Linked Intelligence

LinkedIn launched their blog in April 2007, shortly after hiring Mario Sundar as Community Evangelist. I know there are probably almost as many different opinions about what LinkedIn ought to be doing with regard to community outreach as there are LinkedIn users. So I thought I’d see what Mario has to say about the topic on his own blog, Marketing Nirvana, where he writes about community evangelism. In searching his blog, I came across this post:

5th P of Marketing - First 4 Steps in Social Media Engagement

In it, he describes “the fifth P of marketing” – Participation. He says that companies that want to engage in social media need to do 8 things:

- Be where the users are
- Facilitate easier means of communication with them
- Create brand evangelists
- Be a source of information on the company
- Respond swiftly and honestly
- Start publishing content
- Stir internal company conversations
- Improve product and user experience

So, one year later – how do you think LinkedIn is doing in each of those areas?

I’ve set up a simple survey – just rate LinkedIn on a scale of 1 to 5 in each of those areas.

Feel free to discuss the topic further here in the comments, but please not at the exclusion of responding to the survey, which should take less than a minute. Also, please feel free to repost this anywhere you want – there’s no limit on the number of survey responses, and the more we have, the more meaningful and impactful the data will be.

Image: Marco Michelini via stock.xchng

Image by .hj barraza via Flickr

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.

My favorite LinkedIn-related quote of the past few weeks is from Erik Dafforn at ClickZ, who asks, “When does social media matter in SEM?“:

LinkedIn has been a workhorse of social networking sites, sort of a baked potato to FaceBook’s bag of Skittles. People likely spend less time per visit on LinkedIn than they do on other networking sites. This is fine for most of its users, as LinkedIn is designed to work for you while you’re doing your job, rather than trying to avoid it.

I love that last line! (my emphasis)

Erik then goes on to offer some very sound advice for companies:

Your HR department or some other official body must get into LinkedIn to consolidate and verify certain issues. Chances are that scads of your employees already use the site and have listed your company in their profiles but have been inaccurate in describing the company. As a result, LinkedIn company profiles are only as accurate as the details individual users have added.

An employee’s profile is not “owned” by their employer, but it’s perfectly reasonable — in fact, I’d say it should be obligatory — for companies to review employee’s profiles and make sure that they are representing the corporate brand correctly and consistently.

There’s a fine line here — you don’t want all your employees sounding like robots programmed to recite the company’s mission as a mantra. You want to give employees leeway to offer their own unique personal perspective on the company. But you also want to reinforce the corporate brand.

Just handle with care. Think of it as a training opportunity.

Image: Jesse Sneed via Flickr

Over the past few weeks I’ve been collecting some more great ideas from the blogosphere to add to my collection of 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn. Here are the recent additions:

Warm Calling via LinkedIn - Alex Iskold

As part of his excellent “Guide to Business Development 2.0″, Alex says that cold calling is dead:

LinkedIn has become an indispensable tool for business introductions. [...] An introduction received via LinkedIn is much warmer than a cold call, because it comes with a bit of trust. You are no longer a stranger trying to upsell things that no one needs, instead you come with a recommendation, however light, from a person that the receiver is connected to. And even if you can’t find a path to connect to someone, sending a direct message via LinkedIn is better than sending a cold email. The reason is that LinkedIn implies business context, and so the person you’re trying to reach likely is not going to be as surprised or angry about the unsolicited ping.

Five Ways IT Managers Can Get More Out of LinkedIn - Shane Schick

This is a great post focused on how senior IT managers and executives can use LinkedIn to do their job more effectively (and not one of them has anything to do with recruiting/hiring). I particularly like #5, which is applicable to everyone — not just IT managers:

Treat the network like a network. IT infrastructure only functions as well as all the parts that comprise it. The same holds true for your LinkedIn network. As you establish contacts, monitor them for new people they’re meeting, new projects they’ve started on, and contribute whenever and however you’re able. In compute terms we call this kind of thing “load balancing.” That’s what LinkedIn, and social networking in general, is all about.

Five Ways Authors Can Profit from LinkedIn - Mahesh Grossman

LinkedIn has created unprecedented levels of access to agents, acquisition editors, authors and others in the publishing industry. It’s been an invaluable tool for me for all my book projects. Any author who’s not already a best-seller is nuts if they’re not using LinkedIn.

Secrets LinkedIn Can Tell You About Your Customers - Matt Asay

As Matt points out:

One of the frustrating things about an open-source business is you don’t generally know who is using your software. The paid customers you know, of course, but generally this represents a small fraction of the total user base.

He then goes on to explain how a search on LinkedIn for his company’s product turned up a wealth of information about people using it that he wouldn’t otherwise have known about. Note that this isn’t applicable just to open-source products, but any off-the-shelf software product.

Searching the Hidden Job Market for Opportunities - Debra Feldman

CIO Magazine says that the nature of recruiting is changing:

Employers are extremely cautious and selective, and recruiting proceeds at an unusually slow pace. Job hunting has literally become a contact sport. That is, you need contacts—lots of them—to expedite the process of landing your next job. In particular, you need connections inside the companies you’re targeting. Why? Because employee referrals are becoming a proportionately bigger source of new hires.

Market Your Company on LinkedIn - Gordon Choi

Gordon offers an in-depth look at LinkedIn’s new corporate profiles.