Sacred Cow Dung

An amazing compilation Christian. Lots to consider here and a generous sharing of great ideas.
Des

Cheat # 17: ALWAYS COME BEARING GIFTS

Cheater Principle: "Pay it forward"

Anytime you approach someone, give them something of value

• Advice
• Useful Links to Others
• Relevant blog entries

While it can be in the body of the request, it can also be in a PS or even in your signature

Cheat # 18: TWEAK YOU EMAIL SIGNATURE FOR YOUR PURPOSES

Cheater Principle: "Never pass on an opportunty to promote"

Review your email signature to make sure it includes things that may work for your purposes

• complete contact info (including email address)
• your websites or blogs
• Relevant blog entries you want known

Most email clients support this feature. You can usually construct them within the email client itself or using external applications from tools such as Plaxo and even LinkedIn has just rolled out a nice tool for email signature generation.  It is probably best to use these as a starter and modify the resulting code to customize yours to better serve your purposes with any simple WYSIWYG html editor.  If you don’t know what that is don’t worry — we are talking simple “cut and paste” and a bit of typing to adjust things.  Signatures should not be too complicated and don’t overdo it with graphics and fancy code as many email clients won’t handle them well — and you don’t want to trigger anti-spam and anti-virus filters or you may be sabotaging your efforts to communicate effectively.

If you are looking for more discussion on LinkedIn, be sure to join the LinkedIn Innovators Yahoo discussion group.

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/LinkedInnovators/

Hello Christian,
thanks for pointing me out to this cheatsheet.. :-))
your advice is quite useful, and I'll try and rework my website to accomodate some of your tips.

Another cheat for you..
"Always have a multilingual website"
It helps immensely with search engines. To this day, my Dutch language pages come up higher than my english pages on Google.

Have a good day, Arun

CHEAT #14: RETHINK YOUR OWN WEBSITES AND BLOGS

If others need help with this, design or SEO just let me know! :-)

Thanks Chris for the "wealth" of info here!

Cheers!

Sean Cook, MBA/TM
Founder/CEO: Salyris Studios
www.salyris.com
sean@salyris.com
W: 503-913-6564
H/F: 503-760-1097

Good stuff Christian.

Cheat # 19: FOLLOW UP

Cheater Principle: "Following up is what makes networking work"

This is not just responding to new emails or requests when your recieve them, this is a deliberate attempt to start a relationship. Follow-up is the ongoing communication you will have with your contacts. In this respects an objective is necessary to ensure your correspondence doesn't become a waste of time for both you and the person you are networking with. This type of communication requires putting reminders in your calendar to circle back on previous conversations or pick up topics at appropriate times. It also has the more important result of keeping you top of mind with your contacts. Something that is becoming increasingly difficult in our cluttered networing world.

Some good information there Christian. Would like to point out that your ecademy/empire analogy is out of date.

They now operate more like a totalitarian regime. They have a jail system you can't appeal against (and which you aren't allowed to mention, if jailed).

They promote themselves as a community, yet the leaders act like judge and jury when it suits them. Many people have been kicked off ecademy for petty disagreements with Thomas and Penny Power.

Beware.

Ste

http://ecadeblog.blogspot.com/

Perhaps you are able to suggest a cheat on how to send requests?

If a request can go through someone you know personally, or through a superconnector hub you have never spoke to - which should you choose?

Cheater's Never Win?

Chris, I really like this post (mostly). It shows your typical thorough, diligent, well-thought-out approach. I really love that. Also it explains a lot of things that most LinkedIn neophytes don't seem to get. I often have to explain the value to people.

I have two quotes that seem to sum up LinkedIn pretty well.

     - It's not what you know, it's who you know.

     - A wise man knows everything, a shrewd one, everybody. - Anonymous

Here are my observations about your post:

1 - Cheaters Never Win? -

A rose by any other name does not smell quite as sweet. How about the using the term "Maximizers"? I realize you are probably using the term Cheaters to grab attention, but ...

2 - Promiscuous Linking

I am definitely *against* promiscuous linking. I understand your rationale, but it does not work for me.

First let me say that I admire your "uncensored" style. I like your free spirit and your devil-may-care attitude. But, it's not for me in some cases (and this is one). I like to struggle with this issue. I like and value freedom and free spirits like you, but I also highly value "filtering" and judgement. How to balance the two? I don't know. I just know that once you let loose you can't go back.

Last night I was watching a documentary on Dale Chihuly, the glass artist, on PBS. He is also a free spirit. He's in the flow and he leaves his judgment at the door. I really like this. I truly admire it. I occasionally achieve it myself. I just can't endorse it unconditionally (yet). (This is a good subject for a lunch date.) You'll notice that I strive to be as unguarded as possible but too much of any good thing is not good.

I won't link with someone I don't know or haven't met. I definitely *will* connect with them by email or phone or in person without hesitation. And after meeting them I will link with them (unless I think they're crazy and would reflect badly on my judgment).

Casual or promiscuous Linking undermines LinkedIn
I feel casual linking with people you don't know actually undermines LinkedIn's core value rather than enhancing it. To me the core value is understanding who knows who and how well they know them. If a large number of people were to follow your approach everyone would be directly linked to everyone (exaggeration for effect) and the links become meaningless (or at least much less meaningful). For example, I know you due to your interest in NEO and I saw some of your emails to the team. After I conversed with you (and checked out your web site thoroughly), I was happy to link with you. That is a legitimate connection. I find it hard to believe you have as much connection (though it is possible) with the other 7,000 people on your list. I'm not being judgmental here, though.

I've mentioned your name to a number of people and some of them have a less than positive reaction. (on the plus side, they did recognize your name!) Quite a few were put off by your request to connect your network with their network without first having some real connection with you. This means that some of the more valuable connections are consciously not in your network. And it may mean that many of the folks who are in your network are just networking "sluts" as I think you put it.

Bottom Line - I don't think it helps the value of the network to encourage people to be promiscuous linkers.

3 - Uninviting or Unlinking is Not an Option -

You mention that you could always uninvite someone if they proved to be obnoxious or annoying. I do not believe that is accurate. I know of no way to "de-link" from someone on LinkedIn once you connect with them.

I believe LinkedIn's philosophy is that links indicate a relationship with a person. Therefore you must have known the person (by their assumption) or you would not have connected with them. Therefore why would you want to deny you know them after the fact? You might not recommend them, but that is a different issue. Note also that they only allow positive references. They seem to have intentionally eliminated the possibility for blacklisting or politics (and I agree with them completely on this).

-------------------------------

Note that I believe something like LinkedIn is fragile. (Aren't most things in life?) I have belonged to forums which I really enjoyed, only to see them ruined by a couple of loudmouths who had to pick arguments with everyone about everything. (I bet you know the type.) They drowned out all reasonable discourse and "peed in the pool" so much that the good folks left.

This is a cutting-edge issue in online communities. How to allow for free flow and yet avoid the "tragedy of the commons"? (I suspect most readers already know the tragedy of the commons (great article) is where the fact that a resource is open to all, causes some to abuse it and ruin it for all.) So far LinkedIn has done a wonderful job of avoiding the potential pitfalls in these areas.

--- BTW, I LOVE LinkedIn. Since this post is getting long, I'll make a separate post on the reasons why.

- Daniel Endy - www.EndyTech.com

My LinkedIn Profile

--- Why I LOVE LinkedIn ---- Let me count the ways:

1 - Personal Professional Web Site - it essentially allows a person to have a personal web site of sorts which tells others everything (within a professional context) they want to reveal about themselves. This alone is great.

2 - Researching and Reviewing - It allows you to see into a person's background (at least as far as they want to let you go). I can go and remind myself about the background of someone I know (and often have a pleasant "oh yeah" experience), and even more importantly it allows me to check on someone I have yet to meet. I can then look for points of common interest or common connections which helps me develop a rapport more quickly than the traditional method. It also allows me to discover who we know in common. ("Hey he knows so-and-so too! How about that!)

3 - Discovery - It allows me to troll around for other connections. I can look at a company they used to work for and see that there are connections there too.

4 - Identifies Good Networkers - It allows me to see who cares about networking and understands how to do it in the new model. I can tell that Joe who is very well connected but has only 2 connections on LinkedIn either is not interested (already achieved his success and sees no need to help others?) or he just doesn't understand the value of electronic networking (cyber networking? Internetworking? we need a term here.), or he just doesn't understand technology well enough to use the internet at all. Some of them are too snooty to network online. Fine, I won't waste my time on them.

5 - Keeping Track of Old Friends - It let's me keep track of the people I know (or have known). I've been saving contacts since I first owned a PDA. It let's me look up someone and say, oh yeah, I remember them. Or more often, wow they are in my list, but I don't remember them at all!

6 - Visibility and Transparency - It brings into visibility that which was previously invisible. Where they worked, what their roles were, who they know, where they went to school, etc. This is the fulfillment of my dream of a fully augmented interconnection between people and machines. Our information is recorded and linked and made available for us to use. I see the world as a mass of interconnections and LinkedIn makes some of them visible. I believe it is the beginning of a new level of personal connections. Just as the web and HTML allow us to link information, a site like LinkedIn allows us to record and expose the links between people using the web.

7 - Electronic Memory - I like my PDA and I keep every contact I record as a form of memory. (I do the same with email but that's another story.) When you network the old way, you get a few tid-bits from a discussion with the person, maybe a few more from asking a friend about them, but that's about it. You have to remember all that, and you have to make all the connections in your head. And my memory isn't as good as I would like so more often I miss a connection. LinkedIn is my electronic memory. In reviewing a person's profile, I will remember other details about them.

8 - Networking - In the end, isn't all of this what networking is all about? I tend to see things very deeply. I tend to see connections other people don't seem to see. I see the future of information and LinkedIn will be a part of it one way or another.

9 - Exponential Value - The value of networks grows exponentially based on the number of connections. There were 128,000 people on LinkedIn when I joined a 3 or 4 years ago. As I write this there are over 1.6 million within 4 degrees of me. That's Huge. Even if you only go 2 degrees away, I have access to over 11,800 people from my 155 direct connections. (Even if I take away half due to Chris' promiscuous linking, that's over 6,000 potential personal introduction connections.)

Whether LinkedIn continues to snowball or not, a system like this will be a part of the online landscape of the future. There is no avoiding it. Systems like this are the future.

- Daniel Endy -

www.EndyTech.com

My LinkedIn Profile

Christian,

Your guide is an incredible way for someone to accelerate their LinkedIn experience! I had to learn what you've posted the hard way as I'm sure you did as well. The only thing I'm not doing that you've mentioned is using an add-in to Outlook at this point. I've seen your previous post about NEO Pro and am still evaluating going that way. You should be charging for this!

Sincerely,
Joe Gillespie

Chris,

Thanks for sending me the link to this--it's very good advice. You are not the first person to recommend NEO, but you put me over the top. I am using the trial version now.

Thanks,
Thatcher

Chris,

Wonderful work you have done here, Thanks for sharing this with me as well.

Regards,
Nitin
Founder/CEO: Ampere Software
E-mail: nitin@amperesoftware.com
www.amperesoftware.com

This is wonderful Chris.

Thanks for sharing.
A LinkedIn feature you might want to mention here is - notify your network of recent updates to your profile. That is another way to stay in contact with your network as it grows.

Joan

Chris,

It appears that once a contact request hits the target, you can pull the request and free up one's allocation and still achieve the desired outcome.

Allegedly we can only have 5 requests out at a time for contact.

When my queu filled I pulled a number of requests, including the ones below. They had already arrived at their destination but were not acted on.

I pulled the requests so that I could utilize my allocation elsewhere...but yet this contact could still accept the request.

Vic

It's Not About Who You Know, It's About Who You Trust (and Who Trusts You)

Coincidentally, after making two large posts yesterday, I found an article that puts into words the abstract concept that's most important in this area.

One of the most valuable things about a network tool like LinkedIn is the ability to check-out someone. You may have just heard a name in a lecture or read about someone or been referred to someone. The first thing I need to know is who are they? And I'm not just talking about where they work or live, I'm talking about who are they at the deeper levels. Where have they worked? What roles did they have? Who else to they know?

Why is this important?!

It's all about TRUST. It's about REPUTATION. In the real world, your reputation is the thing you work to build and protect. Trust takes a lifetime to earn and only a moment to lose.

Networks like LinkedIn are systems for communicating reputation so people can determine how much they should trust you. It's a virtual representation of your reputation. Both what you list and who you are connected to, give critical information about who you are.

Systems like LinkedIn enable you to quickly determine who someone is. They're not about who you link to, they are about helping a new acquaintance (or potential acquaintence), determine how much they should trust you. In cyberspace today this is just important, in the future it will be vital.

See this article for more thoughts on the subject of Trust in Cyberspace

- Daniel Endy -

www.EndyTech.com

My LinkedIn Profile

Daniel Endy mentioned in a reply above that he's not aware of the ability to delink. It can be done by contacting LinkedIn customer service.

Regarding only inviting people who are already in LinkedIn and not proselytizing LinkedIn are definitely "cheats". Not to say that "cheating" is necessary bad, but it's cheating in the sense of investing the smallest amount of effort for potentially the bulk of benefits. Why? Because it can be VERY time consuming explaining to people what LinkedIn is and how to use it. However, I do it because I'm interested in helping people, and those who "get it" are VERY thankful that I took the time to show them how to use such a valuable resource. So while the investment for introducing people to LinkedIn is large, the rewards can be large as well. Of course, you can wait for someone else to introduce your friend to LinkedIn, and then invite them. But then you missed out on a chance to give. And the more one gives, the more one can recieve. For those who are new to LinkedIn, I've written some LinkedIn tips of my own.

You can't talk about LinkedIn without mentioning the LinkedIn Contacts Management tool.

This tool is a freeware to all MyLinkedInPowerForum members and LinkedIn users.

The tools give you the edge in using LinkedIn for business purposes. It downloads all your LinkedIn contacts details/requests/outstanding invitations to a personal database on your PC.

Then, with an easy to use GUI you can make smart selections and manipulations of the data and Email the selected group of contacts. You can do multi accept/reject of requests; you can resend multiple outstanding invitations or withdraw them and much more.

To download the LICM application:

Go to: www.megaas.co.nz
Select the Demos/Downloads page
Scroll down to the LinkedIn icon
Download the installation ZIP file.

Read the Readme file and register at the support forum:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LICM/

Remember - there is a "payment" involved - you have to let at least 10 of your LinkedIn contacts know about the system....

Hi,

I'm confused about what each of the Request to forward snippets are:
First Off the Block
Monkey in the Middle
Gatekeeper
Polite Rejection

Also, what's the difference between a Request to Connect vs an Invite snippet?

Thanks,
Mike

Hi there. This is indeed a great resource. I enjoyed it thoroughly. A lot is common sense practice that I am using, but a few things your post made me rethink my opinions ons. Great post, great advice.

Imran
http://evertrac.us
http://imran.com/media/blog/

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