Those authentic relationships are my LinkedIn Network. They’re the ones who support me, introduce, and connect me to other great folks much like they are. It’s that base of people who know me that make my LinkedIn Network solid, fun, and sleek to navigate. It’s turbo-powered by the relationships that started on my blog.
Liz Strauss, community builder, product analyst, and social web strategist, writes for Successful-Blog.
April 15th, 2008 at 3:34 am
3,000 pages, that’s awesome! And I have to ask a question. How do you back up your blog? What processes do you have in place?
I’m still a young blogger and young at LinkedIn (just over a year at LI and 3 years at blogging) but I know I don’t want to lose what I have put into place and need to feel confident that I have backed up what needs to be backed up.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:42 am
Hi Kathie,
I have to say that I let folks much smarter than I am back up my blog. Both the b5 server folks have a back up process and so does my designer.
April 20th, 2008 at 7:06 am
[...] as part of “switch” among fellow bloggers, I wrote post for LinkedIntelligence, called How My Blog Turbo Powers My LinkedIn Connections. Now Liz Fuller, from Business and Blogging, has graciously offered one on success for us here. [...]