LinkedIn Archive

A good friend of mine asked me for some tips on how to use LinkedIn.  I sent him a long email and figure that I should share my thoughts on this with all of you.  I’m not an investor in LinkedIn, but think it’s a great service.  Here’s the scoop.

Editor’s note: After you read Mark’s guide below, check out all of our LinkedIn coverage and join our LinkedIn networking group.

Why you should use LinkedIn:

1. The service allows you to see who your contacts know – something that is virtually impossible to do sufficiently through normal social interactions.  LinkedIn takes the coincidence out of networking.
2. It enables you to passively keep up to date contact information for all of your contacts.
3. It facilitates introductions through your broader network.
4. It enables people to find you based upon your background and who you know.
5. It is a professional network that excludes unnecessary personal information.

Why You Should Expand Your LinkedIn Network

I find that a lot of people define ‘using’ LinkedIn as having a profile, but not a lot of connections. As a result, I think it’s worth pointing out that the more you expand your network the more valuable the service will be for you.

As you add more contacts:

1. You will have a larger database of people to search through when you are looking for a contact.  When you search for a person or a background you can only see contacts in your three degrees or contacts – more contacts means more people in your searchable pool.
2. More people will be able to find you when they search for someone with your background.

LinkedIn Best Practices

Here’s my short list of LinkedIn best practices (and how you do them):

1. Customize your LinkedIn profile page URL name.  Go to ‘edit my profile’ in your LinkedIn account and click on ‘edit’ next to ‘Public Profile’ a little way down the page.
2. Add your LinkedIn profile page to your email signature.  For gmail click on ’settings’ in the upper right hand corner and in the text box half way down the page labeled ’signature’ enter a custom signature including your new Public Profile URL.
3. Connect with your existing contacts.  Click on ‘add connections’ on the left side of the screen and follow the process of letting LinkedIn scan your gmail, outlook or other contact lists.  By doing so you will be able to invite your contacts to connect using the very easy process provided on the site.  Note that you will not automatically invite everyone in your gmail or outlook contact list.
4. Use the Browser Toolbar.  The most important feature of the browser toolbar is that it adds a LinkedIn icon next to email addresses in your gmail.  This icon enables you to see a LinkedIn summary (job title, position in your network, number of contacts, etc) of any person who emails you.  It also enables you to invite people to LinkedIn from your gmail account – making it easier to connect with people.
5. Use the Outlook Toolbar.  This application integrates into your outlook as is useful in a few ways.  First, it adds a LinkedIn icon that is similar to the one described in the browser toolbar.  Second, it enables you to update your outlook contacts based upon changes that people make to their LinkedIn profiles – keeping your contacts up to date.
6. Add a picture.  It’s always helpful for other people to be able to associate your face with your background, making it easier for people to introduce themselves at social events.

LinkedIn Etiquette

Standard for connecting.  When I first started using LinkedIn I viewed a connection as an endorsement.  I no longer see it that way, because I realized that my connections do not have direct access to each other – I have to approve introductions.  At this point, I am willing to connect with anyone with which I would normally exchange contact information (e.g., a business card).

Appropriate use of the name field.  Some folks insert additional information into the name field on their profile.  The most often additions are a title or an email address.  I understand that they do this because in some forms of search on the site the name field is the only thing that shows up.  However, I don’t like it.  Not only does it seem aggressive in general, but also it screws up their contact information for everyone that uses the outlook toolbar. 

It’s OK not to forward an intro:  People can request that you introduce them to someone else in your network.  While it’s a bit awkward to say ‘no’, I think that it’s appropriate to do so if it makes you uncomfortable.

This column was provided by Mark Davis, the author of Get Venture, a column designed to help entrepreneurs raise venture capital. In addition to his column, Mark is active in the venture community as an entrepreneur, advisor and venture capitalist. He currently works at DFJ Gotham Ventures, a leading early-stage IT venture capital fund based in NYC. Mark has also setup a variety of regional venture communities on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn community evangelist Mario Sundar has posted a chart from Nielsen showing the top social networks and their growth over the past year (March-March). I’ve embedded the chart below. The analysis is based on U.S. home and work traffic and does not include international traffic.

LinkedIn shows growth at 319% while Facebook only grew 98% and MySpace barely grew at 9%. I’d suggest that Facebook and MySpace have the market nearly tapped so their growth will be slower than LinkedIn. Buzznet also grew nicely at 49%.

A year ago the Facebook fans claimed LinkedIn was dead and that Facebook would replace LinkedIn as the business networking tool of choice. I haven’t seen that happen and if anything, I’ve seen more LinkedIn requests than Facebook requests lately. Do you believe Facebook will still replace LinkedIn as the business social network?

Update: Dave Barger said something I think is worth repeating, "More people wokeup to the fact the LinkedIn wasn’t just for JobHunters than Facebook was not just for College kids."

Drama 2.0 also wonders Are the Most LinkedIn Really LinkedOut?

We’ve just received our first batch of limited-edition stickers (thanks Mark!) and are ready to share them with all of you, our great, loyal readers. And to celebrate the printing of the stickers, we’ve launched a new Facebook group and a LinkedIn group which we would love for you to join.

Once you have joined a group, submit your address and a sticker will be shipped to you at no charge! We ship worldwide.

Thank you for continuing to read and support CenterNetworks!

Editor’s note: we won’t be able to reply to each email for a sticker but know that your sticker is on the way!

IT Venture Partner Mark Davis has launched a new group on LinkedIn, "The NY Venture Community Group". In just three days, the group has over 400 people subscribed and a good bit of activity.

Davis explains the purpose for the group, "The New York Venture Community is the LinkedIn group for entrepreneurs, startup teams, venture capitalists and venture service providers in the New York region.  The purpose of this group is to make it easier to 1) find other people in region interested in venture and 2) connect with these people.  Lastly, being part of this group will make it easier for others to find you."

If you are seeking funding now or plan to in the future, you need to be reading Davis’ blog. He has a huge library of information about every facet of the funding process. Frankly I think he should be selling this information because it easily could mean the difference between getting the funding and not.

Pingdom is out with their latest stats regarding downtime for the major social networks for the first 60-ish days in 2008. Bebo leads the list with over 12 hours of downtime after their big downtime in January. We wondered if that downtime was due to the rapid expansion of the Bebo developer platform.

Other notables on the list include Friendster with 6 hours of downtime, LinkedIn at 4 hours, Facebook at 95 minutes and LiveJournal at 10 minutes.

As a side note, these type of blog posts from Pingdom are what I try to explain to new startups all the time. Use your tools to show off your tools. This is something I rarely see and, where applicable, should be on every marketing plan.

LinkedIn has released a new beta version of their site this morning. And to quote Jan, "widget widget widget". Mario from LinkedIn has a good overview of the new features. There’s also new APIs coming soon. Along with the APIs, I’d love to see some new widgets to integrate into a Web site – profile, jobs, etc.

The new home page looks great – an absolute improvement over the old, crusty version. It has a widget feel to it and sure enough it has some widgets that you can move around, add/delete as you wish. The contact viewer is also cleaner than previously. The page feeds very open and airy and a nice 2007 flavor.

They also moved the job board to the home page. Perhaps LinkedIn should look at offering a job board similar to the Job-a-matic board offered by SimplyHired.

If LinkedIn’s goal is to create a more sticky environment, why not partner with a start page provider such as Netvibes or Pageflakes and then you could actually create a very strong business networking environment.  Feeds, travel, etc. — all should be available.

From my perspective, LinkedIn still wins over Facebook for business networking. I get 7-10x more LinkedIn requests than Facebook requests. If you’d link to link me up, check out my profile.

Mike Butcher from TechcrunchUK has a source on a rumor of News Corp. acquiring LinkedIn in 2008. I like this a lot. This makes absolute sense for News Corp who needs to get deeper online and since LinkedIn works for the business crowd and there is some overlap with newspaper readers, this is a deal I can approve.

This is a much better plan than to go after Digg. Except for possible ad revenues, the Digg audience does not match up well against News Corp. But LinkedIn does. It would instantly increase the userbase of LinkedIn and *could* bring some new readers to the WSJ newspaper.

Mike notes, "However, while online revenue is growing it isn’t offsetting the declines in print revenue. So newspapers need another way to monetise their online operations, and social networking – which is eating into classified revenues – is the natural route to take."

Check out our previous LinkedIn coverage including "Are the Most LinkedIn Really LinkedOut?" and our coverage of new Yahoo competitor Kickstart.

(no charge for the Thanksgiving "Gobble" reference)