LinkedIn Archives - Career Pivot

LinkedIn Endorsements and Promiscuous Connections

March 12, 2013 by Miller MarcAdmin 8 Comments

LinkedIn Endorsements and Promiscuous Connections

Yes, you heard me right, LinkedIn Endorsements and promiscuous connections.

What the heck is a promiscuous connection?

I did not dream this up but LinkedIn Director of Insights James Raybould used this terminology in the following video.

Go to 30 seconds into the video to get James Raybould’s explanation of LinkedIn Endorsements and promiscuous connections.

LinkedIn tells us that we should connect only with people we actually know.

Do you connect only with people you know?

I guess it is how you define knowing someone.

I try to connect with people I have actually met. Notice I said I try to connect with people I have actually met.

Do I connect with others? Sure. I serve on the board of directors for Launch Pad Job Club. I offer to connect with anyone involved in the group who is looking for a job. Do I know everyone I connect with? No.

So I have a few promiscuous connections.

Does that make me a bad person? I hope not.

(More: LinkedIn Endorsements – What the heck are these?)

LinkedIn Endorsements

If you watch the video, the concept behind endorsements is you will receive endorsements from well known sources. People who actually know you.

Have you been receiving endorsements from people you do not know or promiscuous connections?

(By the way, this is the first time I have ever used the word promiscuous in a professional manner!)

I have recently received a bunch of endorsements from a recruiter, that I talked to 7-8 years ago. We really do not know one another. More importantly he is endorsing me for skills not listed in my profile. (By the way, I have a phenomenal memory for people. I can even tell you why I talked to him, and the position I was applying for. I have over 1,500 connections, and I can tell you my relationship with over 90% of them. I am not typical!)

What can I do?

Hide the endorsements
Send him an e-mail or InMail and please ask him to stop
Remove the connection

If he had not stopped, I would have removed the connection.

I did not accept the endorsements for skills that were not in my profile.

What would you do?

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Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: LinkedIn, Social Media Tagged With: endorsements, LinkedIn, Social Media

How do I get more views of my LinkedIn Profile? Part III

March 3, 2013 by Miller MarcAdmin Leave a Comment

How do I get more views of my LinkedIn Profile?

In my last two posts, I talked about posting good content on LinkedIn consistently and making sure the content is visible to the audience you want.

Let’s address a method to get people at your targeted companies to look at your LinkedIn profile.

Step 1 Connect with Recruiters

You will always want to send LinkedIn connection requests to recruiters at your target companies.

Recruiters are connected to most of the employees in their company. When you connect with a recruiter you become a 2nd degree connection to most of the employees in your target company.

Read the following blog posts on connecting with recruiters:

Step 2 Verify what others see when you look at their profile

When you look at a profile, the profile owner will see one of three possibilities.

Below are three people who visited my profile.

The first is where I see the persons full name, picture and access to their LinkedInprofile.

The second is where I am given a hint at who it is and I can display a list of possibilities

The third is totally anonymous.

We want #1 for ourself. We want people to see that we looked at their LinkedIn profile.

You change this back in the LinkedIn settings that I showed you in the last blog post , but this time Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile.

Step 3 Systematically look at profiles at the target company

Now the trick is to select a group of individuals in the target company that you want for them to look at your LinkedIn profile.

Every few days, view one of their LinkedIn profiles. Be consistent and check multiple times a day to see whether they have looked at your LinkedIn profile.

DO NOT STALK!

Rotate through your list. Be systematic. Do this at most every other day. Look at just one LinkedIn profile a day.

When someone looks at your LinkedIn profile send them a LinkedIn Inmail or a connection request stating that you saw that they looked at your LinkedIn profile, and you would like to ask them some advice.

This is a step in the AIR, Advice, Insights and Recommendation method that I wrote in a post last year.

The point is to engage them in a dialog and using the ploy of looking at their LinkedIn profile to get them curious enough to look at yours!

Will this always work? NO!

A lot will depend on how they use LinkedIn.

Give it a try!

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You can also download my whitepaper “Don’t Retire Even If you Can and What to do Instead – A Baby Boomer Manifesto”

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: LinkedIn, Social Media Tagged With: LinkedIn, Social Media, target

How do I get more views of my LinkedIn Profile? Part II

February 26, 2013 by Miller MarcAdmin 2 Comments

How do I get more views of my LinkedIn Profile?

In my last post I told you that if you consistently share good content on your LinkedIn status update, people will notice and will want to check out your LinkedIn profile.

Now you are probably saying to yourself

Only my network will see the content I share!

Well not completely. It depends on a little known setting in LinkedIn.

You have control on how widely you broadcast this information! Yes, you have the power!

First find the LinkedIn settings menu in the top right hand corner of the home page.

Look in the Privacy Options for Select who can see your activity feed like below.

When you click on Select who can see your activity feed

You have four options:

Only you
Your connections – This is those connections that are directly connected to you or your first degree connections
Your Network – Your first and second degree connections
Everyone – Your first, second and third degree connections

Which do you choose? That depends.

Most people will choose Your Network. This is the default setting, which is for your first and second degree connections to see your activity.

Recruiters will most likely choose Everyone. They post jobs, and they want as great a reach as possible.

Small business owners who are posting material about their business will most likely will chose Everyone!

What about you? Who do you want to see your postings?

If you are goal is to build credibility within your industry or network you will likely choose Everyone.

If you are posting just because you like to share what you find, then Your Network is probably more appropriate.

It depends on what your end goal and strategy to achieve that goal. Do you have a social media strategy?

In my next post, I will talk about how to strategically look at other people’s profiles to get them to look at yours!

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You can also download my whitepaper “Don’t Retire Even If you Can and What to do Instead – A Baby Boomer Manifesto”

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: LinkedIn, Social Media Tagged With: LinkedIn, Social Media, target

How do I get more views of my LinkedIn Profile?

February 24, 2013 by Miller MarcAdmin 2 Comments

How do I get more views of my LinkedIn Profile?

Whether you are looking for a job or looking for leads to new clients, one of the keys is getting recruiters, hiring managers and prospects to look at your LinkedIn profile.

First look at how frequently your profile is viewed.

LinkedIn folklore says that your profile needs to be viewed 1,300 times to get a job. Is this true? I do not know but it is a reasonable number to me. You can tell that my LinkedIn profile has been viewed 920 times over the last three months. It has been steadily increasing over the last six months.

Why do people look at profiles?

I am going to give you several basic reasons why people look at profiles and then some strategies.

Search – Recruiters and hiring managers are using LinkedIn search using keywords
Readers click on your name when they read a content that you posted on LinkedIn
- Content that you shared on your personal LinkedIn profile
- Content that you shared on a LinkedIn Group
- Content that you shared on your personal LinkedIn profile and some one else shared it
LinkedIn Users see that you have looked at their LinkedIn profile and they click on yours

In this post, let us talk about the second one, sharing content.

The more you share, the more frequently your name shows up in the activity feed. One way to get noticed it is to post at the same frequency and time each day.

How Frequent Should I Post?

This is dependent on how much content you curate and how often your connections want you to post.

I post twice a day.

When do you post?

I post at 8:15 AM CT and 2:05 PM CT.

Wait!! You are probably saying — you have an alarm set to tell you to post?

No, I use a free application called BufferApp, Check it out at www.bufferapp.com

I used Buffer App to post to LinkedIn personal profile, Facebook and Twitter. Each channel has a separate schedule.

The free version you can post to three channels and have a maximum of 11 in each queue.

Watch this video on how I do it!

Go to the BufferApp Webpage and check it out.

You will want to determine how much time you want to give to finding good content.

Notice I said good content!

Bufferapp will give you statistics on how often the content you post is clicked on, liked, retweeted, shared,….. You will then determine whether you want to post more often, less often or change the timing.

Give it a try!

In my next post I will write about strategically looking at targeted individuals profiles with the intention of getting them to look at yours.

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Like what you just read? Share it with your friends using the buttons below?

You can also download my whitepaper “Don’t Retire Even If you Can and What to do Instead – A Baby Boomer Manifesto”

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: LinkedIn, Social Media Tagged With: LinkedIn, Social Media, target

LinkedIn Groups – Which one should I Join [Video]

January 22, 2013 by Miller MarcAdmin 6 Comments

LinkedIn Groups

Which LinkedIn groups should you belong to and why?

In my opinion, LinkedIn groups is the most powerful feature of LinkedIn. There are two reasons people join groups:

You want a like minded group of people to interact with in a conversation
You want to be part of a group and by being part of that group you can easily connect on LinkedIn. When you are part of a LinkedIn group you can send a connection request to anyone in the group without knowing their e-mail address. I hate getting connection requests that state they are my friend and I have never met them.

Which LinkedIn groups should I join?

There are several easy ways to locate groups to join:

Locate the menu item Groups You May Like
Look at LinkedIn profiles of people that you would like to meet or are in the professions that you want to interact with. Check out what groups they belong to
Search for groups that are associated with specific organizations

This last option is especially important. My favorite groups are alumni groups, both university alumni and corporate alumni.

For example, I belong to the Northwestern University Alumni LinkedIn group.

I also belong to the IBM Official Alumni Group: The Greater IBM Connection. Notice the little lock next to the name. That means it is a closed group and is not searchable by Google. I like these kinds of groups as they are often moderated. You will find little SPAM in these kinds of groups.

LinkedIn Group Statistics

Once you find a group you are considering joining, check out the group statistics first.

Watch the video below where I contrast to very different large LinkedIn groups.

Go look at the statistics for the LinkedIn Groups you belong to. Did anything surprise you?

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My book “Repurpose Your Career – A Practical Guide for Baby Boomers” is now available. Check it out!

You can also download my whitepaper “Don’t Retire Even If you Can and What to do Instead – A Baby Boomer Manifesto”

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: LinkedIn, Social Media Tagged With: LinkedIn, Social Media

The New LinkedIn Profile – A Video Tour

December 18, 2012 by Miller MarcAdmin 7 Comments

A new LinkedIn profile format has been rolled out to most of you by now. Let me highlight some of the changes I see and then give you a short video tour.

New LinkedIn Profile Overview

Your picture is larger
Some LinkedIn Applications have gone away. This appears to be a work in progress!
LinkedIn Applications are now attached to your summary
You can attach any type of media that is available via a URL to any section. VERY COOL!
Recommendations are now statically at the bottom of your profile. I think this will change. NOT SO COOL!
It is much more obvious how to move sections around in your profile

Let me take you on a short 3 minute tour of the new LinkedIn Profile

This new LinkedIn profile has been phased in over many months. Many of us who use LinkedIn applications received the new format in the last week. I am still seeing a few profiles that have not been updated.

I believe there are more changes coming. I see no reason for endorsements of skills and expertise to be moveable in your profile but recommendations are stuck at the bottom!

It is pretty obvious to me that the migration of LinkedIn applications is not complete. If you are using the LinkedIn Portfolio application or the Slideshare application then those applications are migrated over. You cannot add those applications in after you have been migrated to the new LinkedIn Profile. The new media icon that I showed you in the video is to replace the applications. Hmmm…. we will have to see how well that works.

So what do you think?

What did they miss?

If you missed my recent post on my upcoming book “Repurpose Your Career – A Practical Guide for Baby Boomers” please go check it out.

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You can also download my whitepaper “Don’t Retire Even If you Can and What to do Instead – A Baby Boomer Manifesto”

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: LinkedIn, Social Media Tagged With: LinkedIn, Social Media

LinkedIn Recommendations versus Endorsements

November 27, 2012 by Miller MarcAdmin 6 Comments

Which are more important – LinkedIn Recommendations or Endorsements

When I published my previous post on LinkedIn Endorsements, I was surprised at the reaction. Many of you think that LinkedIn Recommendations were being devalued. There were a number of good points that were brought up that I want to highlight.

Order is important!

Which appears first in your profile, your LinkedIn recommendations or your endorsements?

You have control over the order of every section of your profile! YES, you can reorder your profile!

I recommend that you place your recommendations and endorsements before your work experience!

Which is more powerful?

Which is more powerful the recommendation that my former colleague at LifeSize (my last corporate gig) Ian Poh wrote for me:

“Marc is one of the closest and wonderful peers that I ever worked with in a multinational corporation. He understands the cultures of people that come from different nationalities with different background, and always sensitive to their way of thinking and perspectives while working with them in a global organisation. With clear objectives in his mind, Marc always carries out training development plans in such an organized way and he knows exactly what to do and how to bring his objectives to accomplishment. As a trainer in person, he never fails to capture his audiences’ attention with his dynamic and engaging communications skill.

One thing that I always admire Marc is his ability to create excellent visual communications training contents that makes the profound technical knowledge easy to be understood by the audiences.”

Ian endorsed the following skills:

Training
Coaching
Public Speaking
Teaching
Start-Ups

I hope you see that the recommendation is much more powerful!

By the way, Ian lives in Singapore and is one of the most talented professional I have ever worked with in my career.

Which appears first? My recommendations!

Order is important in your skills and expertise

If you want certain skills and expertise to get priority in your endorsements, put them first!

If you do not want endorsements for certain skills and expertise, either remove them from your profile or put them at the bottom.

You have control but….

LinkedIn Recommendations you have to accept. You have control over what recommendations appear in your profile which I wrote about in my post Managing LinkedIn Recommendations.

Endorsements just show up.

You can hide endorsements but…. if you hide them they are gone forever!

Endorsements are a real problem for financial professionals!!

Most financial professionals are strictly forbidden from having public recommendations by law.

If you do not want endorsements then you will need to stay on top of this and regularly monitor your LinkedIn profile.

Which are more important – LinkedIn Recommendations or Endorsements?

It is up to you!

You have control.

Which comes first in your profile?

I have had a career where I have touched a lot of people. I have given workshops or presentations around the world, probably over 1,000, over the last 35 years. Lots of people can attest to my skills and expertise.

On the other hand, recommendations are based on personal relationships.

Personal relationships are much more important to me than any skill endorsement.

My LinkedIn Recommendations come first!

Which comes first in your profile?

If you missed my recent post on my upcoming book “Repurpose Your Career – A Practical Guide for Baby Boomers” please go check it out.

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Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: LinkedIn, Social Media

Are You Using Video to Promote Your Career?

September 11, 2012 by Miller MarcAdmin Leave a Comment

Video to Promote Your Career?

You heard me right, are you using video to promote your career?

I know you are not a movie star!

Video has become easier and easier to produce with just about every smart phone having a HD video camera.

Video is everywhere with the advent of YouTube. The video in this post is screencast I created using Camtasia from Techsmith and the video is hosted on YouTube. Camtasia Studio for Windows is $299 and YouTube is free!

Video is a great way to showcase your skills.

What most people do not know is you can put video in your LinkedIn Profile.

There is no LinkedIn Video App!

Correct there is no LinkedIn Video app but you can put a presentation on your LinkedIn profile. That presentation can contain a video.
In 2011, the only way to do this was to use the LinkedIn Google presentation application. Unfortunately, that broke and best to my knowledge never got fixed. Slideshare has since added a feature where you can add a YouTube video to a Slideshare presentation. Interesting enough LinkedIn bought Slideshare. Hmmm…..

This whole process is not hard but….. it can be confusing. I created this video which is on my LinkedIn profile to show you how to do this.

I have made one change to this process. I always place the YouTube video after the first slide. The reason I do this is because you cannot control when the video starts on your LinkedIn profile. If you place the video before slide 1 then the video will start as soon as the profile is finished loading.

I have had complaints from people looking at my profile while sitting in office cubicles. The audio suddenly starts from the video. I guess they get a little embarrassed when suddenly their computer starts saying “Hi I’m Marc Miller with Career Pivot….” or maybe they do not want their boss know they are looking for a job.

Check out my LinkedIn profile here. Click on the View Full Profile icon on the right side of the screen. Scroll down to the Slideshare presentation application. When you advance the presentation to the second slide the video will start.

Do you have a video that promotes your career? If not, when will you start Using Video to Promote Your Career?

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Like what you read? Click here to subscribe to this blog! Better yet share it with your friends using the buttons below.

You can also download my whitepaper “Don’t Retire Even If you Can and What to do Instead – A Baby Boomer Manifesto”

Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles.

Please check out my one on one coaching packages or the Cure for Career Insanity webinars

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career, LinkedIn, Social Media Tagged With: career, LinkedIn, Social Media

Social Media Strategy – LinkedIn Portfolio App

September 9, 2012 by Miller MarcAdmin Leave a Comment

Social Media Strategy – LinkedIn Portfolio App

In previous posts, I have been discussing the need to develop a Social Media strategy. You put your body of work or portfolio on the Internet for everyone to find.

Jim Adcock wrote three posts on how he gained credibility by blogging. Take a moment to read the last post in the series – Social Media Strategy – My Resume

In the opening post of this series – Social Media Strategy for Staying Employed in the 21st Century I mentioned you could build a personal website. Here are two good examples:

Make sure to check out their skill and work samples page.

What if you are an artist, photographer, graphic designer, or another creative type? There is another option to display your creative portfolio in your LinkedIn Profile! There is the Behance Portfolio Application which is Free. This is one of the least known and used applications.

The best way to understand this application is to see an example. Below is a video of Judi Hays‘s portfolio in LinkedIn. Judi is an incredibly talented woman who has demonstrated her design skills in multiple industries.

Judi is the Vice President of Communications for the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. She performs a wide range of duties that fits her skills as the portfolio shows.

Are you the creative type where this type of portfolio would work for you?

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Like what you read? Click here to subscribe to this blog! Better yet share it with your friends using the buttons below.

You can also download my whitepaper “Don’t Retire Even If you Can and What to do Instead – A Baby Boomer Manifesto”

Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles.

Please check out my one on one coaching packages or the Cure for Career Insanity webinars

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: LinkedIn, Social Media Tagged With: LinkedIn, Social Media

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