This Powerpoint presentation provides a baseline for users of the social network site to get a relatively good idea of how to increase the profile status, promote personal branding, and to assist in career and job searches, as well as building their marketing brand for themselves or their company.

1. LinkedIn – Introduction / Networking

4. Get Started…sign into / set up… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Use an e-mail that will be ‘permanent’ for all your communications via LinkedIn for business contacts, job searches, client/customer POC’s, etc.

5. Get Started…explore… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Scroll down and you see more – you’ll see notifications of activities, and ‘applications’ on the right-hand side, which allows you to share your ‘wealth of knowledge’ with others by providing feedback or answers to their questions or information sharing.

6. Get Started…explore… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Scroll further down and there’s even more! If you are a member of a group (or many) within LinkedIn, you can see what type of activity is going on, without having to go to each groups’ page on LinkedIn to review them one by one (good if multiple group memberships).

7. Get Started…explore… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved These screens shots are from a ‘not a lot of bells and whistles’ profile level, but there is still plenty you can do with the basic profile. Interested in finding out the answer or surveying folks about a curiosity question? Post a “Poll” and see what folks think. Let your mouse curser ‘hover’ over a link to a member’s profile and you will instantly be able to get a snapshot of their background, interests, or even company name.

8. Get Started…explore… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved As the owner of your profile, you can click on “Profile” in the tabs at the top and look at your profile as others see it or edit it to update your information as often as you wish. Ensure the information you wish to post is: a) professional, b) useful to others, and c) and ensures they can reach you without having to use the ‘limited’ number of ‘contact this user’ or ‘send an in-mail to this profile,’ (doled out by LinkedIn in small amounts based on profile user level).

9. Get Started…completing the profile 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved NOTHING is more important than a complete PROFILE when practicing Social Networking. If you are only half-heartedly putting information into the profile and leave it incomplete or so short on information, it will be evident you are using this social network as a placeholder – which portrays someone who isn’t investing in the potential of the medium and the tool.

10. Get Started…completing the profile 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Several social media sites, will offer a percentage of completion of the bar chart (see above, right hand side, about half way down the graphic screen shot). Those who complete at least 75% of their profile entice viewers to linger a little longer to learn more about you .

11. Get Started…completing the profile 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved In the screen shot above– you can learn about the profile owner, his/her business, and on the right hand side recent activity: who’s linked with them recently, what questions & answers they’ve been busy with, as well as recommendations provided by those linked to the profile owner.

12. Get Started…adding applications… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved An expertly completed profile may have applications attached that ‘create an interactivity’ that makes Web 2.0 what it is today – two-way communications at the touch of a button or mouse or keyboard key. Set up a poll, which asks questions that gets attention. Use this as a marketing tool to target the customers who want to know what others think, also. Set up a Twitter Feed – so folks can see what’s coming and going. Set up your Blog for ‘snapshot’ viewing.

13. Get Started…adding applications… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved SlideShare allows you to share presentations (for viewing only or download by viewers); what a way to store presentations on the web (for free) and never have to worry about losing or forgetting to take a file!).

14. Get Started…crowing about yourself 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved The Experience piece of any social networking profile is the “RESUME” upon which you are expounding your experience, your skills, your UNIQUE skill set or business model and why it’s different from EVERY OTHER person out there in the universe. What makes you special? What sets you apart from every one else? What makes your business more desirable than the competition? Do not list ‘tasks’ and responsibilities’ The BEST written resume has a list of ‘accomplishments you have achieved for your past employers or clients. Those accomplishments should have metrics, statistics, and numbers which make you look like you ARE the expert, the subject matter expert, the go-to person, or potential new employee to help solve a problem they may have.

15. Get Started…crowing about yourself 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Below that, post information that adds to your credibility – your education, training, certifications – AND MOST IMPORTANT – your recommendations from folks with which you have done business, or know, or have interacted with and with whom you are connected on LinkedIn. These recommendations are the Cherry on Top of the Banana Split If these folks have credibility in the business world, and provide you with credibility, and the more recommendations you have, with folks who can be reached for comment via LinkedIn, without having to actually speak with you, it provides them a valid means of getting unbiased (hopefully) referrals.

16. Get Started…Twitter about yourself 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Further down you can add Twitter account profile links to folks can add you to their ‘following’, as well as your list of interests so if they wish to entice you with their products. This tells reviewers you are socially savvy and technologically capable, plus more.

17. Get Started…Mingle with others in Groups and have conversations 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Groups you join will list near bottom of your profile. You may “join” up to 50 Groups, but the number of “Sub-Groups” you can join are unlimited (now). You may also create a Group, and solicit those who may share interests with you to join (free!). Check the groups often for posted jobs, discussions that are ongoing (and follow responses), as well as making announcements about events, notices, items of interest, etc., (be careful of making it sound like spam, though).

19. Avoiding Spammers and Phishing… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Drive viewers to your website with a phone number BUT… Use symbols in e-mail addresses for (all) social networking sites: MonsterClean1(at)mac.com, with brackets as a symbol for the @ sign. A human will understand the symbol, but ‘bots’ won’t - will reject the parentheses/brackets as part of HTML coding in website.

20. Add Connections… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved The biggest marketing piece about LinkedIn is how many ‘connections’ to which you can link. WARNING : You are ALLOWED A MAXIMUM OF 3,000 invites per profile in LinkedIn. Use those wisely - encourage others to send you invitations (using theirs up first versus you using up your allotment). SECRET #1 : You may request more invites, and may be granted up to 150 per ‘grant’ via the Customer Service (see link at bottom of website page) . SECRET #2 : Create a second or third profile with different e-mail addresses to take advantage of the availability of the number of invites allowed per profile. SECRET #3 : If you have a business, and business e-mail (e.g., Jane.Doe@handycrafts.com), create a business profile to send out even more invitations.

21. Collecting Connections… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Adding / inviting connections is simple – click on the “ADD CONNECTIONS” link on top right hand side of this page. This feature allows you to enter e-mail addresses individually, or upload from an excel spreadsheet or word document.

22. Adding Connections… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Adding / inviting connections is simple – click on the “ADD CONNECTIONS” link on top right hand side of this page. This allows you to enter e-mail addresses individually, copy and pasted from an excel spreadsheet or word document.

23. Adding Connections… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved OR… import contacts from your Google, Yahoo, AOL, or other address book by entering your user name and passwords temporarily (deleted once the address books are downloaded; LinkedIn does not retain the information; their programmers/employees are unable to access this password information).

24. Adding Connections… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved If you have sent invitations to folks, and they have never answered, never accepted the invitations, you can ‘get those invites back’ so you can reuse them. Easiest method: Contact the programmers at LinkedIn and request they go into to your profile account and delete all ‘unanswered’ invites. The LinkedIn Customer Service Reps will take those unanswered invites and delete them, thereby giving them back to you to reuse.

25. Find Acquaintances… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved If you have posted ‘past employers’ and/or ‘educational institutions’ and others have added those employers or schools to their profiles, “COLLEGUES” and/or “CLASSMATES” enables connections. Click on the link and if you know the person, you can ‘contact’ peers to connect with them.

26. Joining Groups… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Below is the “Groups” Page. This is another important facet of getting folks to find you, getting to know you, and getting others to pay attention to your opinions, advice, personal commentary, etc. What you say here is going to be posted out on LinkedIn, as well as RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds to those who subscribe to the group on LinkedIn.

27. Joining Groups… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved This is also an excellent springboard to find information others (as well as Subject Matter Experts – SME’s) are willing to provide you for ‘FREE.’ This is parallel to asking for bookkeeping advice on one question and getting fifty expert bookkeepers answering your question for ‘FREE.’ If you are seeking ideas for a solution to a business problems, it’s equivalent to asking several dozen SCORE reps from the local Small Business Administration or Chamber of Commerce for advice, and getting the answers - while you are still at home in your pajamas sitting at the computer.

28. Getting to the Groups… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Click on “FIND A GROUP” in the upper, right-hand side of the Groups Page, which leads you to a query engine to find the group with a similar interest to your industry, business, social, or personal interests. Some Groups will need to have your membership application ‘approved’ by a group manager, and others have ‘open approval’ which means anyone can join.

29. Joining Groups… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Click on “JOIN THIS GROUP;” the following box will pop up; you can find the specifics you can toggle on and off for your notifications from the group. Search for a name or key word… Results…click on “Join this group”

30. Joining Groups… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Be sure to choose daily or weekly digest e-mails based on daily or once-a-week announcements. Each group provides an option of choosing the type of communications to your in-box.

31. Group Discussions… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved The posts provided by LinkedIn members in Group Discussion threads – current or past – is rich in information you can ‘data-mine’ for use for your own business ideas or just brushing up on new ideas.

32. Group Discussions… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved For example if you are in business development and/or marketing, a member in the Networking Pros Group asked a question, requesting comments and feedback on his/her ideas. Who knows – someone might make a comment that sparks a proverbial light bulb turning on! (Those of you in MLM or Network Marketing should be interested in his discussion comments and those who come back with answers.)

33. Finding Jobs or Clients… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Most business entrepreneurs who are marketing and performing public relations for their business won’t necessarily need to ‘look for a job’ – BUT this part of LinkedIn might provide you leads to “folks who know folks” who might purchase your business services or products. Don’t overlook something that might take a few more steps to pull up some information, but might prove very productive in your search for new clients and customers.

34. Finding Jobs or Clients… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved If you are seeking employment, this is a wonderful ‘added value’ for job searching, in addition to your profile on LinkedIn, for which many recruiters do queries on key skill words in profiles.

35. Who’s Viewing my Resume?… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Proof is in the pudding – the following slide is notifications of downloads from box.net (that weren’t deleted from mailbox already) of files uploaded by profile owner into the application (app) via LinkedIn. You will get auto-notices via e-mail - when someone uploads a file – albeit anonymously – so you don’t exactly know who did it. BUT - you do know there is interest in your resume and background, knowledge, skills, and other factors of interest.

36. Who’s Viewing my Resume/Files?… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved

37. E-mail Communications… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved You can read messages from other LinkedIn members, read invitations to join connections, read requests for connections, message forwarding, and answers to questions you have posted.

38. E-mail Communications… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved The three tabs allow you to see ‘incoming’ mail, ‘sent’ mail, and ‘archived’ mail messages. Once you have read a message you may ‘archive’ it so you don’t have to see it every time you go into your in-box to read new messages. A simple way to archive read messages is to toggle an “X” in the box to the left of the message, then click on “ARCHIVE” (not shown in this graphic because it’s the sent message queue). Messages will be saved to another ‘page view.’

39. Becoming a SME on LinkedIn… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Nothing gets peoples attention faster than ‘FREE,’ valuable advice from a creditable source. LinkedIn allows profile owners to ask questions and answer other’s questions. The graphic (next page) illustrates how you can ask a question of others (or experts) on LinkedIn by starting on the question page.

40. Becoming a SME on LinkedIn… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Once you decide to ask a question, you will be pushed to the question page (graphic) where you can “TARGET” the question to an audience most likely to answer your specific question or where experts are most likely to see the question and have an interest in providing valuable and important advice. Be sure to post a question that will ‘intrigue’ the readers with curiosity.

41. Becoming a SME on LinkedIn… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved The questions will be ‘POSTED’ online on thousands of folks “home-pages” with applications set up to allow questions posted under these categories to show so they may quickly review and decide if they are interested in providing answers.

42. Becoming a SME on LinkedIn… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved The questions will show up on your profile Q&A page, as well as the number of questions you have answered, and which (or how many) were voted as “BEST ANSWERS” by others.

45. Entice Others Seek You as a SME… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Use the following techniques to “VIRALLY” build a profile: Answer questions – but don’t get too wordy, emotional, or political. LinkedIn will only allow a pre-set number of characters in the answer box. This is usually equivalent to a one-page, double-spaced line, amount of text. Leave enough text characters for your informational ‘signature.’ Create a mini-advertisement ‘signature’ to copy and paste into the end of every single question you answer in LinkedIn – create a ‘standard.’ Ensure your e-mail is visible and easy to copy and paste into the invite field. Make sure folks know what business services you offer or what you do, sell, or produce. If you have a poll posted on LinkedIn, or even elsewhere, advertise it! Post notices about your blogs and other websites, advertise it!

46. Make Others Seek You as a SME… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Sample “Signature” at the bottom of Answers to Questions: I accept all LinkedIn Invitations: Dawn.Boyer(at)me.com Currently providing Human Resources consulting to small businesses, including startup defense companies, in the Hampton Roads, VA area.

47. Make Others Seek You as a SME… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved ALWAYS enter your business website and your LinkedIn website into one to three of the available website fields under your answer. ALWAYS provide a “PRIVATE MESSAGE” to the questioner with whatever follow-up action you may want them to provide you – a phone call, an e-mail (direct), a name or other private information, or a request for a Vote for Best Answer when the question finally closes. (See next slide for sample)

48. Make Others Seek You as a SME… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved

49. Get YOUR PROFILE Under Other’s Noses… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved NETWORK UPDATES: Just like FaceBook and MySpace, there is a field in which you can enter a limited number of characters for current events or news-feeds. LI allows 140+ characters, but only 140 will shoot out to a Twitter-feed. Use this to announce (Twitter-like) your current status, instant questions, comments on anything of interest to you or others, or announce a sale, or important message. These can be changed every second of the day, and what is interesting, once they are changed, daily or weekly announcement to network updates go out. Your message will be posted for ALL your network connections on your activities.

50. Get Your Profile Under Other’s Noses and Before Their Eyes… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved NETWORK UPDATES:

51. Using the Home Page to Keep Current with Events… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved The Home Page also provides you with updates on who has been active or updating information within your network of connections, as well as sending you a notification on a daily, or weekly, basis. The graphics on the next page shows an emailed LinkedIn Network update (message) via a Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feed.

52. Using the Home Page to Keep Current with Events… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved

53. HOW ELSE TO GET YOUR NAME ‘OUT THERE’ in LINKED IN… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Reading Lists: Reading a book? Then let the world know about it - provide a review…

54. HOW ELSE TO GET YOUR NAME ‘OUT THERE’ in LINKED IN… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved … and at the bottom of that review let readers know you accept LinkedIn invites; you are in business (who/what/how/where), and ask for the reader to view something, answer a question, look at something – ask for an action – which will make your name stick in their memory.

55. Final Note on LINKED IN… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved This, or any, social networking tool is only worth the energy, time, and effort you put into it. If you are going to use it as a valid networking tool as a means to do business - use it wisely, use it professionally, and work the connections by offering to help others in their endeavors before you ask them to do business with you. Create a professionally written profile, upload a professional photo of yourself, and concentrate on business discussions and communications.

56. Final Note on LINKED IN… 06/26/10 D. Boyer Consulting, 2010, All Rights Reserved Dawn Boyer is a doctoral student at Old Dominion University in the Darden College of Education, working on her PhD in Occupational Studies and Technology), as well as working as a (Doctoral) Graduate Teaching Assistant teaching computer science and technology to undergraduate students. Ms. Boyer has over 20 years of senior management experience in human resources, nine years in the defense-contracting arena. She also provides HR consulting services via D. Boyer Consulting to small businesses, including dynamically growing 8(a) defense companies, in Hampton Roads, VA. Her LinkedIn profile is: http://www.linkedin.com/in/DawnBoyer . She accepts all LinkedIn invites via: [email_address] . Join her 4,700+ connections! Her blogs are located at: http://www.bloglines.com/blog/DawnBoyer and http://DawnBoyer.wordpress.com .