• Before You Start: You have a LinkedIn account.
• Learning level: 2 | Getting Started
• Article Last Updated: Friday, February 24, 2012

Build Your LinkedIn Network

It’s great that you have posted your work history on LinkedIn. But the real value from LinkedIn comes from building up your professional network.

LinkedIn makes it easy for you to find people that you already know who use LinkedIn. In fact, LinkedIn only wants you to connect with people you already know.

The whole idea behind the LinkedIn community is that people connect with people they know. Relationships are not with strangers, but people you know, and in theory, people you can recommend. That’s the power of LinkedIn.

Add People From Your Email Address Book

LinkedIn will search through your email address book to find people based on their email address. There are two ways to this, based on your email account.

• Web-based email accounts. If your email account is stored online, LinkedIn most likely can import your address book contents directly. Examples of web-based email include Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, and  Comcast.
• Desktop or laptop email accounts. If your email is stored on your computer, LinkedIn requires you to create an export file of your contacts. You can import you contacts into LinkedIn.  Examples of desktop email includes Outlook and Apple Mail.

To search through your address book:

1. Log in to your LinkedIn account.
2. Click Add Connections at the top of the page.
3. In the See Who You Already Know on LinkedIn box, type your email address and click Continue.
4. Follow the instructions on the screen to log into your email account and give LinkedIn access to your contacts. Every email service has a slightly different process.
5. LinkedIn uses your credentials to log into your email account and scans the email addresses against it members.
6. On the We found XXX people you know on LinkedIn page, check every person you want to invite to join your network and click Add Connections.  LinkedIn sends an invitation to these people.
7. On the Why not invite some people page, click Skip This Step.

To import your contacts file:

1. Use your email program to create an export file for your contacts. Your file format should be comma-separated values (csv), text (txt) or vCard file (vcf). Check the help system for your email program for specific instructions.
2. Know the name and location of your contacts file.
3. Log in to your LinkedIn account.
4. Click Add Connections at the top of the page.
5. In the See Who You Already Know on LinkedIn box, click Import your desktop email contacts.
6. Click Choose File and select your contacts file on your computer.
7. Click Upload File. LinkedIn reviews your contacts and identifies people who are on LinkedIn.
8. On the Invite XXX Contacts to Connect page, check every person you want to invite to join your network and click Send Invitations.

These procedure may miss some of your contacts. Some of the people in your address book have used a different email address with their LinkedIn account.

Related Articles:

• 5 Ways To Update Your LinkedIn Network
• Backing Up Your LinkedIn Connections
• Finding Existing Customers on Twitter

• Before You Start: You have a business Twitter account and you have your personal resume listed on LinkedIn.
• Learning level: 4 | Creating Solutions
• Article Last Updated: Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Should You Share Your Tweets On LinkedIn?

Many small business people work hard to share great information with their community on Twitter. For some small business people, it makes sense to republish your tweets with your LinkedIn profile. For others, your business tweet stream is more about your customers and doesn’t contribute to your professional resume and image. This is a decision that you must make after reviewing your tweets and your goals for your LinkedIn profile.

Before you link together Twitter and LinkedIn, review your tweet stream to make sure that your tweets add to the professional presence you want to convey on Twitter. It is better not to display your tweets than to display them and have them detract from your professionalism or add clutter to your LinkedIn profile.

I strongly recommend that you only share selected tweets from Twitter to LinkedIn.

Connecting Twitter and LinkedIn

Previously, LinkedIn had a special application that allowed people to post their most recent tweets on their LinkedIn profile. They did away with that feature, and replaced it with a simple way to post a tweet as a status update on LinkedIn.

First, you must set up your Twitter account with your LinkedIn profile.

1. Log into your LinkedIn profile.
2. Choose Profile | Edit Profile from the menu.
3. Scroll down to the Additional Information area.
4. Next to Twitter, click Edit. LinkedIn displays the Manager Your Twitter Setting window.
5. Click Add Another Twitter Account. Twitter displays a window where you can authorized LinkedIn to access your Twitter account.
6. Type your Twitter account credentials and click Authorize App. Your Twitter account now appears in the Manage Your Twitter Settings window.
7. Under Sharing Tweets, select the appropriate Twitter account from the drop-down list of Twitter accounts associated with your LinkedIn profile. (You can link several Twitter accounts, but you can only share tweets from one account at a time.)
8. Click the checkbox for sharing only tweets that contain the hashtags #li or #in.
9. Click Save Settings.

The next time you write a tweet that you want to share on LinkedIn, simply add a special hashtag to your tweet. You can use either #in or #li and that tweet will show up on LinkedIn as a status update.

Related Articles:

• Using LinkedIn For Business
• Getting The Most From LinkedIn
• 5 Ways To Update Your LinkedIn Network
• Add A Company Profile To LinkedIn
• Write A Great Twitter Bio
  
• Using Twitter Lists

• Before You Start: You have a business blog. You have a LinkedIn account.
• Learning Level: 4 | Creating Solutions
• Article Last Updated: Friday, February 24, 2012

Publish Your Blog on LinkedIn

You work hard on your business blog. You invest the time to research and write posts that benefit your blog community. You do everything you can to promote your blog to expand your community and build your reputation as an expert in your field.

Have you added your blog to your LinkedIn profile?

LinkedIn allows you to connect your blog to your profile through specialized applications. These applications automatically show the most recent blog posts to anyone who lands on your LinkedIn profile. This gives you many benefits, including:

• Allows you to show your expertise to people when they review your work history.
• Introduces new people to your blog who might not have found your blog another way.
• Lets your LinkedIn connections learn more about you and your expertise.

Connecting Your Blog To LinkedIn

LinkedIn provides two different applications that connect blogs to LinkedIn profiles.

• Blog Link. This application supports all of the major blogging platforms.
• WordPress. This application connects any blog on the WordPress platform.

To add your blog to LinkedIn:

1. Display your LinkedIn profile with the Edit My Profile tab.
2. Scroll below your work history Summary to the Applications area.

1. Click Add An Application. LinkedIn displays a page that contains all of the available applications.
2. Scroll through the list to find the blog application of your choice (Blog Link or WordPress) and click on the application name or icon. LinkedIn displays an information page for your selected application.
3. Read the details about this application.
4. On the right, choose the appropriate settings for your blog application and click Add Application button.
5. Provide the information required by the application to display your blog and choose your settings.

Your blog now displays on your LinkedIn profile.

Related Articles:

• Using LinkedIn For Business
• Getting The Most From LinkedIn
• Getting Your Blog In Print
• How Does A Blog Help My Business?
• Add Twitter To LinkedIn

• Before You Start: You have a personal profile on LinkedIn. You work at (or own) a small business and have an email address from the business website domain.
• Learning Level: 2 | Getting Started
• Article Last Updated: Friday, February 24, 2012

LinkedIn Company Profile

In addition to posting your personal profile on LinkedIn, you can add a company profile for your small business. A company profile gives you these features:

• A company description and link to your website.
• A dynamic list of employees based on individual work history information.
• Additional information pop-up about your company on employee profiles.
• Your company appears in company and industry searches.

An LinkedIn profile showing the company pop-up information.

Add Your Company To LinkedIn

To add your company to LinkedIn:

1. Login to LinkedIn and display your profile.
2. Click Companies in the menu. (You may have to click More to see this option.)
3. On the Companies page, click Add A Company. (LinkedIn may ask you to log in.)
4. Type the company name and your email address. (If your company email address is already verified with your account, skip to step #8.)
5. Click Continue.
6. LinkedIn sends you an email at your company email address.
7. Open the email from LinkedIn and confirm your company email address.
8. Identify the people who can edit your company page.
9. Provide details about your company to appear in your company profile.
10. Click Publish.

After you add your company, LinkedIn goes through all personal profiles to find people who list your company in their work history and continues to update the list as people update their profiles. You can continue to fill out supplemental company information for the profile.

Related Articles:

• Using LinkedIn For Business
• Blogs And LinkedIn Work Together
• Getting The Most From LinkedIn
• 5 Ways To Update Your LinkedIn Network
• Backing Up Your LinkedIn Connections
• Add Twitter To LinkedIn

• Before You Start: You have a LinkedIn profile and connections (people in your network)
• Learning level: 3 | Building Skills
• Article Last Updated: Friday, February 24, 2012

Your LinkedIn Network

LinkedIn is different from many social media networking sites because it emphasizes the quality of your connections over the number of people in your network. With LinkedIn, you are encouraged to only connect with people you know and trust. This means that LinkedIn is not a tool you can use to expand your network. Instead, you want to update LinkedIn to reflect your real world network.

Here are five ways you can update your LinkedIn connections.

1. Import Your Email Addresses

LinkedIn has an automated process for importing your email addresses from the most common web-based email like Gmail and Yahoo! and email software like Outlook. Click Add Connections from the top menu and follow the instructions.

2. Add People From Business Cards

When you attend professional meetings, tweetups, conferences, and trade shows, make a point to collect a business card from everyone you meet. When you return to your office, have a place to store your collected business cards. While the event is fresh in your mind, sit down and search for each person using LinkedIn’s people search box.

3. Review Your Twitter Community

Twitter allows you to make connections with strangers. However, after talking with someone on Twitter for a while, you may feel comfortable enough to invite them to join your LinkedIn network. As good rule of them is to send the person a direct message (DM) first to ask if they are on LinkedIn and if they would like to connect there. If they agree, they might send you a link, or you can search for them using LinkedIn’s people search box.

4. Search For Colleagues

There are more than 55 million people on LinkedIn. Most likely, you can find people you work with currently or worked with in previous jobs and add them to your network. LinkedIn uses your job history to find people who have overlapping work histories. Use Colleagues tab located on the Add Connections page to find people you know.

5. Search For Classmates

Like colleagues, LinkedIn finds people who attended the same schools, colleges, and universities. Use Classmates tab located on the Add Connections page to find people you know.

Bonus Tip: How To Connect

Because LinkedIn emphasizes connecting only with people you know, it penalizes you if you invite people who say they don’t know you. For this reason, always include a personal message with your invitation that mentions how you know the person you are inviting. Don’t assume that they will remember you!

Related Articles:

• Backing Up Your LinkedIn Connections
• Announcing Your Social Media Presence
• Conference and Trade Show Tweeting
• Add A Company Profile To LinkedIn
• Add  A Twitter List

• Before You Start: You have a LinkedIn profile and connections (people in your network)
• Learning Level: 3 | Building Skills
• Article Last Updated: Friday, February 24, 2012

Your LinkedIn Profile

Here are simple things you can do to maximize the benefit of having a LinkedIn profile.

• Focus on your accomplishments, not your responsibilities, in your job descriptions. People are interested in what you have accomplished and what you can accomplish for them. Use statistics and give examples. Often, you can rewrite a responsibility into a accomplishment with just a little thought and effort.
• Ask for recommendations. People are busy, and it probably won’t occur to anyone that they should write a recommendation for you. When you finish a client project, ask your client to post a recommendation on LinkedIn for you.
• Give recommendations. Be generous and give recommendations to the people in your network that you can recommend. Your recommendations can be as short as a couple sentences, but should be specific and focused.
• Post a professional picture on your profile. If you don’t have one, hire a photographer to take a headshot or a portrait that you can use for your online presence. It’s worth the money it costs! You can use the same photo on every social media outpost.
• Customize the link to your public profile. It’s much friendlier for other people use when it is customized.
• Complete your profile to 100%. You don’t have to fill it out completely the first day, but set a deadline to complete it. You’ll be glad when the details are all there.
• If you have a business topic blog, use the Blog Link or WordPress applications to pull your latest blog posts into your profile. This showcases your blog to the people who check out your profile.
• Update your profile as you accomplish more things. Keep your profile current, and add details about professional events you attend them. Review your profile every month to make sure you have the most current information posted.
• Share your LinkedIn public profile web address. Put it on your website, your blog, and include it in your social media passport.
• Check the LinkedIn blog for new features and smart strategies. They provide tips and information about new features added to LinkedIn. Check it regularly.

Your LinkedIn Network

Here are a few ideas about expanding your LinkedIn network to include people you already know.

• Decide your connection policy. LinkedIn recommends that you only link to people you know. That’s a good policy for many people. You can also decide to create an open network where you connect with people that you don’t know. Decide how much interaction you want to have with a person online before you connect with them on LinkedIn.
• Join groups to find people you already know. Most colleges have alumni groups, cities and regions have groups, and professional organizations have groups. Invite old friends and former co-workers to join your network.
• Check for people you know in each of your connection’s networks. Most likely, you have one or more people in common with each of your connections. Take a little time each month to review their networks looking for mutual connections.
• Backup your connection information. Use the export connections feature to pull your connection data out of LinkedIn and import it into your contact management or address book program.

Related Articles:

• Backing Up Your LinkedIn Connections
• Finding Existing Customers on Twitter
• Using LinkedIn For Business
• Blogs And LinkedIn Work Together
• 6 Reasons Why Potential Customers Won’t Follow You on Twitter
• Add Twitter To LinkedIn

• Before You Start: You have a LinkedIn profile and connections (people in your network)
• Learning Level: 4 | Creating Solutions
• Article Last Updated: Friday, February 24, 2012

Export Your LinkedIn Connections

LinkedIn allows you to make a backup of your online business connections. This means that you can safeguard this valuable business data by having a backup on your computer. You can also use this information in other ways for your business. For example, you can import your LinkedIn connections to your email address book.

Before you export your LinkedIn connections, decide what you will do with them. This may change the export file format you choose. For example, if you only want to save the information, you could use any CSV file because you can open that kind of file with a spreadsheet. If you want to import your contacts into an email address book or other contact manager, find out the file format it requires.

To export your business connection contact information:

1. Log in to LinkedIn and display your connections.
2. At the bottom of the list, click Export Connections.
3. Choose the file format.
4. Type the verification code. (This is a security measure that makes sure a person and not a computer program is downloading your contact information.)
5. Click Export.
6. LinkedIn creates the file.
7. Choose Save File.
8. Your browser may ask you to select a file save location, or may save the file to a predetermined location.

If you want to import the connections, LinkedIn provides instructions for several email programs. If your email program is not listed here, refer to the instructions for your program.

Related Articles:

• 5 Ways To Update Your LinkedIn Network
• Getting The Most From LinkedIn
• Announcing Your Social Media Presence
• 8 Ways To Get More Facebook Fans

• Before You Start: This is the starting point to learn about LinkedIn.
• Learning level: 1 | Social Media Basics
• Article last updated: Friday, February 24, 2012

LinkedIn Basics

When it first appeared, LinkedIn was seen as the job search area of the social media realm. Common wisdom said that if you were corporate and looking for a job, you should post your resume on LinkedIn. That’s still true today, but what’s changed in the range of people who can benefit from being on LinkedIn. Now, small businesses and freelancers also benefit from being on LinkedIn.

If you need a crash course on LinkedIn and how it works, check out this introductory video from the fabulous people at Common Craft.

LinkedIn Benefits

Like other social media applications, LinkedIn allows you to build a community and provides a wide range of communication tools within your community.

LinkedIn’s greatest benefits for your small business include:

• Emphasize your personal business accomplishments. Your LinkedIn profile focuses on you and your personal work history. This gives you the opportunity to focus on your accomplishments within your business and to emphasize your business strengths.
• Collect recommendations from people who know your work. Each time someone reviews your resume, they can review the recommendations you have received. Your recommendations can include customer testimonials, but also can include feedback from your peers, former business associates, and even people you know through any volunteer or pro bono work you perform.
• Define a professional network of people. Part of building your business is establishing a network of your peers, your collaborators, and people in related industries. LinkedIn allows you to create professional relationships and gives you access to contact information for your network.
• Research your network to find people. Using the power of your network, you can find someone within your network who can help you answer many types of questions. This is a valuable resource when you need to find a collaborator, a contractor, or an employee.
• Keep your contacts updated. You can export the LinkedIn contact information from your network and import it into your address book or contact management software.
• Share your social media passport. You can link your blog, slideshows, and other social media accounts to your LinkedIn profile. This allows you to drive traffic to your social media outposts including your business website and blog.
• Get introduced to new people through existing network connections. The best way to meet someone who can help your career (or hire you) is through a personal recommendation. LinkedIn shows you who in your network provides the connection for getting introduced.
• Expand your network through groups. LinkedIn allows people to create groups based on common industries, community affiliations, and previous work experience.  You can join groups to meet people who can become part of your professional network.
• Establish your expertise. People ask questions on LinkedIn, and you can provide answers. Not only can you help the people asking questions, but your answers become part of your LinkedIn profile.
• Stay connected while mobile. LinkedIn is available through the mobile internet, and many phones have LinkedIn applications in their online stores.

Recruiting Through LinkedIn

You can use your LinkedIn network to help with your recruiting efforts, including finding temporary staffing and project contractors.

• Get recommendations. Ask the people you know and trust to recommend people they know and trust.
• Post jobs. Post jobs and other opportunities to your network and let them help you find great candidates for your positions.
• Search for candidates. Use the search feature to explore people in your extended LinkedIn network with specific skills and experience and then get introduced to them.

Even recruiters are turning to LinkedIn to fill positions today because of the high costs of using large job boards like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com.

Related Articles:

• Getting The Most From LinkedIn
• 5 Ways To Update Your LinkedIn Network
• Announcing Your Social Media Presence
• Blogs And LinkedIn Work Together
• Add A Company Profile To LinkedIn