1. The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success Kick-start Your Business, Brand, and Job Search Wayne Breitbarth

2. ContentsIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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 ToolChapter 2 The Million-Cubicle Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 LinkedInMaking the Invisible VisibleChapter 3 Wheres the Beef? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 The LinkedIn Profile: BasicsChapter 4 Your 30-Second Bumper Sticker . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 The LinkedIn Profile: Personal Identification Box Your Name Your Photograph Your Headline Your Location and Industry

3. viii The Power Formula for LinkedIn SuccessChapter 5 Resume on Steroids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 The LinkedIn Profile: Experience SectionChapter 6 Arent 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 RecommendationsChapter 7 Hyperlinks to Hot Leads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 The LinkedIn Profile: Additional Top Box Items Education Websites Public Profile URLChapter 8 Thats My Boy! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 The LinkedIn Profile: Summary and Specialties Sections The Summary Section SpecialtiesChapter 9 Not Your Average Joe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 The LinkedIn Profile: Must-Have Applications and Tools Box.net Files Google Presentation / SlideShare Amazons Reading List Events Giving (and Getting) AnswersChapter 10 Who Do You Want to Find? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Searching on LinkedIn Saved Searches

4. Contents ixChapter 11 I Found YouNow What Do I Do with You? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Contacting the Person You Just Found The Introduction FunctionChapter 12 Theres 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 Whos 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 ProfileChapter 14 How Do Companies Fit into the LinkedIn Landscape? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Researching Companies on LinkedIn and Other Company-Related Matters Social Media Policies and ProceduresChapter 15 Revving Up Your LinkedIn Efforts by Joining Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 The Power of LinkedIn Groups

5. x The Power Formula for LinkedIn SuccessChapter 16 Show Me the Money! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 What Are the Power Users Doing on LinkedIn?Chapter 17 Your Account, Your SettingsYour Way . . . . . 129 Setting Your Preferences and Using the LinkedIn Help Centers Paid vs. Free Accounts LinkedIn Learning Center and Customer Service CenterChapter 18 A Job Seekers New Best Friend . . . . . . . . . . . 135 LinkedInThe Worlds Largest Internet-Based Resume DatabaseChapter 19 Ready...Set...Go! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 A Six-Week, Two-Hour-per-Week Road Map to Results Weeks 1-6 Managing Your Time on LinkedInChapter 20 Conclusion (Or Is It Just the Beginning?) . . . . 153 Which Camp Are You In?Bonus My Kids Are Already on FacebookChapter Cant They Find a Job There? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Why College Students Need to Be on LinkedInAcknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

6. C h apt e r 1 2 Theres Gold in Them Thar Hills Expanding Your NetworkAs you can tell from previous chapters, the winner of the searchingaspect 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 youknow and trust, because when you add a new contact, you putyour extremely valuable network in his or her hands. Remember,it is your network. It is a possession you have worked your entirecareer to build, and when you add a connection on LinkedIn, it islike 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 least200 to 250 connections (muskie size), as opposed to the 20 or30 connections (minnow size) that the vast majority of LinkedInusers acquire. If you want your searches to be useful, you reallywant to consistently add connections. This chapter will show you

7. 88 The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success how to find new people to add, accept or decline the requests youll get, and gather interesting information about your expand- ing base of contacts. Once youve built your muskie-sized net, when you go fishing, youll 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 persons e-mail address, and then you can use LinkedIns 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 Id 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 LaurinoEdit My Profile Add Wayne to your network Forward this profile to a connection ors, where we have served the office and Linkedin Trainer Furniture

8. Theres Gold in Them Thar Hills 89Remember, you are adding this person to your group of trustedprofessionals. Therefore, you should add a personal touch to yourinvitation. Customizing the connection request will get you amuch higher response rate. Now I am going to show you how to add a lot of connectionsat the same time. Even if youre starting out with no contacts, youshould be able to get to 50 or 60 connections within three or fourdays by following the four steps that follow. If you currently have 30or 40 connections and follow these steps, you should get to over 100.Importing ContactsThe first step is to import contacts (see Figure 12.2). Click Con-tacts on the top toolbar. Then select Imported Contacts. Atthat point LinkedIn will be searching your entire database forcontacts. It searches Outlook by default, but it can do any otherdatabase or e-mail account, including ACT, GoldMine, Yahoo,Gmail, or even a simple Excel file with name and e-mail. LinkedInwill sift through the entries in your database, looking for e-mailaddresses that match those of people who are on LinkedIn. WhenFigure 12.2: Press the button and relax while LinkedIn findsconnections 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

9. 90 The Power Formula for LinkedIn Successits done searching, you will see the screen shown in Figure 12.3.What youre looking for is the little blue square that says in.That icon indicates the contacts in your database who are alreadyon LinkedIn. What do you think the odds are that they will wantto connect with you once you send them an invitation? Probablyclose to 100 percent. Check the boxes next to the names of the contacts you wantto connect with and click the button labeled Invite selected con-tacts. This will send a group invitation to the people you haveselected, and you will have to be fairly creative in crafting yourpersonalized 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 DoeFigure 12.3: Quickly connect with trusted professionals who arealready 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

10. Theres Gold in Them Thar Hills 91Connecting with ColleaguesThe second step to building your network is adding colleagues.Click Add Connections on the top right toolbar, and then click onColleagues (see Figure 12.4). LinkedIn will then take all the jobsyou have included in your profile and create a comprehensive listof the people on LinkedIn who were employed at those companiesduring your tenure (another benefit to listing all jobs you have had).If you perform this same search at a later time, the list will includeonly people who have been added since the last time you searched.Figure 12.4: Past and present colleagues can be extremely valuableconnections. 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 ClassmatesThe third step, connection with classmates, is funit will feel likeyoure on Facebook. Click Classmates (see Figure 12.5). Select aschool and the years you attended that school, and LinkedIn willgive you a list of all the people who said they attended this schoolduring the years you indicated. You will probably get quite a largenumber of potential connections, but if you say to yourself, Well,thats too many; thats going to take me too long to review, then I guess

11. 92 The Power Formula for LinkedIn Successyou dont really understand why you are even on LinkedIn. Ratherthan viewing this process as a hassle, treat your search for valuableconnections as if you were hunting treasuretell yourself, Theresgold in them thar hills. Your classmates present a tremendous oppor-tunity to make some important connections. These are people whowill remember you from your college days, and you will now be ableto tell them what you are up to today. Reconnecting with old friendsis fun, but it can also be very productive; some of your old drinkingbuddies may now be presidents of the companies with which youare trying to do business. Many others will likely have nice databasesof Number 1 connections, which could lead to great connections atthe 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 ToolbarThe fourth step is downloading the Outlook toolbar, which youcan get by clicking on Tools at the bottom of any LinkedInpage. Click Download it now in the Outlook Toolbar box (seeFigure 12.6). This will download a piece of software to your com-puter, which, going forward, will search all the e-mails you receive

12. Theres Gold in Them Thar Hills 93for contacts who are in the LinkedIn database. The program willalso tell you when people you have in your Outlook database joinLinkedIn. In addition, when you are writing an e-mail to a newcontact in Outlook, a pop-up box will tell you whether the recipi-ent is a LinkedIn member and how many connections he cur-rently hasand it will give you the option to add the person as aLinkedIn connection.Figure 12.6: The Outlook Toolbaryour virtual assistantlooks forpotential connections 24/7.People You May KnowOn your LinkedIn home page, youll see a box on the right labeledPeople You May Know (see Figure 12.7). LinkedIn has a specialformula for putting people in this section, and although they havenot revealed how it works, you will be amazed at the names youfind here. From my observation, these people typically fall intoone 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.

13. 94 The Power Formula for LinkedIn SuccessFigure 12.7: LinkedIn helps you find new connections. People You May Know Kristy Sears 2 nd Invitejob advice Apr 16 take action Owner - K & S Lawn Service, LLCReschedule Apr 13 take action Katie Henry 2 nd Invitetraining Apr 9 take action Systems AnalystEvent: Investment Conference-2nd... Apr 1 take actionendorse me? Mar 18 archive Gary Smith 2 nd Invite Lean Manufacturing Expertils (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 ofguys 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 DecliningConnection RequestsPeople frequently ask me what they should do when somebodythey dont know invites them to connect on LinkedIn. This willbegin to happen with greater frequency as you become more activeon LinkedIn, especially if you decide to join larger groups. Somepeople 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 seethe screen in Figure 12.8. Lets go through the six options youhave when responding to an invitation: Accept. The person will immediately become a first-degree1. connection.

14. Theres Gold in Them Thar Hills 95 Reply. People often overlook the option of using the Reply2. 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, lets make sure we connect and get to know each other better so we can join each others 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- ones 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 theyve done business with at Growth Capital: Archived Id like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. Trash - John Smith You are using the new Inbox. Send us feedback > Accept Ignore

15. 96 The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success Ignore. The invitation will be put into the archive file and5. marked Ignore. Before deciding to ignore an invitation, follow the same procedure that I suggested for archiving invitations: Check out the persons profile to determine whether there might be a reason to meet him or her. After selecting Ignore, you will have two additional options I dont 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 this6. 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 CompetitorsOne question that comes up quite frequently is, Would you letcompetitors be connected to you at the first level? My immedi-ate response is No! It does not make good business sense toallow your competitors to have a list of the people who are mostimportant to you. You are basically handing them your Outlookdatabase. There are, however, certain industries in which yourcompetitors may also be your suppliers or vendors, and you willneed to weigh the risk and reward of allowing those individuals tobe part of your network. One of the few times I used the I dont know them optionwas when one of my direct competitors, whom I had never met,attempted to connect with me on LinkedIn. There was no wayI was going to give her access to the network I have worked sohard to develop over the course of my lifetime. So I promptly

16. Theres Gold in Them Thar Hills 97told LinkedIn I dont know her. Something tells me she was notsurprised by my response.Monitoring Your Growing NetworkOnce youve started to build your LinkedIn network, you caneasily keep track of the number of new people added to yournetwork since a certain date. Select Contacts on the top tool-bar and then Network Statistics to view information aboutyour total number of connections (see Figure 12.9). You will beamazed at how quickly you continue to add people to your net-work, not only at the first level but also at the second and thirdlevels. You will find a summary of this information on the rightside of your home page. I typically pick up about 8,500 peopleper day. Although I am not aware of the names of these peopleor who in my network has connected with them, I do know Iam 8,500 people closer to finding that million-cubicle job thanI was yesterday. Even when I am at the beach or hiking in theRocky Mountains, I am adding about 8,500 people per day tomy network. Now doesnt that bring new meaning to the word vacation! And there is no question in my mind that one day theseconnections will pay off in a big way.Figure 12.9: You will be amazed by how quickly your network grows.

17. 98 The Power Formula for LinkedIn SuccessTagsOnce youve got all these connections, youll want to use tags tosort them for easy reference. LinkedIn defines tags as simple key-words that you can create to organize your connections for quickfiltering on LinkedIn. To use this feature, go to Contacts on thetop 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 thisfeature, you will find more ways to use tags to help you organizeyour network, which can save you time when you need to locateor contact a particular person or group within your network.Whos Viewed My Profile?LinkedIn also allows users to see how many people are looking attheir profile with the Whos Viewed My Profile? feature, whichyoull find in the column on the right side of the LinkedIn homepage (see Figure 12.10). This is an interesting box to click on fromtime to time, but dont expect to see the name of the person wholooked at your profile. You may instead see any of the follow-ing information about the person: job title, type of company orindustry, company name, or location. From this information, youcan sometimes guess who viewed your profile and perhaps may beinterested in meeting you. The Whos Viewed My Profile? section can also help youidentify whether you are increasing your activity and presence onLinkedIn; it will display information like Your profile has beenviewed by 22 people in the last 3 days. Yesterday, you appearedin search results 7 times. As with all networking, increasing your

18. Theres Gold in Them Thar Hills 99activity has the potential to increase relationships, which may leadto increased business.Figure 12.10: More looks at your profile should create more businessopportunities. Whos 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 chapterwill enable you to quickly add a large number of connections.Youll be on your way to building that big muskie net, so thatwhen you search for new contacts, you will have plenty of peopleto 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 its well worth the effort. Every one of your unique relationships gives you lots of Number 2s and 3s, 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.

19. The Power Formula forLinkedInSuccessfree 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