Geoff Peterson, Managing Principal of General Lead, a provider of staffing services, and Editor of StaffBytes, has created a list of 55 tips, tricks, and strategies for networking on professional networking site LinkedIn.
Here are some highlights from the list, which can be found by registering here.
- Join Jigsaw; Leverage LinkedIn through Jigsaw by email strings for every company; then using emails in place of LinkedIn InMail
- Utilize LinkedIn applications out on Facebook
- Explore Xobni for Outlook email users
- Download Outlook toolbar; Send invitations to people you are not 1st connections with
- Download web browser toolbar for IE or Firefox
- Get noticed on search engines: change your public profile name to include your actual name
- Place your email address in top of Summary in profile; Let other people know you are open to connect
- State clear ways you want to connect out on LinkedIn in your profile summary
- Be very descriptive and add as much detail as possible in each section: Experience down through Additional Information; Key words will get you more profile views, and in turn will get you found and produce more invitations that you should accept
- Join the maximum number (50) of Groups in LinkedIn; Introduce yourself to each group as an open networker; Get involved in discussions & activities
- Specifically check out LinkedIn LIONS, MyVirtualPowerForum and TopLinked
- Join the OpenLink Network on LinkedIn
- Create your own group on LinkedIn, Yahoo Groups or Ning
- Read profiles carefully: Look for clues to contact such as email addresses or phone numbers listed in name, summary or contact settings
- Dig into LinkedIn Answers; Ask and answer questions; Search past discussions for leads
September 16th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
“Get noticed on search engines: change your public profile name to include your actual name”
I liked the list of networking tips. All I could remember of your site was Cheez so I decided to type in Vanessa Dennis and I found you. Keep up the great posts and interesting reading. Although this is not within my scope of practice and I don’t understand everything you are talking about, I feel a great sense of pride because I know the person who writes these posts. You should be proud of yourself.
Love,
Gloria
September 17th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Thanks for your post! I work for a staffing company in Boston, Hollister Staffing (www.hollisterstaffing.com) and strongly recommend to my clients that they make a LinkedIn profile, and this will be a great guide for them. I will definitely share this with my clients who are new to the LinkedIn world, thank you so much!
September 24th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Great information. I’d like to add a few points, to comment on/complement Geoff’s LinkedIn Checklist.
1. Resumegrabber from eGrabber is a fantastic tool. It doesn’t collect LI profile info into Excel table at this time (as far as I know) but eGrabber tools may do this in the very near future. A free trial of Resume Grabber is available here: http://tinyurl.com/48rqw8
2. You can join Jigsaw here: http://www.jigsaw.com/join/freetrial
You can select between a free membership and a paid membership, it depends on your needs.
Jigsaw has free company info, and as Geoff is suggesting it’s a good way to figure out an email pattern for a company. There are other ways to combine Jigsaw and LinkedIn. As an example, you could save a contact downloaded from Jigsaw in your Outlook contacts and verify the person’s profile on LinkedIn - if you have the LinkedIn toolbar installed.
3. I think LinkedIn discourages people to put their email address in their profiles, so it’s good to check with their rules/user agreement before you do.
4. Search engines do NOT extend search results (as the LinkedIn Checklist says). This is because they show only public profiles, perhaps less than 10% of all the profiles.
Also you can’t search for a company name etc. on a search engine since all you have is keywords. Say, if you wanted to look for people from Oracle or Microsoft you are better off searching inside LI.
However you do not have the 500 limitation if you search outside of LI (like if you search on Google for
-intitle:directory -intitle:answers -intitle:profiles site:linkedin.com) - so you can see more profiles at once. (Note though that search engines wouldn’t go way beyond 1000 results since it’s the way they are built).
Broadlook Diver does a great job consolidating search from LI profiles into an excel table. A trail can be downloaded here. http://www.broadlook.com/braingain
I want to thank Geoff for the extensive collection of points he’s got. I found a couple of new points and am going to check them out. I’d also like to thank Vanessa for the post.