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The Four LinkedIn Connection Strategies

December 7, 2009 By Sean Nelson 18 Comments

LinkedIn is a fairly harmonious place. People tend to act professional and when there are opposing opinions they typically become a case where people “agree to disagree”. Things change though when you began discussing LIONS. Suddenly the conversation isn’t so rosy.

LION’s, for those who don’t know are open networkers. They connect to just about anyone. They see opportunity increasing as the number of connections increases. Those who disagree see LIONS as simply driving their ego’s by counting the connections, as if the purpose of LinkedIn is to proudly claim to have 1,000’s of connections.

For the record I don’t consider myself a LION, yet I’m an open networker. When writing my first LinkedIn book I identified three LinkedIn connection strategies. This year I added a fourth to define how I now connect.

How you choose to connect will impact how you use LinkedIn and in the end your chances of finding success.

Before we look at the four connection strategies I want to make one point. How you choose to connect on LinkedIn should be of no concern to anyone else. It’s your network and your strategy. As long as it works for you thats all that matters.

The Four LinkedIn Connection Strategies: [Read more...]

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I Need Your Help – Blogoff 2

December 1, 2009 By Sean Nelson Leave a Comment

For the last two years I’ve written this blog to help people more effectively use LinkedIn.  I decided it was time to benchmark the blog’s success by competing in the BlogOff 2 competition.  I need your help to have a chance to win the competition.

Your Task:  Visit my new blog post “The 7 Worst Mistakes on LinkedIn and Their Fixes“.  This post will help you identify and correct the mistakes I see many people making on LinkedIn.

VOTE NOW:  Your click is your vote.  *******Comments on tT7he post are a major component of the voting so please consider adding a comment.*******

Thank you and have a great day.

Sean Nelson

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Growing Your Business with LinkedIn (part 9 of 10)

November 30, 2009 By Sean Nelson 10 Comments

Two months ago I started this series asking the question “Can LinkedIn work for you?”. Today we come full circle and look at expanding on the four keys of success that I listed in the original article:

1.  The Right Purpose = The right Activities
2.  More Reach = More Opportunities
3.  Provide Value to Others = Know, Like, & Trust
4.  More Activity = More Success

Get these four right and LinkedIn will work for you. The components of each of these have been covered throughout the series so if you’ve followed along this should put the icing on the cake.

The Right Activities
There is the ideal and there is reality. Reality is that most of us first joined LinkedIn and begin to explore it over time. Most people get that LinkedIn is about connecting to other people so the first step is that people invite those that they know. After those first connections are made, though, is where most people hit the wall.

My kids love movies and there is a scene in “A Bugs Life” where the ants are carrying food in a neat and orderly line…one after another. Each one is simply following what the other is doing. Suddenly a leaf lands between two ants and the one in front keeps moving but the one behind has no clue what to do. The leaf is the ant’s wall.

After some coaching the ant simply changes directions to go around the leaf and the line continues moving.

On LinkedIn the ability to move around your walls is dramatically increased if you have taken the time to develop goals and a strategy for reaching the goals. Because if you don’t know what you hope to achieve (purpose) how do you know which actions you should be taking.

You need to think about why you are on LinkedIn and develop a strategy to make it work for you. My purpose for being on LinkedIn is to make money. Actions such as connecting, starting discussion posts, posting news articles, joining groups, asking and answering questions, posting status updates, etc. are all done with this purpose in mind. [Read more...]

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5 Ways to Communicate Your Message on LinkedIn (Part 8 of 10)

November 22, 2009 By Sean Nelson 13 Comments

When I first joined LinkedIn my thought was that this would be a good place to network and connect to other business professionals.  What I’ve learned since is that LinkedIn is a great place to communicate your message to millions of business professionals.  Most often through indirect methods.

Most people think in term of communicating directly, but that’s a traditional perspective.  Social networking/media has its own rules in regards to sales related activites and most often using a direct sales pitch will fail and potentially cause damage to your brand.

There are a few ways to communicate directly on LinkedIn.  The most obvious is to send a direct message to your first degree connections.  Personally when I receive a direct sales message I immediately archive it.  Most often it’s from someone I’m connected to but do not personally know.  If I receive several I simply remove the connection.

If you want to sell to me you have to first introduce yourself and then start a conversation.  It all starts with the three requirements necessary for someone to choose to do business with you.  First they have to know you, second they need to like you, and finally they need to trust you.

Connecting or interacting within LinkedIn groups can accomplish the “getting to know you” requirement.  Moving to like and trust requires time and interaction.  You’re going to have to share value over time for this to occur.

Here are some of the ways that I communicate my message to tens of thousands of LinkedIn members each week. [Read more...]

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A Case of LinkedIn Spam?

November 16, 2009 By Sean Nelson 43 Comments

I’ve been on LinkedIn for over three years and I’ve been amazed that spam related content has not been a huge issue.  Rarely do I see, or maybe its that I haven’t recognized it, this type of activity.  Compared to Twitter direct sales messages rarely work.

Today I received a message from a fellow group member that at first I assumed was legitimate.  Now I’m not so sure.  I’m going to leave the final decision up to you.

First here’s the message I received from Bradley Mitchell which included a note apparently sent to him from Mr. Brad Kenzie.  It includes a link to http://www.moresocialleads.com which advertises a social media product called PMA Desk.

the spam message A Case of LinkedIn Spam?

The message is pretty straight forward.  Since I work with clients helping them with their social media strategies, and having written a blog for the past two years that discusses LinkedIn and social media, I was curious.  I clicked on the link to check it out. [Read more...]

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Prospecting with LinkedIn (part 7 of 10)

November 8, 2009 By Sean Nelson 12 Comments

Last week I discussed New Opportunities, New Hires with LinkedIn that discussed using LinkedIn to advance your career and for companies to find new employees.  Todays conversation addresses using LinkedIn to prospect.

Most people use LinkedIn to connect to other business professionals that they know or meet while networking.  It definitely can help put an additional degree of connectivity to these folks.  But limiting your use to simply networking leaves a significant opportunity out of your monetization toolbox.

The tool that most people fail to take advantage of is the ability to prospect for potential opportunities.  Let me be clear, prospecting is not sending sales messages to your direct connections.  It’s not posting sales messages in groups.  It’s simply identifying potential people or companies that could eventually become clients.

LinkedIn, like other social networking sites, are not great places to overtly sell your products and services.  Can doing this work? Sure, but you’re more likely to turn people off than to turn them on.  A better approach is to connect and engage in conversations so that people first get a chance to know and like you.  Then you can begin converting the “like” into trust.

I recently received a message form someone stating that they had looked at my profile and read my blog.  In the message they simply asked if they could follow up with a question.  I said sure and then next communication was an offer for me to use their services.

Bad strategy.  I’ll talk about how they could have approached things later.

The two ways you can prospect on LinkedIn are People and for Companies. [Read more...]

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What is a Social Networking/Media Expert?

October 21, 2009 By Sean Nelson 31 Comments

I recently was asked to speak at a workshop on LinkedIn by a connection of mine.  A week or so prior to the event I received an email from her to use to promote the event.  The description headline stopped me in my tracks…”Sean Nelson the King of LinkedIn”

It took me about two seconds to fire off an email telling her to ditch the royal reference ASAP.  A lot of people would call me an expert on LinkedIn, its their opinion so they can think or say what they like.  I have a different different way of describing what I am.  “I’m simply a small business owner that learned how to use LinkedIn and Social networking / media in order to network more efficiently and to drive new business.”

The word “expert” is thrown around way too often these days with little to back up the claim.  What does a LinkedIn expert look like?  How do you determine that they are an expert?  The same goes for “social networking/media expert”.

I was looking at my home page the other day and noticed an updated profile for a connection of mine and someone I’ve known for the last couple of years.  Curious about what changed I took a look at his profile and immediately noticed that after years in another field he was now a social media expert.

Now anyone can learn a lot about social media and be seen as an expert or extremely knowledgeable even if they’re not in the marketing or advertising field.  I’m a prime example of that.  I learned LinkedIn and social networking/media through trial and error trying to drive business for my insurance agency.

In this case the person had attended a couple of my LinkedIn workshops, a few other social media workshops, and was partnering with a company jumping from Google Adwords to social media.  It takes more than attending a couple of workshops and working in the industry to be an expert.

So what is an expert and how do you determine if you’re one?  Is it valid to claim that you are an expert or does that title have to be conferred upon you by another person?  I’m not certain what the official definition is but here are some thoughts about what I think it takes to potentially be considered an expert: [Read more...]

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Building Credibility on LinkedIn (part 5 of 10)

October 19, 2009 By Sean Nelson 25 Comments

Part 5 finally arrives.  Sorry for the delay but client’s have to take preference over the blog.  Plus I’ve recently switched to a Mac and much of my time has been spent migrating to the new computer.

In part 4, Expand Your Reach on LinkedIn we covered building through direct connections and groups.  Today we talk about Building Credibility on LinkedIn.

When I lived in New Orleans a good friend of mine had an uncle named Joe.  Everyone in the neighborhood knew him and everybody loved him.  I don’t know anybody who would trust him as far as doing what he said he would.  Great guy, just not dependable.

For a business you want to be known and liked, but before the cash register start ringing you have to establish trust.  Trust might be strong enough to over come someone not liking you, but with enough options, this combination is not likely to be viable.

On LinkedIn you start your account off with none of the three.  As you start to connect on LinkedIn you’ll pop up on people’s radar.  Your activity is displayed on people’s home page so with enough participation you’ll start to get known.

To take the next step the most effective way to do so is to share value.  In a small network you may be able to establish this outside of LinkedIn.  But for those people that only know you through LinkedIn, they’ll make their decision based on how they judge your interaction and the value of the information you share.

Trust only occurs as people positively evaluate your interactions and content over time.  Trust can take a long time to build and disappear overnight.  So how do you use LinkedIn to take the steps from Known to trusted?  Here are some ways. [Read more...]

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Expand Your LinkedIn Reach (part 4 of 10)

October 5, 2009 By Sean Nelson 10 Comments

linkedin expand network Expand Your LinkedIn Reach (part 4 of 10)In part three of this series, Enhance Your Networking with LinkedIn, I talked about how LinkedIn could be used as a way to support your offline networking efforts. Today I continue the conversation discussing how LinkedIn can expand your reach.

Your end goal on LinkedIn should be to drive new business or to monetize LinkedIn. Your ability to communicate your message to a larger number of people, expand your reach, is critical if you hope to move from “connecting” to “collecting”.

When you’re at networking events and collecting business cards you’ve got a great opportunity to take this activity and convert it into new LinkedIn connections. This is a way to grow your direct connections. Your Direct Connections, though, are not your only network on LinkedIn.

I’ve identified three networks that everyone has access to on LinkedIn:

  1. Your Direct Network: These are the people who are 1st degree connections.
  2. Your Group Network: The people that are in the same groups as you are.
  3. The LinkedIn Network: Everyone who is a member of LinkedIn.

What makes the member of each of these a network is your ability to communicate your message to them. There are specific ways to communicate to each and we’ll touch on many of these later in the series. First we need to expand out reach. [Read more...]

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The Insurance Brokers Guide to LinkedIn

October 2, 2009 By Sean Nelson 5 Comments

insurance brokers guide to linkedin 200 The Insurance Brokers Guide to LinkedIn

Today I’m excited to announce the first industry specific guide that I have written about LinkedIn.  This guide was developed based on the 8 years of experience that I have as an insurance broker and the expertise I’ve developed since 2006, using LinkedIn to drive new business.

The Insurance Brokers Guide to LinkedIn uses Action Steps to walk you through the process of moving from a social networker to a social marketer.  You’ll learn how to identify why you are on LinkedIn, expand your network, build your credibility, leverage LinkedIn, and a Bonus Action Step on using LinkedIn to prospect.
As a Special Bonus you also get a free copy of my LinkedIn MBA, a $9.97 value, which uses exercises to walk you through creating a “Killer” profile.

The Insurance Brokers Guide to LinkedIn is relevant to any business person, but the examples and terminology are geared to insurance brokers.  Here is a list of the content:

Foreword by Jeremiah Desmarais, Vice President Marketing, Norvax
Authors Note
Introduction
Action Step 1:  Understanding Why You Are on LinkedIn
Action Step 2:  Extending Your Networks
Action Step 3:  Building Your Credibility
Action Step 4:  Leveraging LinkedIn
Bonus Action Step:  Prospecting with LinkedIn
Wrap Up
14 Quick Action Steps
6 Social Media Tools You Should Be Using
  • Foreword by Jeremiah Desmarais, Vice President Marketing, Norvax
  • Authors Note
  • Introduction
  • Action Step 1:  Understanding Why You Are on LinkedIn
  • Action Step 2:  Extending Your Networks
  • Action Step 3:  Building Your Credibility
  • Action Step 4:  Leveraging LinkedIn
  • Bonus Action Step:  Prospecting with LinkedIn
  • Wrap Up
  • 14 Quick Action Steps
  • 6 Social Media Tools You Should Be Using
For more information about this guide and to purchase your copy go to:  http://socialmediasonar.com/insurance_brokers_guide_to_lin.html
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