LinkedIn

If you’re overlooking LinkedIn, your business is ignoring the second-largest social network. That’s right, some data suggests that LinkedIn actually has more dedicated users than Twitter. Whether you are seeking introductions to decision makers or more clients for your business, LinkedIn can help you get there, but only if you use it right. Overhaul your LinkedIn…

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Of all the underrated tools on the web, Slideshare is one of the biggest examples. For many who are hoping to promote, it is last on the list of helpful social dashboards. Yet, it offers a unique and effective way to increase the power of your social brand. The lack of oversaturation means your chances…

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Everything you put online should have some kind of brand-specific purpose. Even if it didn’t when you created it, it damn well better have it by the time you publish. At first glance, that might sound like cynical advice. It may also appear to fly in the face on conventional wisdom, that all content should…

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Slideshare has become a staple of content creation in recent years. The ability to impart information quickly, in a visual way that appeals to how humans think and recall that information, is fantastic. Where slideshow presentations used to be a tool with a limited user base, it can now be used by anyone, for anything….

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Content repackaging is the number one content strategy that not enough people are using. I know this, because I have too many fellow bloggers, marketers and website owners who have never even tried it. Instead, they constantly beat their heads against the wall as they try to come up with fresh content constantly. But our…

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Creating the perfect SlideShare slide is more than a skill, it is an art. Your goal is to make sure every slide is crafted just the right way because the whole of the presentation depends on the strength of its parts. Breaking down SlideShare slides, you can start to find a winning formula that will help…

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Slideshare is the largest Powerpoint sharing community on the web, but it is so much more than that. It is also a social network, and a platform for marketing visual content in many different forms – which means Slideshare an essential part of a solid social media strategy. Presentations can be both hosted and noticed there,…

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Last month I was sharing some Slideshare content ideas including re-packaging screenshots, collecting quotes, curating content and re-using your presentations from events you are visiting. This time let’s share some tools that will make a presentation creation a breeze! First of all, a few words about PowerPoint which I am not including into the list…

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Slideshare is a great (content) marketing platform but since it’s mostly about sharing presentations, many people shy away from marketing there. I am starting Slideshare series here, at Maximize Social Business, giving you lots of tips on how to quite easily add Slideshare to your content marketing plan and even become a superstar there. Yes,…

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It’s been a few months since I wrote my popular Professional LinkedIn Profile Tips: A Checklist of 17 Must-Have Items post, and since we have all seen the growing importance of visual social media, I wanted to offer the Maximize Social Business readers an easy way to compare their own profile with what I call the…

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LinkedIn continues to evolve at a fast pace – but is your profile still stuck in pre-2013 times? I’ve blogged about LinkedIn profile mistakes as well as LinkedIn profile inbound marketing tips. It’s time to provide you all an update aligned with all of LinkedIn’s changes to help you create the perfect professional LinkedIn profile. Consider…

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Having written two books on LinkedIn, I naturally get asked for my opinion every time LinkedIn adds new, or deletes old, functionality. But instead of writing this post about what I think about LinkedIn discontinuing LinkedIn Answers, I wanted to instead tell you how I respond to all change in social media. And while I…

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Considering that LinkedIn profiles are the most viewed pages on LinkedIn, and your profile page really is every professional’s starting place to claim and create their own professional brand, you should be regularly reviewing your LinkedIn profile to see how you can optimize it with every user interface change. With that in mind, here are…

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I always say that LinkedIn Groups are the biggest public forums for professionals on the Internet, because they are! Where else can you find more than one million groups, with the largest one “Job Openings, Job Leads, and Job Connections!” having more than 900,000 members! The potential for professional networking – and developing business –…

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I was recently interviewed by Haydn Shaughnessy of Forbes for the article “How to Power Your Professional Networking Through LinkedIn.” Haydn did an excellent job of interviewing me by posting questions that others have never asked, and therefore I provided advice there that I have never provided anywhere else. Make sure you check out the…

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Due to the professional demographic of LinkedIn, it’s only a matter of time before more businesses leverage the professional opportunities available by searching for products and services through LinkedIn Company Pages.  It is in every business owner’s best interest to ensure that his or her company be found prominently in the Company search results when…

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Once you move beyond the generic “add connections” option that LinkedIn has, you might want to specifically search for and increase your connections with people aligned with whatever connection policy you might have.  The challenge is that restrictions exist within LinkedIn that may prevent you from inviting others you don’t personally know.  You are entitled…

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Your LinkedIn profile is the public-facing summary of who you are, what you represent, what your professional history is, and your area of expertise.  In essence, your profile is a snapshot of the brand you are sharing with the entire world. It’s only natural, then, that increasing the Inbound Marketing potential of our profile can…

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Successful social media marketing is about knowing where your customers are and establishing a presence there.  It is clear that professionals from all demographics are spending a great deal of time with social media, and that Facebook is the main networking site where we spend (or rather, waste) our time.  However, simply because many people…

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In consulting with businesses on their social media strategy, I often use success stories from LinkedIn’s own blog to illustrate how business can be developed on LinkedIn.  I also talk about my own success story, which is included in full detail in my new LinkedIn marketing book, and summarized as follows: As my job involves staying abreast…

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Want to buy Facebook fans? Why not buy some Twitter followers to boot? There are companies that you can actually pay money to to achieve this. Nw there are companies not only selling LinkedIn connections, but also saying if you use them to create a LinkedIn Group, they will make sure it gets filled with…

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While recent social media conversations tend to be about Facebook and Twitter, I find that many professionals and businesses aren’t maximizing their LinkedIn presence.  There are many that simply don’t know what else they can be doing on the platform, while others still believe in some of the many common fallacies about the social networking…

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LinkedIn, like any other social media channel, is a social networking platform.  This means that people are networking with each other while revealing who they are and what they do.  LinkedIn reminds you to do this when you log in by making sure your profile is 100% complete.  Part of getting to 100% completion is…

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Why is my LinkedIn account restricted? No, that is not a question that I personally asked recently, but one asked by someone in my network.  This is someone who is not a spammer, not even involved in marketing, and generally keeps a low profile on the social networking site.  This person is also not a…

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As you get more comfortable with using LinkedIn, the day may come when you start connecting with other professionals that you may not know very well.  I am not referring to becoming a LinkedIn LION or open networker, but connecting with people that you may have had a chance to meet at a networking event…

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LinkedIn is a very interesting social networking site.  Many users say they only want to connect with people in their closed network, but unless that network is big enough, the benefits of using LinkedIn to find and be found become minimal.  On the other hand, I find many users who don’t care about acquiring LinkedIn…

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If you looked at 10 different LinkedIn profiles, you might see 10 different ways in which people have entered their details.  For a social networking platform that is trying to standardize the way people depict themselves with their “xxx% profile completeness” status that appears when you edit your profile, the results have been surprisingly across…

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LinkedIn has been around for many years now, and maybe some of you created an account in the early days of 2004 like I did and just forgot about it, including the password.  Then, later on you created a second account.  Or maybe you used your business email as your primary email address and no…

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If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will soon: the dreaded request for a LinkedIn Recommendation from a former co-worker or employee that you may not want to give one to.  Why?  Well, every time you make a recommendation, it appears on your profile and becomes part of your LinkedIn Brand.  Perhaps you don’t…

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We need to start watching our manners on LinkedIn.  There are a lot of people who are clearly irritated by the actions of some of us LinkedIn users.  You may not be guilty of “poor etiquette,” but keep reading to make sure! A few months ago I blogged about what my favorite LinkedIn pet peeves…

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I attended a great local networking event last night in my local Orange County, California.  There were many people who I had communicated with on Twitter and finally had the chance to meet…the feeling was almost like seeing long lost friends!  I will save Tweetups for another blog post, because what interested me last night were…

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Come on, I don’t really want you to write me one, but there has been unprecedented chatter about LinkedIn recommendations in blogging circles these days.  And I want to put everything in perspective to confirm whether or not LinkedIn recommendations really have value. It was Jeremiah Owyang who started the debate.  Jeremiah is a renowned web…

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There are many resources on the web for finding people to follow on Twitter.  Just do a search for any particular type of person you want to follow (student entrepreneurs? job seeker advice? etc.) and chances are you will find a list.  But why none for LinkedIn?  Well, just as I have been the first…

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After networking with several great people over the last several days, which have in essence been conversations that seem more like a veritable cross-breeding of ideas, I believe that more and more people are starting to see the potential value of meeting new people on LinkedIn. Now, just because you are open to doing this…

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LinkedIn Introductions are an integral part of the social networking platform.  After all, LinkedIn has given us the ability to search for someone and see how we are connected to them, and it is with this information that we can request an Introduction from our connection just as we request a referral from a friend…

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As more businesses realize the potential for finding new business on LinkedIn, I am amazed as to how companies are starting to look at social media as if it gives them the right to cold call and send what I would consider spam to anyone and everyone in LinkedIn.  I wanted to go through some…

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I hope the title of this blog post did not shock you.  No, I am not trying to sell you anything.  But this is the question I have been asked twice now in the last month from a gentleman who is apparently living in Bulgaria. I was first contacted on May 22 and offered a…

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I have seen a growing interest in LinkedIn Groups from my networking contacts recently, and in addition to the common questions of What LinkedIn Groups Should I Join? and How to Use LinkedIn Groups Effectively?, there is a growing interest as to what the proper etiquette and best practices should be after joining a group….

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This is actually a follow-up to a post I did recently on Are There Fake Profiles on LinkedIn? At that time I found proof of a few users with fake profiles that I shared with everyone.  And I mentioned that those with fake profiles would create new ways of making us believe that they are…

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LinkedIn, as you already know, is a social networking platform for professionals.  It is no secret, then, that there is business to be found on LinkedIn for companies of many sizes and industries.  If you are a small business owner, you may be confused as to whether you should use your company name or personal…

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I have had the opportunity to engage with many lawyers recently, both in person as well as online through LinkedIn, and the sudden interest in social media that they seem to have has been surprising to me.  I had always envisioned the legal profession as more of an old-school, conservative group of people that would…

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I recently did a Twitter Chat for #smbiz on tips for utilizing LinkedIn for small business.  You can find out more about what we discussed here, but since then I have been contacted by small businesses looking for advice on how to utilize LinkedIn. I decided to answer this particular question on my blog because…

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I just got asked this from an old friend from elementary school (!), who I have been able to keep in better touch with thanks to Social Media, Facebook in particular.  He, like many others, wonders what the real value in LinkedIn Recommendations are when there are a lot of  “if your rub my back,…

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I had dinner last night with a publicly elected official from a large American city.  I was impressed with his understanding of Social Media, and he had already created and implemented a strategy to utilize Facebook for political purposes.  But what about LinkedIn? LinkedIn is still seen as being a boring, static medium when compared,…

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I was a little confused when I received this question recently from a former colleague.  I mean, LinkedIn is really about getting plugged-in to a huge database of professionals.  Why would you want to be part of this huge network but not want anyone to see your profile?  I suppose that for some, the ability…

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I recently received this question and realized that there weren’t a lot of resources out there for soon-to-be-professionals to look for in terms of creating an optimal LinkedIn profile.  I also believe that any college student that is on LinkedIn is to be commended for staying “ahead of the curve”, so here is my advice…

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Need to Remove a LinkedIn Connection? On Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, it is very easy to “unfriend” someone. For some reason it is very difficult to figure out how to remove a LinkedIn connection. If you think about it, LinkedIn was originally intended to be a social network for professionals who only connected…

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Social media changes a lot. Some functionality is here today gone tomorrow. Your LinkedIn account might face restrictions today but I might never. Below is an incident detailing one of those incidents that happened to me several years ago but serves as an example of the never-ending changes that occur in social. The problem is…

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The timing of my blog posts concerning monetizing your LinkedIn connections has to be coincidental, but yesterday, for the first time, I received an email (which was probably sent out to all of this person’s LinkedIn connections) which was an offering, in essence, to sell his LinkedIn account.

I started out on LinkedIn not knowing anything about it, gradually starting my network by connecting with past colleagues and classmates and then expanding my connections to include those with similar interests and open networking ideas.  When I first hit the 3,000 invitation limit, I was shocked that there was a definitive number put on…

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Just got this question from a new member of my LinkedIn network today, so I thought I would share my answer with everyone. If you have something you want to tell everyone, or something that you want to sell, it makes sense that you want to go beyond your first level network to the millions…

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Just as everyone has a good book that they could write, everyone has a good LinkedIn group that they can create. I am a believer that everyone has a niche that they have special expertise in, and thus you can argue that everyone should have their own LinkedIn group.  For whatever reason you are on…

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If you are reading this you hopefully already have a presence on LinkedIn, but maybe you are not as active as you should be.  Confused as to why you need to join and use LinkedIn?  Well, if you are a professional, there are many reasons why you at least need to join LinkedIn and should…

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As I mentioned in previous posts, LinkedIn Groups allow you to be virtually connected to a number of people that share the same interest.  The largest groups have membership in the millions. If you join a group, you will be able to directly send an E-Mail as well as invite, without knowing the E-Mail address of,…

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Back in August 4, 2009, LinkedIn for the first time placed a restriction on the number of LinkedIn Groups once can join.  The official E-Mail that I received at the time looked like this: “We are in the process of adding new functionality to enhance the experience of Groups, including the recent release of a searchable…

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I recently got asked about how to manage LinkedIn invitations which bounced.  Yes, sometimes those precious invites that you send out do not get to their intended recepient because either 1) they changed companies/email addresses and never bothered to update their LinkedIn profile, 2) the e-mail address that they have in their profile is misspelled…

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I recently got asked this question about how to connect with Barack Obama on LinkedIn, and because I had a little trouble doing so myself, I thought I would let anyone know who wants to get connected with him on LinkedIn how I did so.  Whether you agree with Barack Obama’s policies or not, according…

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When you open an account at LinkedIn, the default setting is that your connections can be viewed by anyone.  I used to have my connections open, until one day when I was doing some searching in a particular industry for companies to work, I noticed that all of the salespeople had decided to hide their…

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As I mentioned in my “What is a LinkedIn IDK – I Don’t Know This Person?” post, once you reach the LinkedIn IDK threshold of 5 IDKs, your account will be restricted in that you will need to enter an E-Mail address each time you try adding new people to your network.  If you are…

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Assuming that you understand what a LinkedIn Open Networker means from my “What is a LinkedIn LION?” post, and you want to use this terminology in your profile to increase your network as I mentioned in my “How Do I Grow My LinkedIn Network?” post, the next logical question you may have is “How Do…

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When you invite someone to connect with you on LinkedIn or receive an invite from someone, the recipient has a choice of accepting the invite or simply archiving the invite without performing any action.  If the invite is accepted, the two of you become immediately connected.  If the invite is archived, you can always accept…

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What is a LinkedIn LION? LION, in the LinkedIn world, stands for Linked In Open Networker. LIONs are basically open to networking with people that they have never met before, and they are important in the fact that they bridge networks of closed people.  If we all follow the standard rule of LinkedIn and say…

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‘ Everytime someone invites me to connect with them, I always send out a reply thanking them and also asking them to contact me should they ever need any help with LinkedIn.  I have had so many people, either directly or indirectly, help me that I thought I should give something back to the community. …

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