Who's Linked

Yes really, personal branding is guess what ….. all about YOU!    Ok, so you realise that or you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog post would you?  But do you really know who you are?  No really, who are you, who is the person that you are showing on LinkedIn for instance?

The reason for the questions above is because I come across so many people who don’t really know who they are and as a result are not really doing themselves any favours when it comes to putting a profile together.   So where do you start?  Well, you could start with the present.  The reason for this is because it is the present that matters when it comes to a personal brand, of course what you have done in the past and the vast amount of experience you have had matters a huge amount, but it matters because it informs the present.  In other words, you probably wouldn’t be doing what you are doing now without having gone through your past experiences, even if you jumped ship into a completely different career.

How this translates online means that your summary reflects your CURRENT STATE – the things you are interested in, what motivates you, what drives you, your goals, dreams and aspiration NOW.  It also should reflect the successes you have already achieved as well as those you are hoping to achieve in the short to medium term.

Don’t forget those all important key words too, you know the ones that reflect the expertise you have, that you draw on everyday in order to undertake the role you now have  …. At the same time don’t dismiss your past experience, just because it was a different career path, it has never been truer than today to say that all of your experience is relevant, but only in context of how it is used now.

Once you realise that LinkedIn is not just another online CV storage facility, but a real, live thriving community that can help you to achieve your goals you’ll start to value the person you are today, and not the person you were five, ten or even twenty years ago.  It is the present that matters, but your present is built on the experiences of your past!

LinkedIn Made Easy, the ebook that accompanies this website, is full of hints and tips to help you make the most of the opportunity that is the LinkedIn community, you can buy it now, for just £4.99.

Welcome to 2010, yes I know that I haven’t posted anything on the site since before Christmas, but I promised myself Christmas off after all the hard work that went into the challenge.  I’ve also taken a few days off over the last weekend and so am really only properly back to work today ….  I have to say that it’s lovely to have been in a position to take the time off, especially with the weather we have been having in the UK recently.  But now it’s time to get back to work.

As you have probably guessed by now, LinkedIn can be used for many different purposes, the main one of which is Personal Brand Building (in my opinion of course!).  There are however, so many conflicting opinions on how to go about the task of personal branding, and my take on it is just one of many, that I thought a post listing some of the key blogs in this area might be of use to readers.

Personal Branding Blog was started by Dan Schawbel in 2007 and has been providing advice, suggestions and a regular magazine ever since.   Dan’s mission is to teach you how to create your career, command your future, learn how to position yourself for success and in the process become known for your passion and expertise.  In my opinion, one of the best personal branding blogs around!  Just as a matter of interest, if you do a search on Google for Personal Branding blogs, Dan’s blog returns no less than six of the listed organic results, rather like the results I get for LinkedIn Made Easy!

The Personal Branding Blog’s first post was an short comment on personal googling – AKA using google to search for yourself – you should try it sometime, it’s fun .  Since then William Aruda has demonstrated with passion, everything you need to consider when you are taking a peek at using personal branding to build your career and lifestyle.  Use it with caution though, it can be addictive and I can spend hours just surfing around for interesting snippets of information.

Rob Cuesta’s ‘The Business Growth Blog‘ began life in January 2007 and has grown ever since.  791 links in and an Alexa ranking of around 49,000 mean that Rob is a key man to watch.  What he says matters, what he doesn’t say is often even more important.  Note the comments he makes about Networking (in the traditional sense that is) and his comparison to Schrodingers cat – those that know me well will know that I’m interested in this sort of thing.

Well what a 30 days it’s been.  To say that I have been seriously challenged myself would be an understatement and I have learnt an amazing amount about a great many different things, some of them are personal and some of them are business and marketing focused.  I have however, not managed to reach my target of £400,000 in 30 days, in fact I’m just a shade short of it …. by just about £399,660

The final figures on Day 30 of the challenge are:

• Number of books sold – 187 (just under 6 books per day)
• Money Raised for charity – £374
• Amount paid to affiliates – £83
• Costs of processing the sales – £99.36
• Total amount to go to The Hysterectomy Association – £459.77

These bald figures though, don’t reflect the other ’successes’ that the challenge has had which include meeting my objective of ‘proving’ that social networking works for all businesses regardless of their starting point.  The social networks proved to be the greatest source of activity on the website and consequently sales and it would be fair to say that almost everyone that actually visited the LinkedIn Made Easy sales page on this site bought the book – according to Google Analytics there were 94 unique visitors to the page and 82 books were sold through it – this is an amazing return on investment.

I also have so many people to thank and will do so over the course of the next few weeks by writing about them on the blog.  Once again, it was links from the social networks, blog posts and twitter that were responsible for most of the visits to that book page.

As a result I’m going to keep the challenge going – I want to raise £400,000 for charity but now I’m not putting a time limit on it.  I will continue to write on this blog, I’ll continue to keep people posted and I will continue to donate £2 from every book sold to either Kiva or the BCCT.  In the coming weeks I’ll be reporting on where the money has gone to and how it is going to be used as well.  The reason I’m focusing on these two charities is because the other two that I would have liked to support didn’t bother to come back to me at all.

Let’s say you have a website for your business and you are selling a product or service that requires people to have confidence in you and your product or service.  Let’s also say that your email address is something like phil759hc@yahoo.co.uk , what sort of impression do you think that might give to people who are contacting you?  I know that for me, I’d always think twice about whether I actually engage with someone whose business won’t even run to a personal email address.

In today’s harsh world of business everything has to be consistent otherwise you can create an unprofessional image of someone only playing at things.  Your website, web address and email address should all be related to your business card, business name and any other marketing material you may be producing.  This is equally true on the social networks like LinkedIn where your professional persona is even more important, because this is where you talk about YOU in relation to your business rather than your business in relation to you.

So if you too have yahoo!, gmail or msn email address, go have a chat with your website developer and ask him to make sure your email address is consistent with the image you are hoping to convey.

I’ve just been posting up links to a social media in recruitment survey as news items in the various LinkedIn groups that I’m a member of and it occurred to me as I was doing this that it may be possible, in some really off the wall way, be construed as spamming the group.  As a result I now face a dilemma as there is always more than one way to skin a cat as they say, when it comes to working with the network of people you have on LinkedIn.

So, what exactly do you do in this situation?  I thought I’d have a quick trawl around the web to see if I could come up with a list of suggestions that other people make as well as see if I can add some of my own in addition.  I came up with FOUR key points to bear in mind.

1.  Think carefully about the message – mine was “social media and recruitment survey – win a bottle of champagne” and it went on to say that one could win a bottle of France’s finest champagne just for taking part in the survey.  On reflection, I’m not entirely sure that this was the right way to go about encouraging people to complete what is actually a very serious piece of research in business use of social media for recruitment.

2. Think about where you post it.  I could have chosen to post it as a discussion, but my own feeling was that this is a piece of news, a bit like a newspaper headline.  At least as news you get the chance to ignore it if you don’t want to read it and it is quite clearly marked as going to another website for more info.

3. Think about the audience.  I’m a member of quite a few groups on LinkedIn and as I worked my way down the list I was surprised to find myself questioning whether a group was the right audience for this particular news item.  As a result I avoided some groups entirely and on others checked the type of news items posted previously, BEFORE I made my own contribution.

4. Think about who YOU are.  As a trainer and business development consultant on social media, it behoves me to act in a way that is consistent with what I tell my clients to do.  It also requires me to analyse my own behaviour fairly frequently simply because things and cultures change in groups.  I am sure that there will be one or two groups where my news item might be seen as spam; I’m equally sure that as a result I will receive a message or two informing me of this.  The problem is that I don’t yet know which groups that might apply to and as a result am flying blind.  What will happen though, is that I will change my behaviour in the future, because that’s the nature of learning I guess.

One of the big areas for expansion in Internet Marketing is likely to be that of the Personal Brand.  Today, we can no longer rely on a job for life with just one company and we need to be constantly updating and adapting our sets of knowledge and skills, not only to allow us to work but also to keep pace with the changes in technology.

But what exactly is a ‘personal brand’?  According to Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, personal branding “is the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands”.

So just how do you build a personal brand? It’s about being consistent in everything you do.  From the profile that you post on LinkedIn or Facebook, to the email address you use, the presentations you give, the skills you demonstrate in your work.  I’m constantly amazed by the number of professionals that give an email address of x@gmail.com (unless of course they work for Google).

Over the next few weeks I’ll explore how you can use LinkedIn to build a personal brand that has integrity as well as the ability to transform your business and your career.

In the words of that famous statement ‘there is always more than one way to skin a cat’, and this is never more true that when using computers, the internet or a social network like LinkedIn.  We will all find our own preferred methods and this video below is just one simple way to make a connection request on LinkedIn. Even more are discussed in the LinkedIn Made Easy eBook, which you can pick up for just £4.99 today!

One of the most important things to remember though is to ensure that you do send a personalised request to connect, rather than the canned message that are built into the system.  There are many reasons for doing this but the most important is to demonstrate that you have  very good reason for making the request in the first place and that you aren’t simply in a numbers game.

LinkedIn Status Updates are a great way to keep in touch with those you are connected too.  They can also be a great opportunity to get back in touch with people, especially if you haven’t seen them for a while, they have changed jobs or you no longer work with their company.   Even small status changes can help give you something to start a conversation, such as congratulating them on news they have posted, or commenting on the trip they are about to take.  It is this sort of casual interaction that really builds close business relationships.  Take the time to make time to stay in touch.

Status Update for LinkedIn Made Easy – 30 Day Challenge

• The total number of books sold – 176
• The number of books sold online – 185
• The number of books sold directly to people instead of online – 9
• The amount of money raised for charity – £370
• The amount paid out to affiliates too – £83.00
• The number of LinkedIn connections I have – 440
• Some basic website statisticss, such as number of visitors and pages viewed – Visitors – 941, Pages Viewed – 5390
• Number of links from Google search for LinkedIn Made Easy – 6/10 – not bad at all!

The short video below will talk you through, in nice simple steps, how to link your wordpress blog to LinkedIn.  Of course, you need to be sure that the content of your blog is APPROPRIATE for the LinkedIn audience first! Read the rest of this entry »

When people find you in searches on Linkedin, or when you are being active within the Group discussions or in Linkedin Answers; the first thing they see is a little box that has your name, your photo (assuming you’ve chosen to add one) and a ‘headline’ or baby bio.   Unfortunately what most people do is leave their job title in their headline and there is nothing LESS likely to attract attention than something that doesn’t say anything.  However, you do have the option to change it and change it you should. Read the rest of this entry »

The new LinkedIn home page is throwing up some unusual experiences, especially for users that are browsing with the likes of Chrome.  I found out today that a number of applications are less than happy being accessed by Chrome on the new LinkedIn even though it had worked quite happily before.  But enough of that, what I wanted to introduce you too is the new Beta version of Dynamic Search Refinements which is something I’ve just added into the updated version of LinkedIn Made Easy. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have been on LinkedIn in the last couple of days you will have noticed that they have updated the home page just a little

No longer is there a left hand menu, it’s all driven from the top menu and that’s not the only change!  It seems that Google Chrome doesn’t like to interact with the Google Presentation application on LinkedIn either!  Unfortunately there is no way to tell which of the various applications is at fault when it comes to diagnosing things like this and eventually it will get worked out.  So my recommendation is that for the time being, if you are Chrome user who is using the Google presentations application, that you revert to IE or Firefox until the problem is sorted out.

And for those of you who bought the LinkedIn Made Easy ebook recently, I just wanted to let you know that there will be an all new, updated version coming out over the weekend and I will send you all a link to get the latest version of it.

Latest Statistics from yesterday to today

• The total number of books sold – 5
• The number of books sold online – 5
• The number of books sold for directly to people instead of online – 0
• The amount of money raised for charity – £10.00
• The amount paid out to affiliates too – £2.00
• The number of LinkedIn connections I have – 433

It is noticeable that we are coming up to Christmas.  People are either in a panic about how much they still have to do before the Christmas break or they are already winding down and attending function after function.  I’ve noticed it myself.  I’ve not been well and my own activity has been ‘lacking’ should we say.  I’ve also had some big projects and presentations to complete and prepare for, as well as the ‘usual running a business’ activities that take place on a day to day basis. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday this week I made a presentation to the Brilliant BusinessXchange run by the fabulous Laura McHarrie which talked through how important it is to engage with groups in a meaningful way.   There were five key points I wanted to make:

1. Understand your business objective
2. Understand the demographics
3. Engage appropriately
4. Know whether you are selling or serving
5. Make the time to participate

Whilst the presentation was made without notes or powerpoint on the day, I created the following video with the intention of getting my message across to as wide an audience as possible.  I hope you enjoy it.

There are many different ways to achieve most things when using a computer and the Internet, and LinkedIn is no exception.  This short video will walk you through just one way to add a connection to your LinkedIn network, quickly and easily. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve not been well this week, had a nasty throat infection and at one point lost my voice entirely.  However, it has not been entirely without merit either as I’ve noticed that when I take my eye of the ball and am not putting in the effort that I normally do that, guess what, people engaging with the project dry up!! Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know that you can export your LinkedIn contacts?  This is the perfect way to provide a bit of security in the event that something happens and your account stops functioning for some reason. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, LinkedIn Made Easy, the 30Day challenge has made it to video thanks to Rob Goodwin of Champagne Video. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my networking buddies, David Cottrell, sent me this LinkedIn success story and he was happy for me to share it with you as well. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve already had a rant on this blog about the people who do reciprocal recommendations.  Now, I’d like to introduce you to a colleague of mine, Michelle Fischer of Creative Leadership, who has a really nice way of looking at this very subject.  She calls it the art of ‘saying it forward‘ and you can read more about it on her Creative Leadership blog. Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to marketing and social media it is worth bearing in mind that you can never know it all, and nor should you expect too.  I was reminded of this quite forcibly during a conversation I had with Andy Lopata earlier today (thanks Andy, you put me back on track!), who very gently explained that I had forgotten one simple thing …. Give Back! Read the rest of this entry »

As you know I’m undertaking a 30 day challenge to raise £400,000 for charity by selling 200,000 copies of my e-book, LinkedIn Made Easy.  As a result of the challenge I’ve been in touch with all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons but I today I received an email from someone special.  His name is John Jocham and as a result of buying my e-Book he suddenly had lots of ideas about how he could promote his own challenge, which is to raise funds for Diabetes research.  He’s contacted me on LinkedIn to see if I could help as well, hence this blog post; oh, and I gave him some other ideas for things he could do as well. Read the rest of this entry »

I’d like to challenge you to make a difference to YOUR business by using LinkedIn more effectively in the NEXT 30 DAYS.  Running along side my own LinkedIn Made Easy 30 day challenge to raise £400,000 for charity in 30 days, I thought this would be a great way for YOU to concentrate your efforts on your business to make the change that needs to happen. Read the rest of this entry »

LinkedIn and Twitter have teamed up to provide LinkedIn networkers with a way to

• pull in their status updates from Twitter automatically to their status update on LinkedIn
• and push their LinkedIn status update out to Twitter Read the rest of this entry »

A star is born, no really … that’s what Rob Goodwin of Champagne Video Production told me today when he did a vox pop video of me for the challenge.  And what fun it was too, I got to talk about the challenge as well as the book and he’s sending me a copy to help me promote what I’m doing.  When it’s available I’ll add it to the website and you can see me in all my glory – ahem! Read the rest of this entry »

There is a facility within LinkedIn to say that you don’t know someone if they send you a connection request, it is ‘affectionately’ known as IDK – you may well have seen it on some people’s profiles or even in the email requests they send you.  However, use it only with caution because when you do there is every chance that LinkedIn will penalise the person who has sent the request, particularly if it has happened more than three times. Read the rest of this entry »

I had an interesting conversation today about Groups on LinkedIn and it seems there is no way to guage which will be the ‘right’ ones for you to join.  So I thought I’d put together a few pointers to the sort of things I look for when I’m joining a group – it may just help you make a decision too! Read the rest of this entry »

Quite a few people have been asking me what exactly is going to happen to the money that is raised through the sale of LinkedIn Made Easy so I thought I’d try to expand on it a little more than I have done elsewhere: Read the rest of this entry »

LinkedIn is great for giving you a little teaser about who has viewed your profile.  You know that little box on the right hand side of the home page that says “Your profile has been viewed 15,000,000 people in the last 2 days”.  When you click on the link that says See More, you are taken to a page with a partial list of the people and/or the sectors that have had a good, old poke around.  In some cases, it will say the name as well as the sector, but in most it won’t.  The reason being that you have no control over this section unless you have paid to be a member!  If you want other people to see that you’ve been nosey, then become a paid member and if you don’t, don’t!

It would be true to say that small changes, undertaken regularly can lead to huge changes over a longer period of time.  Let’s take the idea of writing a book for instance, say one about LinkedIn  You might start by spending just a few minutes thinking about the sort of things that people might want to know.  The next day you could take that one stage further and write down the chapter headings.  Under each chapter heading you might have some section titles, and then you  might write a paragraph or two about each one.  In no time at all you have a book and yet, you may only have spent a very short period of time each day on writing it.  Now, you may wonder why I’m telling you this.  The reason is that art of social networking is all in the connections you make and the relationships you build with those connections.

Read the rest of this entry »