LINKEDIN: May I suggest that you not use your employer’s email on LinkedIn?

Friday, November 16, 2007

May I suggest that you not use your employer’s email on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a great way to find people and be found. Unfortunately, in today’s economic climate, changing jobs is a fact of life. When I was on Wall Street, one would be walked out of the building and one’s email unceremoniously forwarded to one’s boss or “Human Resources”. That taught me NEVER to depend or use the boss’ email. So to, I’ve seen a lot of people — one of my very best contacts — lose access to their LinkedIn account. She’s forgotten her password and her corporate email is gone. Hence always I advise people to use a personal email on LinkedIn. I have some pretty specific opinions about what email to use, but suffice to say it’s NEVER the corporate email.

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Update: And, I saw that happen yesterday! :-(

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LINKEDIN: an email about LinkedIn

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

FROM AN EMAIL ABOUT LINKEDIN

*** begin quote ***

>Second, what is the 5 strikes and you’re locked rule that you refer to below?

LinkedIn has a policy, about a year old, that if five people that you invite say “Don’t know”, you’re account is locked out. Depending upon how well you kowtow to “customer (dis)service”, they will unlock you. A second offense, and you may not be unlocked.

>Third, I like your “I am not accepting your request ..”

Contrary to the impression my large count gives, I am NOT an open networker. (I run an alumni ezine and have been “in transition” five times and ran a networking group.) I try to only connect with kindred spirits.

>Speaking of LinkedIn, I had an interesting conversation with a recruiter last week on the topic of having recruiters as LinkedIn connections.

I’d think that was “interesting” because recruiters have a completely different set of objectives than real people.

> I told her my take on how I see it being a one-way street (at least from a career networking point of view)

I’m not so sure I agree with you. LinkedIn for seekers allows one to find and be found.

>and she basically agreed as she said “I would never put my clients in my linkedin connections”.

Sure, because she can’t compete with all the recruiters out their chasing a diminishing world of hiring managers and job seekers. If I can id someone who needs my brand of poison then why should they hire a recruiter to find me. Or visa versa.

There’s a lot of sleeze tactics on LinkedIn.

*** end quote ***

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LINKEDIN: Personalizing your LinkedIn url

Sunday, November 11, 2007

What is a personalized LinkedIn url?

Personalizing your LinkedIn url allow you to customize the web address of your LinkedIn public profile. You can include this personalized LinkedIn url in the signature of emails you send, post it on other web sites, or whatever. (Put it on your resume?) You “personalize” it by getting to the “Edit My Public Profile” page. Then choose what will appear after the last slash in www.linkedin.com/in/ “at least five letters”! “first come, first served”! “one to a user”!

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LINKEDIN: “Liveliness”

Saturday, November 10, 2007

At the end of the first week: (for all contacts older than one month)

%Dead 0.0720
%Unresponding 0.6490
%MyEmployer 0.0719
%HeadHunters 0.0182

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My original focus was on “breakage”. But at a little more than 5%, that’s not terrible. I am attempting to “reach around” the break. That’s how I describe sending an InMail directly to a contact of the “broken contact”.

Since my first email only induced about 30% to respond, I’ll have to figure out a better approach.

Sigh. Always more to do!

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LINKEDIN: Track the origin of the species

Friday, November 9, 2007

In building your LinkedIn circle of connections, it appears wise to have some organized system of tracking them from the beginning. Lest, awhile down the road, you WILL be asked “How do I know you?”. Sometimes that’s a tough question. Unless you have anticipated it.

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LINKEDIN: Reaching out to your LinkedIn contacts

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

FROM A LINKEDIN QUESTION, MY ANSWER:

*** begin quote ***

I recently started a new job. How can I send an update message in to all of my LinkedIn connections letting them know?

*** end quote ***

I’d suggest going the extra mile and send each person a personalized email.

It can be identical in content but you’ll find that individual messages get through spam filter easier.

Also, if by chance a email address is out of date — not likely that would ever happen with LinkedIn-ites — my current number of bum address is 7% — you’ll have some personalized text to resolve it. Sometimes bounces don’t really give you enough to go on.

You can even repay the Universe for your good fortune by asking if they need you help.

If you use Microsoft Word, Exce, and Outlook, it’s pretty easy to do a merge. I download LinkedIn contacts into an XLS sheet. Spruce up the name field. Create a message in Word. Then run a merge. It’ll stuff them in your Outlook email outbox and they ship out on the next send receive.

All pretty easy to do.

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LINKEDIN: Getting a subtotal by first letter of last name

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

You can subdivided you contacts into “panels” by the first letter of their last name. (It’s useful for may things. Days Outstanding measurement. Balancing what LinkedIn thinks you have versus what you have in Outlook.)

I have a little trick for finding out how many of a certain letter LinkedIn has. If you go to the “contacts” screen in LinkedIn and tap on the letter in the index, then up at the top is “showing xxx of yyyy connections”. And there is your check total. It’s better than trying to count, or print to count.

fwiw

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LINKEDIN: LinkedIn requires a lot of activity to stay in sync

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

In my LinkedIn Outlook folder, I have 1109 contacts. In LinkedIn, I have 1100. Why the discrepancy?

And, it’s not easy to figure it out.

One can count until you’re bleary eyed. But it’s like counting sheep, it’ll put you to sleep.

And, is it an “activity trap” type of activity? Or, does it lead to something useful?

Don’t know.

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LINKEDIN: You can be in LinkedIn’s “dog house” and not even know it!

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

FROM AN EMAIL TO A LINKEDIN CONTACT WHO HAD BEEN “POUNDED”:

*** begin quote ***

FYI Your profile has been sent to the “dog pound” by LinkedIn. I think you need to take some action on that, but I don’t know what to tell you. It’s my understanding that you will not, repeat NOT, be found in any LinkedIn searches if you’ve been “pounded”. So right away, I think you have a problem. It’s my again my understanding that LinkedIn has done this to anyone who has their email, or other strange characters in their name field. The hard part is only YOUR first level connections can see this “pounding”, and tell you about it. Others that I have told, have “fixed” the problem and about a week later were “un-pounded”. Please advise if, after you “fix” it, you want me to check for you again.

Fjohn

*** end quote ***

AND HERE”S WHERE I FIRST HEARD ABOUT IT:

*** begin quote ***

Is Your Profile Ending Up In The Linkedin Dog Pound?
Posted by: “Vincent Wright”
Tue Nov 7, 2006 10:01 pm (PST)

Because of the way the symbol for it is pronounced, I think of the “#”
Section of Linkedin’s Remove Connections as “The Dog Pound” . (Some may
think this a good name for certain types of profiles. :-))

In case you’re not familiar with the “#” Section on Linkedin, it’s located
at the end of the alphabetized list of your contacts at:
http://www.linkedin.com/connections?displayBreakConnections

You and I cannot place any contacts in this area. Profiles are assigned
there by Linkedin’s contact algorithm based on certain types of elements
being present in the name field – I believe.

Food For Thought: Some people may use this as a way to clean up “weak”
connections en masse. If this happens, your profile may unintentionally be
removed even by a connection who may know you pretty well as a “strong”
connection.

—
Thanks!
Vincent Wright
Chief Encouragement Officer
www.VincentWright.com

*** end quote ***

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LINKEDIN: Aligning what LinkedIn has

Monday, November 5, 2007

Arghh! This is annoying. I have ten discrepancies between what I show and what LinkedIn has. And, I didn’t even start reconciling what Outlook has.

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