Lead Generation on LinkedIn
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The document outlines strategies for leveraging LinkedIn to enhance professional networking and job searching. It emphasizes the importance of building a strong network of trusted connections and provides tips for adding contacts, customizing invitations, and utilizing features like imported contacts and the Outlook toolbar. Additionally, it highlights the significance of personalizing connection requests and actively engaging with classmates and colleagues to expand one's network effectively.
![88 • The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success
how to find new people to add, accept or decline the requests
you’ll get, and gather interesting information about your expand-
ing base of contacts. Once you’ve built your muskie-sized net,
when you go fishing, you’ll be sure to come up with lots of poten-
tially valuable connections.
The most common way to add connections is one at a time.
You do this by clicking “Add Connections” on the top toolbar (see
Figure 12.1). All you need is the person’s e-mail address, and then
you can use LinkedIn’s standard invitation to invite your friend or
colleague to join your network
The preferable way, however, to add a person to your network
is to search for her by name and then click “Add [her name] to
your network” at the top right corner of her profile. Once you
make this selection, you must then tell LinkedIn and the per-
son how you know her by selecting one of the options LinkedIn
shows you: colleague, classmate, etc. I prefer this method of add-
ing connections rather than the option mentioned in the previous
paragraph because it allows you to enter a short personal note
explaining why it would be beneficial for the person to allow you
to be part of her network. In my opinion, the standard “I’d like
to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” is very lame.
Figure 12.1: Adding connections one at a time is as easy as 1-2-3.
Welcome, Wayne Breitbarth • Add Connections • Settings • Help • Sign Out
Profile Contacts Groups Jobs Inbox (7) More... People Advanced
the Life You Deserve - If you must work, work from home. Earn $500-$1000 Month to start. – From Susan Laurino
Edit My Profile
Add Wayne to your network
Forward this profile to a connection
ors, where we have served the office
and Linkedin Trainer
Furniture](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/powerformulaforlinkedinsuccesssneakpeek-13439108899675-phpapp01-120802073836-phpapp01/85/Lead-Generation-on-LinkedIn-8-320.jpg)
Lead Generation on LinkedIn
- 2. The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success Kick-start Your Business, Brand, and Job Search Wayne Breitbarth
- 3. Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 I Never Even Wanted to Be on LinkedIn! Chapter 1 A New Way to Look at Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The LinkedIn Power Formula Your Unique Experience Your Unique Relationships The Tool Chapter 2 The Million-Cubicle Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 LinkedIn—Making the Invisible Visible Chapter 3 Where’s the Beef? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 The LinkedIn Profile: Basics Chapter 4 Your 30-Second Bumper Sticker . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 The LinkedIn Profile: Personal Identification Box Your Name Your Photograph Your Headline Your Location and Industry
- 4. viii • The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success Chapter 5 Resume on Steroids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 The LinkedIn Profile: Experience Section Chapter 6 Aren’t You Any Good? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 The LinkedIn Profile: Recommendations How Many Recommendations Should I Have? What Should My Recommendations Say? Why Are Recommendations So Important? Tips for Getting Recommendations Chapter 7 Hyperlinks to Hot Leads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 The LinkedIn Profile: Additional Top Box Items Education Websites Public Profile URL Chapter 8 That’s My Boy! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 The LinkedIn Profile: Summary and Specialties Sections The Summary Section Specialties Chapter 9 Not Your Average Joe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 The LinkedIn Profile: Must-Have Applications and Tools Box.net Files Google Presentation / SlideShare Amazon’s Reading List Events Giving (and Getting) Answers Chapter 10 Who Do You Want to Find? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Searching on LinkedIn Saved Searches
- 5. Contents • ix Chapter 11 I Found You—Now What Do I Do with You? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Contacting the Person You Just Found The Introduction Function Chapter 12 There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Expanding Your Network Importing Contacts Connecting with Colleagues Connecting with Classmates The Outlook Toolbar “People You May Know” Accepting or Declining Connection Requests Connecting with Competitors Monitoring Your Growing Network Tags “Who’s Viewed My Profile?” Chapter 13 Keywords Are King . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Maximizing Your Ability to Find and Be Found by Others Exact Phrases The “And” Function The “Or” Function The “Not” Function Keyword Optimizing Your Profile Chapter 14 How Do Companies Fit into the LinkedIn Landscape? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Researching Companies on LinkedIn and Other Company-Related Matters Social Media Policies and Procedures Chapter 15 Revving Up Your LinkedIn Efforts by Joining Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 The Power of LinkedIn Groups
- 6. x • The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success Chapter 16 Show Me the Money! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 What Are the Power Users Doing on LinkedIn? Chapter 17 Your Account, Your Settings—Your Way . . . . . 129 Setting Your Preferences and Using the LinkedIn Help Centers Paid vs. Free Accounts LinkedIn Learning Center and Customer Service Center Chapter 18 A Job Seeker’s New Best Friend . . . . . . . . . . . 135 LinkedIn—The World’s Largest Internet-Based Resume Database Chapter 19 Ready . . . Set . . . Go! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 A Six-Week, Two-Hour-per-Week Road Map to Results Weeks 1-6 Managing Your Time on LinkedIn Chapter 20 Conclusion (Or Is It Just the Beginning?) . . . . 153 Which Camp Are You In? Bonus My Kids Are Already on Facebook— Chapter Can’t They Find a Job There? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Why College Students Need to Be on LinkedIn Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Index ���������� . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
- 7. C h apt e r 1 2 There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills Expanding Your Network As you can tell from previous chapters, the winner of the searching aspect of the LinkedIn game is the person who has a lot of con- nections. However, please continue to keep in mind my recom- mendation that you only add to your network people whom you know and trust, because when you add a new contact, you put your extremely valuable network in his or her hands. Remember, it is your network. It is a possession you have worked your entire career to build, and when you add a connection on LinkedIn, it is like handing your Outlook database to that individual and trust- ing him to treat it professionally as you would treat his. I recommend you have an ultimate goal of acquiring at least 200 to 250 connections (muskie size), as opposed to the 20 or 30 connections (minnow size) that the vast majority of LinkedIn users acquire. If you want your searches to be useful, you really want to consistently add connections. This chapter will show you
- 8. 88 • The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success how to find new people to add, accept or decline the requests you’ll get, and gather interesting information about your expand- ing base of contacts. Once you’ve built your muskie-sized net, when you go fishing, you’ll be sure to come up with lots of poten- tially valuable connections. The most common way to add connections is one at a time. You do this by clicking “Add Connections” on the top toolbar (see Figure 12.1). All you need is the person’s e-mail address, and then you can use LinkedIn’s standard invitation to invite your friend or colleague to join your network The preferable way, however, to add a person to your network is to search for her by name and then click “Add [her name] to your network” at the top right corner of her profile. Once you make this selection, you must then tell LinkedIn and the per- son how you know her by selecting one of the options LinkedIn shows you: colleague, classmate, etc. I prefer this method of add- ing connections rather than the option mentioned in the previous paragraph because it allows you to enter a short personal note explaining why it would be beneficial for the person to allow you to be part of her network. In my opinion, the standard “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” is very lame. Figure 12.1: Adding connections one at a time is as easy as 1-2-3. Welcome, Wayne Breitbarth • Add Connections • Settings • Help • Sign Out Profile Contacts Groups Jobs Inbox (7) More... People Advanced the Life You Deserve - If you must work, work from home. Earn $500-$1000 Month to start. – From Susan Laurino Edit My Profile Add Wayne to your network Forward this profile to a connection ors, where we have served the office and Linkedin Trainer Furniture
- 9. There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills • 89 Remember, you are adding this person to your group of trusted professionals. Therefore, you should add a personal touch to your invitation. Customizing the connection request will get you a much higher response rate. Now I am going to show you how to add a lot of connections at the same time. Even if you’re starting out with no contacts, you should be able to get to 50 or 60 connections within three or four days by following the four steps that follow. If you currently have 30 or 40 connections and follow these steps, you should get to over 100. Importing Contacts The first step is to import contacts (see Figure 12.2). Click “Con- tacts” on the top toolbar. Then select “Imported Contacts.” At that point LinkedIn will be searching your entire database for contacts. It searches Outlook by default, but it can do any other database or e-mail account, including ACT, GoldMine, Yahoo, Gmail, or even a simple Excel file with name and e-mail. LinkedIn will sift through the entries in your database, looking for e-mail addresses that match those of people who are on LinkedIn. When Figure 12.2: Press the button and relax while LinkedIn finds connections for you. Account Type: Basic Home Profile Contacts Groups Jobs Inbox 262 Companies My Connections Imported Contacts Profile Organizer Network Sta Filter Connections Select: All, None A Smith, John 199 All Connections (1624) Owner – Media Company Tags Manage
- 10. 90 • The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success it’s done searching, you will see the screen shown in Figure 12.3. What you’re looking for is the little blue square that says “in.” That icon indicates the contacts in your database who are already on LinkedIn. What do you think the odds are that they will want to connect with you once you send them an invitation? Probably close to 100 percent. Check the boxes next to the names of the contacts you want to connect with and click the button labeled “Invite selected con- tacts.” This will send a group invitation to the people you have selected, and you will have to be fairly creative in crafting your personalized message, since it is going to many different people. You could do something like this: Hi. I just read a great book by Wayne Breitbarth on LinkedIn, and I finally understand how powerful this thing is. I would love to have you join my network. —John Doe Figure 12.3: Quickly connect with trusted professionals who are already using LinkedIn. View & edit details ‹ L M Jones, Jerry jerry.jones@business.com N President O View & edit details ‹ P Q Jones, John john.jones@business.com R Business Consultant S View & edit details ‹ T U V Knight, John john.knight@business.com W Client/Administrative Manager X View & edit details ‹ Y Z Gray, Gary gary.gray@business.com # View & edit details ‹
- 11. There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills • 91 Connecting with Colleagues The second step to building your network is adding colleagues. Click “Add Connections” on the top right toolbar, and then click on “Colleagues” (see Figure 12.4). LinkedIn will then take all the jobs you have included in your profile and create a comprehensive list of the people on LinkedIn who were employed at those companies during your tenure (another benefit to listing all jobs you have had). If you perform this same search at a later time, the list will include only people who have been added since the last time you searched. Figure 12.4: Past and present colleagues can be extremely valuable connections. Basic Account: Upgrade Welcome, Wayne Breitbarth • Add Connections • Home Profile Contacts Groups Jobs Inbox (7) More... People Add Connections Colleagues Classmates Get more value out of LinkedIn by inviting your trusted friends and colleagues to connect. See Who You Already Know on LinkedIn Enter Email Addresses Searching your email contacts (hotmail.com, gmail.com, yahoo.com, aol.com) is the easiest Enter email addresses of people to way to find people who already know on LinkedIn. Learn More each address by a comma. Email: Password: Connecting with Classmates The third step, connection with classmates, is fun—it will feel like you’re on Facebook. Click “Classmates” (see Figure 12.5). Select a school and the years you attended that school, and LinkedIn will give you a list of all the people who said they attended this school during the years you indicated. You will probably get quite a large number of potential connections, but if you say to yourself, Well, that’s too many; that’s going to take me too long to review, then I guess
- 12. 92 • The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success you don’t really understand why you are even on LinkedIn. Rather than viewing this process as a hassle, treat your search for valuable connections as if you were hunting treasure—tell yourself, There’s gold in them thar hills. Your classmates present a tremendous oppor- tunity to make some important connections. These are people who will remember you from your college days, and you will now be able to tell them what you are up to today. Reconnecting with old friends is fun, but it can also be very productive; some of your old drinking buddies may now be presidents of the companies with which you are trying to do business. Many others will likely have nice databases of Number 1 connections, which could lead to great connections at the second or third level for you. You just never know. Figure 12.5: Connecting with a classmate may lead to that million- cubicle deal. Basic Account: Upgrade Welcome, Wayne Breitbarth • Add Con Home Profile Contacts Groups Jobs Inbox (7) More... People Add Connections Colleagues Classmates Get more value out of LinkedIn by inviting your trusted friends and colleagues to connect. See Who You Already Know on LinkedIn Enter Email Addresses Searching your email contacts (hotmail.com, gmail.com, yahoo.com aol.com) is the easiest Enter email addresses of people to way to find people who already know on LinkedIn. Learn More each address by a comma. Email: Password: The Outlook Toolbar The fourth step is downloading the Outlook toolbar, which you can get by clicking on “Tools” at the bottom of any LinkedIn page. Click “Download it now” in the Outlook Toolbar box (see Figure 12.6). This will download a piece of software to your com- puter, which, going forward, will search all the e-mails you receive
- 13. There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills • 93 for contacts who are in the LinkedIn database. The program will also tell you when people you have in your Outlook database join LinkedIn. In addition, when you are writing an e-mail to a new contact in Outlook, a pop-up box will tell you whether the recipi- ent is a LinkedIn member and how many connections he cur- rently has—and it will give you the option to add the person as a LinkedIn connection. Figure 12.6: The Outlook Toolbar—your virtual assistant—looks for potential connections 24/7. “People You May Know” On your LinkedIn home page, you’ll see a box on the right labeled “People You May Know” (see Figure 12.7). LinkedIn has a special formula for putting people in this section, and although they have not revealed how it works, you will be amazed at the names you find here. From my observation, these people typically fall into one or more of the following categories: • They are connected to someone in your network. • They attended a school that you also attended. • They are a member of a group to which you belong.
- 14. 94 • The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success Figure 12.7: LinkedIn helps you find new connections. People You May Know Kristy Sears 2 nd Invite job advice Apr 16 take action Owner - K & S Lawn Service, LLC Reschedule Apr 13 take action Katie Henry 2 nd Invite training Apr 9 take action Systems Analyst Event: Investment Conference-2nd... Apr 1 take action endorse me? Mar 18 archive Gary Smith 2 nd Invite Lean Manufacturing Expert ils (3), See all messages ‹ See more ‹ You will find these suggestions not only useful but also some- what entertaining. LinkedIn has helped me find a number of guys I used to drink dime taps (10¢ beers) with during my col- lege days! Do not overlook the usefulness of this feature in find- ing new connections. Accepting or Declining Connection Requests People frequently ask me what they should do when somebody they don’t know invites them to connect on LinkedIn. This will begin to happen with greater frequency as you become more active on LinkedIn, especially if you decide to join larger groups. Some people assume that because you are members of the same group, you will want to connect with them on the first-degree level. When you receive an invitation from someone, you will see the screen in Figure 12.8. Let’s go through the six options you have when responding to an invitation: Accept. The person will immediately become a first-degree 1. connection.
- 15. There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills • 95 Reply. People often overlook the option of using the Reply 2. feature. If you hit the Reply arrow, you can send a com- munication to the requesting individual without allowing him to become part of your network. If I have had an inter- esting meeting with a person and we belong to the same group or club, I can send a message saying something like, “At the next meeting, let’s make sure we connect and get to know each other better so we can join each other’s Linked- In networks.” Delete. The invitation will be moved to the trash. 3. Archive. The invitation will be stored in your archive file, 4. which gives you the ability to reconsider accepting the invitation at a later time. I use the archive function quite often, but there is one thing I do before I archive some- one’s invitation: I look at his profile and see whether he is somebody I should at least consider having a meeting with. Remember, this person found you, so he is probably inter- ested in building a business relationship with you. Look at his profile to see if there is something interesting there before you put his invitation in your archive file, where you may forget about it entirely. Figure 12.8: Consider all of your options when responding to an invitation. Messages ? Invitations 224 Search Inbox Reply Forward Archive Delete Compose Message Join my network on LinkedIn Inbox John Smith - Director, Growth Capital To: Wayne Breitbarth Message detail Date: July 9, 2010 Sent John Smith has indicated you are a person they’ve done business with at Growth Capital: Archived I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. Trash - John Smith You are using the new Inbox. Send us feedback > Accept Ignore
- 16. 96 • The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success Ignore. The invitation will be put into the archive file and 5. marked “Ignore.” Before deciding to ignore an invitation, follow the same procedure that I suggested for archiving invitations: Check out the person’s profile to determine whether there might be a reason to meet him or her. After selecting “Ignore,” you will have two additional options— “I don’t know them” or “Report as spam.” This allows you to report to LinkedIn that this individual might not be using LinkedIn appropriately. Forward. If you wish to make an inquiry concerning this 6. person before you decide whether to accept his or her invi- tation, you can forward the invitation to any of your first- level connections who might possess useful information. Connecting with Competitors One question that comes up quite frequently is, “Would you let competitors be connected to you at the first level?” My immedi- ate response is “No!” It does not make good business sense to allow your competitors to have a list of the people who are most important to you. You are basically handing them your Outlook database. There are, however, certain industries in which your competitors may also be your suppliers or vendors, and you will need to weigh the risk and reward of allowing those individuals to be part of your network. One of the few times I used the “I don’t know them” option was when one of my direct competitors, whom I had never met, attempted to connect with me on LinkedIn. There was no way I was going to give her access to the network I have worked so hard to develop over the course of my lifetime. So I promptly
- 17. There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills • 97 told LinkedIn I don’t know her. Something tells me she was not surprised by my response. Monitoring Your Growing Network Once you’ve started to build your LinkedIn network, you can easily keep track of the number of new people added to your network since a certain date. Select “Contacts” on the top tool- bar and then “Network Statistics” to view information about your total number of connections (see Figure 12.9). You will be amazed at how quickly you continue to add people to your net- work, not only at the first level but also at the second and third levels. You will find a summary of this information on the right side of your home page. I typically pick up about 8,500 people per day. Although I am not aware of the names of these people or who in my network has connected with them, I do know I am 8,500 people closer to finding that million-cubicle job than I was yesterday. Even when I am at the beach or hiking in the Rocky Mountains, I am adding about 8,500 people per day to my network. Now doesn’t that bring new meaning to the word vacation! And there is no question in my mind that one day these connections will pay off in a big way. Figure 12.9: You will be amazed by how quickly your network grows.
- 18. 98 • The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success Tags Once you’ve got all these connections, you’ll want to use tags to sort them for easy reference. LinkedIn defines tags as “simple key- words that you can create to organize your connections for quick filtering on LinkedIn.” To use this feature, go to “Contacts” on the top toolbar, then click “My Connections,” and then click “Tags.” Once you have tagged all of your connections that fall into a par- ticular category, LinkedIn will create a list of those connections. Examples of tags that I have found useful include “bankers,” “insurance agents,” and “customers.” As you spend time using this feature, you will find more ways to use tags to help you organize your network, which can save you time when you need to locate or contact a particular person or group within your network. “Who’s Viewed My Profile?” LinkedIn also allows users to see how many people are looking at their profile with the “Who’s Viewed My Profile?” feature, which you’ll find in the column on the right side of the LinkedIn home page (see Figure 12.10). This is an interesting box to click on from time to time, but don’t expect to see the name of the person who looked at your profile. You may instead see any of the follow- ing information about the person: job title, type of company or industry, company name, or location. From this information, you can sometimes guess who viewed your profile and perhaps may be interested in meeting you. The “Who’s Viewed My Profile?” section can also help you identify whether you are increasing your activity and presence on LinkedIn; it will display information like “Your profile has been viewed by 22 people in the last 3 days. Yesterday, you appeared in search results 7 times.” As with all networking, increasing your
- 19. There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills • 99 activity has the potential to increase relationships, which may lead to increased business. Figure 12.10: More looks at your profile should create more business opportunities. Who’s Viewed My Profile? 21 Your profile has been viewed by 21 people in the past 3 days. 29 You have shown up in search results 29 times in the past 3 days. Taking advantage of the features explained in this chapter will enable you to quickly add a large number of connections. You’ll be on your way to building that big muskie net, so that when you search for new contacts, you will have plenty of people to choose from. Applying the Power Formula • aking connections using the steps outlined in this chapter M may take you six to eight hours to complete, but it’s well worth the effort. Every one of your unique relationships gives you lots of Number 2’s and 3’s, and any of them could be the person you want to meet. • hese steps work more effectively when you have thoroughly T outlined your unique experience in the Experience and Education sections. If you fail to list a job or an educational experience, you will miss out on potential credibility as well as the opportunity to make valuable connections with people you met while gaining that unique experience.
- 21. The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success free resources I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek into my new book! Some of the other resources I provide are: Customized corporate training classes and social media strategy consulting Keynote and workshop presentations for conventions and association meetings For Sale: LinkedIn training DVDs for beginners and intermediate users For daily tips, follow me on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/WayneBreitbarth Preorder my book now at Amazon.com Wayne C. Breitbarth Author of The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success: Kick-Start Your Business, Brand and Job Search (March 2011, Greenleaf Book Group) www.powerformula.net www.Linkedin.com/in/waynebreitbarth http://twitter.com/WayneBreitbarth