Month: October 2014

The year-end frenzy is almost here. And your thoughts may be turning to 2015 already as well.

Ask yourself: am I getting traction and business from LinkedIn or could I do better in the coming months and year?

Do take a look at yourself from the POV of the casual reader of your LinkedIn profile.

Is your image smooth and shiny, worthy of attention and contact by a potential client or business partner when they search for people like you and then select you for the A-list?

Or do you come across as a bumpy less-than-attractive version of who you are in reality?

Which is it?

Make the decision easier for the reader.

Hopefully they fell in “like” with your LinkedIn profile enough to connect through to you.

And once they contact you, confirm how and why they did.

Honesty is the best policy and some people are more verbal (and descriptive!) about themselves than others.

As in her case.

I met her at a luncheon yesterday and she announced to the assemblage that her LinkedIn knowledge was lacking, as quoted in the words of the graphic.

She is an accomplished, artistic baby boomer. I got these vibes from the context in which I met her, by whom she was introduced to me, and by her elevator pitch as we went around the table.

She’s stuck-she just doesn’t know what to do on LinkedIn to show that.

We can fix that, I said, with an educational session I will soon give to a private group, with her included at the top of the invitation list.

What continues to fascinate to me is that there are so many different degrees of needs for LinkedIn, and so many people, all ages and walks of life, who need to learn to use it better and fortunately, I am able to help deliver everyone I work with so far to the point where they are properly telling “why I do what I do.”

The better you can articulate your purpose and satisfaction in your LinkedIn profile, honestly and directly, the more attractive you become to a reader that you would be a worthy business colleague.

I tell that to you not to annoy you, but to challenge you.

And if you want an invitation to my session (date, time and cost TBD) in NYC, let me know.

On my way to finishing the final session of a 3-part cycle of LinkedIn training to underemployed baby boomers in Westchester County, I had a chance encounter with another job counseling colleague and two of the program administrators at the organization that houses the classes.

Which is a long-winded way of saying “you never know who you run into.”

And you never know what cool things can be imagined when you think “outside the room.”

We started riffing back and forth about what we should do to add more punch to the offerings to boomers and women (each of our target audiences) and we both agreed to bring in another colleague to teach the fine art of networking. He doesn’t know this yet…but he will be glad to participate.

When 3 passionate advocates for self-improvement get together, watch out as the (good) sparks fly.

Stay tuned as this develops into a great session in the winter to melt the proverbial ice: networking on steroids to get your butt a job and also connect2collaborate.

I’ll tell you when we are ready to announce this and to push the button. I’m excited.

LinkedIn acquired SlideShare in May 2012 and since then the combined talents continue to come up with new ways to merge the two.

The latest is called “Professional Journey,” and I just created mine using this link.

It is a rich graphic showing various aspects of my professional background, available in 2 formats. I chose the bright colorful version. The second one is at the bottom. Click any graphic to see it in an enlarged version.

My professional life is a journey and so is yours.

Cool, huh?

From time to time I get news of a colleague who published something online, or was quoted in a publication.

I congratulate him/her on the achievement (because I also know what work went into this!) and remind the author to tell us on LinkedIn.

I always remind that this should be posted on LinkedIn in 2 places: 1) as an update and 2) in the Publication section.

This is not ego-centered. It’s practical. Why?

You post as an update on your Home Page so your connections see it in real-time. Then tomorrow, the posting will be far lower as new updates come in and overlay on top of it.

You post in your Publications section on your personal profile page so it is memorialized for the long-haul and visible to anyone who sees your personal page.

Don’t forget to post it in both places.

Grab the URL, (or shorten it on bit.ly if necessary), add a brief description of what the reader is about to see and you are all set.

No need to do this if it’s a long-form Post on LinkedIn, since it follows you as part of your profile.

But if it’s a video, well, see my earlier postings on that topic….

From a client: “Quick question for you on LinkedIn.  They’ve changed a setting somewhere that I can’t figure out.  How do I send a customized connect request?  Everytime I hit “Connect” it sends that “I’d like to connect with you” static message automatically, and no longer gives me the option to customize it…”

OK, good question, and an easy answer although LinkedIn (once again) recently made this important action a bit difficult at first, but you will get used to this. Here’s what you do:

Look up the person. Next to their picture you will see a white button “Send {first name} Inmail.“ Just to the right of it click the downward pointing arrow.

It opens a box that looks like this and click “personalize invitation.”

You then get a box to key in a message.

Be sure to personalize your invitation.

I give the invitee the context in which we met (the other day I had someone accept an invite that I had extended 6 months ago!).

Then I say something like, “I would be pleased to include you in my amazing group of professional connections on LinkedIn so we can stay in touch.”

Be professional but be yourself in all your business social media interactions, especially on LinkedIn. 

I picked up another personal coaching client yesterday. Actually she picked me.

A few weeks ago there was an article in the local regional Sunday newspaper about how LinkedIn is hugely helpful for the underemployed, when used correctly.

So last week I received an email from an exec at a very large corporation who read the article and decided it’s time to move on, and her question to me, to decide if I am the right coach to work with, or should she work with my competitors:

how can she show “why her” better than what is on her resume?

Now that’s a question I love to answer.

And I did; during our discussion she told me she had paid someone to write her resume (and was not really thrilled with the end result) and she now wanted to have someone rewrite her LinkedIn profile. I gave her my opinion on the resume, as a great article I came across yesterday reinforced my contention, it is “dumb, mute and defenseless.”

The matchmaking began by phone, with my proposal to work with her over 4 sessions. One look at her personal LinkedIn profile as I listened to her, and I knew we had a handle-able challenge on our hands.

We.

She has to rewrite it in her own words, I explained, but with my guidance, I will pull from her themes and threads to tie her rich experience together in a functional review of her past that makes her who she is today, and where she wants to go in the future. Resumes just can’t do that. Her LinkedIn profile will complement her resume, so prior expenditure is not a waste.

Somewhere in the dialog we both decided we had a nice match of personalities and she emailed yesterday to say I was hired. Nice.

I am awaiting a signed proposal by fax or scan, so perhaps I shouldn’t speak too soon. But I take her at her word.

Let’s see:

• newspaper : e-news
• paper mail : email
• fax : scanned document
• resume : LinkedIn

Antiquated concepts : today’s versions.

Get with the program. We have moved beyond a Model T.

Fortunately, honorable business dealings still prevail.

The latest and greatest on LinkedIn, right from the horse’s proverbial mouth comes out daily on LinkedIn’s own blog.

Pretty good stuff, if I may add. Sometimes it’s news on developments and iterative improvements. Sometimes it’s a success story. To stay abreast of their latest blog post, create an RSS feed to your email.

Or let me curate material from it and you can then read it in this blog. Your choice.

Most people I coach erroneously create their LinkedIn profile from a resume.

As said before in this blog, a resume is a backward-looking document stuck in time; by contrast, LinkedIn is past-, present-, and future-looking organic entity, adaptable and reviewable in its latest version at any point.

But, there’s a web app called Resume Builder that asks your permission to use your existing (already amazing and professional business-driven) LinkedIn profile to create a passable PDF version of a CV.

Is it perfect? No, but it’s an OK start if you need one, and saves a lot of time.

I created mine (page one to the left) and there are some anomalies in it (and for that reason I will never use it, except for educational purposes in this blog piece). If I really wanted to, I could buff it up.

One observation: it does not capture your all-important LinkedIn URL (mine is http://www.linkedin.com/ in/marchalpert) on the CV, which I find really odd; it found all my other URLs.

BTW, there’s another (better IMHO) way to create a CV from your LinkedIn profile. Not as attractive, though.

Take your choice. Just be sure you review the output for errors and omitted details.

At the risk of again sounding self-promoting, I am really pleased to post the third, and final, weekly installment from my recent video interview with esteemed colleague and video and TV producer Alex Vachon on his video blog.

My hope is that each segment will turbocharge your day and new week with some fresh ways of thinking about LinkedIn with ideas that you can use right away.

Do contact Alex, a consummate professional, to video you asap, so you can better tell “why you.”

Here’s the third of the 3 parts.

Thanks for the past 2 weeks’ compliments.

Your comments and observations are always welcome.