Database Technology Trends

In my previous posts I talked a lot about the functionalities of LinkedIn, how to set it up, which other social networking sites to use besides LinkedIn and how to integrate it with your Outlook.

Many readers asked me more or less the same question “how can I use LinkedIn to grow my business?”.
There is no straight answer to this question, but I will share how I use LinkedIn. Maybe you can take one new tip away for your LinkedIn strategy.

First, you need to have a complete profile. Make sure that you have a professional picture of yourself. I see a lot of profiles with pictures that belong on profiles of MySpace and Facebook. LinkedIn is a business social networking site; your picture should reflect nothing less than business.

A complete work history and a list of all your skills is a must. Whoever reads your profile wants to know who you are from a business point of view. If you own a business, the key message of your business should be part of the description on your current position.

Don’t be afraid to ask for recommendations. Recommendations are like a score cards; the quality of the recommendations is as important as the quantity. Here’s another tip; you can selectively show recommendations. If you have a lot of recommendations, only showcase the very best ones and preferably from people that are either higher up in your job hierarchy or from clients, if you own a business. Recommendations from colleagues and friends are nice, but not very impressive for visitors who don’t know you.

Here are a few tips on how to use LinkedIn to get an introduction to a key person in a company you want to get either a job opportunity or to gain a new business contact and/or client.

The new LinkedIn company search lets you search for specific companies. The same advanced search criteria as the person search are available. Once you found the company profile you were looking for, you can then see a list of the people who are employed at this company and how they are related to you from a LinkedIn network perspective.

If the person that you want to contact is no more than in your second level network, you could try an introduction via one of your first level contacts. This is possibly the most effective way to contact somebody you don’t know, introductions through a mutual friend.

There’s a good chance that this person is either on your third level network or not connected to you at all. In this case there is another approach available to you. You should read this person’s profile carefully and seek out which group this person belongs to. LinkedIn allows you to contact fellow group members directly with no restrictions.

Maybe you belong to the same group. If not, join the group right away. LinkedIn has a limit of 50 groups you can belong to. To overcome this limit, you can temporarily drop one of your existing groups and join the group you want to contact this person. Later you can reverse this action.

Once you joined the group, you can contact the person you’re interested to talk to. This is not an introduction via a friend; this is a direct email to a fellow group member. For this reason you should keep the first contact focused on the objectives of the group. Ask a question, comment on an article or a comment this person posted, find anything about this person you could refer to. Keep in mind that you contact this person to share common interest and not to start a sales pitch. Once you established a conversation, then you move on to your primary reason why you contacted this person in the first place.

I can’t tell you how to do this, but you should always be respectful and be not too pushy. Don’t sell yourself, but rather refer yourself or your product.

If you don’t get the desired result with this person from this company, move on to the next contact from the LinkedIn list of company employees via the company search.

Yes, this is a lot of work. But the chances of a successful connection are much higher than traditional cold calling. It’s up to you where you want to spend most of your time prospecting.

That’s it for today, thanks for reading.

Peter Dobler

A few days ago I wrote the post “The Art of Social Networking” and I received a lot of positive feedback on it. One question dominated the responses. How do I use the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar? This prompted me to write a follow-up on this topic.

First you need to download the software from LinkedIn. The download link is located at the bottom of your home page. Click on the Outlook Toolbar link.

Click on Download it now.

Make sure that you’re Outlook is closed. Then click run on the following window.

After the install completed start Outlook again and you will see this window popup.

Click on “Get Started” to synchronize your Outlook with LinkedIn.

Click on Start at the next screen.

 
Enter your LinkedIn login. Email and password.

This screen asks you if you want to look for LinkedIn connections based on your Outlook address book and if you want to automatically import contact information into your Outlook address book from LinkedIn. To get the most from your LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar, check both options.

Then click on Next.

This screen asks you about which email folder from Outlook the tool should search for email addresses to add to the new LinkedIn invite list. This is very powerful to connect with people you had an email exchange, but you never saved their information into the Outlook contacts.

Uncheck the folders you don’t want to search. There’s no point in searching the deleted item folders or the junk mail folder.

When you’re done, click on next.

The next screen asks you to enter your personal email addresses. This will speed up the search process and you are not inviting yourself to connect with you.

Click on Build when you’re done.

This screen asks you if you want to add these email contacts to your Outlook contacts. These are email exchanges with contact you never added to your address book.

Click on Create when you’re done.

This screen asks you to confirm the new contacts that will be added into your Outlook address book, based on already existing connections in LinkedIn. This is very helpful to keep your Outlook contacts up-to-date.

Click on Create to add these contacts.

The next screen is very important to grow your LinkedIn network. There are several check boxes and selection to choose from.

First, if you’re doing this for the first time, make sure that you checked the box “Show all contacts in Outlook”. This will expand the selection list with your entire Outlook contact list. Then you need to check every box next to the email you want to invite to LinkedIn. No worry, the tool knows which contacts are already connected and will not send another invitation.

Second, click on Next to compile the invitation emails.

In my case there were no more invitations to send.

Outlook sent out all the necessary invitations and added the missing contacts.

The LinkedIn Toolbar will keep track of all the changes of your contacts in LinkedIn. This assures that all your contacts are always up-to-date. I found this feature of the LinkedIn Toolbar of most value to me.

Here’s another tip. Even if you’re already a LinkedIn Toolbar user, reinstalling the tool from time to time will keep up with the software updates of the tool and also refreshes your contacts synch. I do this about every 2-3 months. This will keep my address book in sync with LinkedIn at all times and I never get an undelivered email notice again.

People tent to keep their LinkedIn information up-to-date, but do not bother to inform their contacts about the email change. The LinkedIn Toolbar does this work for me.

When I ran this tool the first time, I gained about 200 new connections in LinkedIn I didn’t have before, but I knew this contacts from my address book.

Working through the Dashboard on a regular base will keep your contacts fresh. No worries, the LinkedIn Toolbar will never update your address book automatically. You always need to confirm any changes. So, reviewing the information in the Dashboard is vital.

The last feature I want to show is the Grab feature.

Let’s say you received an email from a new business contact and you want to add this information to your address book, Outlook only auto fills the name and the email address. All the other information is up to you.

With the Grab feature, LinkedIn adds the additional information to the address book. Simply highlight the information you want to add to the address book and then click on the Grab Icon in the Outlook menu bar.

Then you will see the following address book entry.

You see that all the additional information was added to the address book records.

One last caution: The new address records are being created into a separate folder called “Collected Contacts”. You need manually move the new contacts into your Contacts folder.

This is very simple and is been done by simply selecting all the new contacts and then use the mouse to drag them into the Contacts folder. If the contact already exists you will see the following screen. It will ask you if you want to add a new contact or update an existing contact. It also shows you what changes will be updates. If everything looks OK, click on the Update button.

This screen will show up for every duplicate entry the tool finds.

There you have it. This is the fast track to the LinkedIn Toolbar. I use this tool every day and I don’t know what I would do without it.

Take care,
Peter Dobler

Like it or not, social networking has become an integral part of our daily life. No matter if you try to reach new clients for your business, looking for a new job or reconnect with old friends; social networking is the weapon of choice.

The recent economic downturn has forced many of us to become more pro-active in many aspects of our business life. Regardless of the situation, it is a buyer’s market. It’s a buyer’s market in real estate, in the job market or in the business world in general. You need to be pro-active to be noticed. This holds true especially in social networking.

But be aware, not all social networking sites are made equal. They have very specific features and functionalities that you need to know to gain the most from them. I personally use 5 distinctive social networking sites to promote my skills and services. The goal is to keep my profile in peoples mind repeatedly to be on somebody’s short list when the need of my services arises.

Here’s my list of the 5 social networking sites that I personally use and how to use them most effectively.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the 800 pound gorilla of social networking sites. Many business professionals are a member of LinkedIn and use it on a daily base to stay in contact with their business contacts. The primary concept is to utilize existing connections to get introduced to new contacts. This concept works very well and allowed me to extend my network to people I previously didn’t know and now maintain a solid business relationship.

The key to success in LinkedIn is to be an active member. Ask questions, answer questions, join groups, write recommendations for people you’re connected with, announce your status, start discussions in groups you’re a member of, write comments to discussion topics, etc.

I use the Outlook add-in from LinkedIn to keep my outlook contacts in sync with LinkedIn’s information. People tent to keep their contact information in LinkedIn up-to-date and this way I always have the latest contact information in my Outlook contacts.

This is my LinkedIn profile.

Plaxo

Plaxo has a similar approach as LinkedIn, but is more geared to exchange current status information of each member. Somewhat like Twitter on steroids. Unlike LinkedIn, Plaxo doesn’t support a concept of connection levels. You are either connected to somebody or not. I like Plaxo’s integration tools a little bit better than the LinkedIn toolbar.

Especially the Plaxo pulse program is an interesting concept that informs you about any new activity from your network connections. I also like the feature of the Plaxo Outlook add-in that synchronizes the Plaxo photo and birthdays with your Outlook contacts. Even if you’re not connected to an individual, if you receive an email from a new contact and you are adding this information to your contacts, Plaxo then synchronizes the photo and when you read the email from this contact it will display a picture in the upper right corner. Very cool technology.

This is my Plaxo profile.

Naymz

Naymz is all about reputation. There are a couple of things you need to do to become a successful Naymz networker. Take your time and review each and every contact. It is important the every contact gets its assessment. That’s how Naymz works. People will give you their assessment anonymously and this will count towards your RepScore. The higher your RepScore, the better your reputation.

Another feature of Naymz is that it monitors the web for any mentioning of your name and creates a history for you to review. This allows you to take action against anything that could harm your reputation before more damage is done. The biggest threat to your professional success is harmful information about your and/or your business floating around in the internet without your knowledge.

This feature alone is worth being a member of Naymz.

This is my Naymz profile.

Ecademy

Ecademy has in impressive SEO feature that will get you onto Google’s map in no time. Create a Google alert with your name and then create a profile on Ecademy. You will be surprised on how fast Google indexes your name.
I used Ecademy for SEO related message placement and of course expanding my network. The best use of Ecademy is to connect as many members as possible, this will keep your profile on top of the list and indexed by Google over and over again.

I don’t think that Ecademy will produce any professional connections that will yield in business activities, but it helps to keep my name in rotation. This is a mostly UK and European based network, but it has a good presence in the United States as well.

This is my Ecademy profile.

Ryze

Ryze is the smallest of the social networks I use. Regardless its size, it offers a couple of features that are very unique to Ryze like the event calendar and posting classifieds to the network.

I have to admit that this is the latest network I joined and I am still gauging its benefits. So far I didn’t explore its entire functionality. I joined Ryze due to an article I read and now I’m exploring its features.

This is my Ryze profile.

Summary

LinkedIn is and will be my main social networking site, but I will utilize the other sites to maximize my online presence. I really like the special features of Plaxo and the reputation approach of Naymz. Ecademy and Ryze are a little bit too spamy, but I will explore their strengths and use it to my advantage. Needless to say that all social networks are free to join and all of them offer a paid upgrade. I do not think that the paid upgrades are worth it, but this is everybody’s own decision.

Bottom-line: No matter which social networking site you’re using, you’re being pro-active as long as you are using at least one of them. As I mentioned earlier, it is a buyer’s market.

Take care,
Peter Dobler