A power user’s guide to LinkedIn

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A power user’s guide to LinkedIn

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Prepared by @adamkleinberg

February 17, 2011

hashtag: #learnphase


Users: 90,000,000


Users: 90,000,000

Power Users: Not so much


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How to be a power user.


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1. Organize Your Profiles

Ordinary business

accounts come with

up to five folders.

Your best source of new business

is your existing customer base.

You can use LinkedIn’s Advanced

Search feature to find everyone at a

given company with a specific

keyword in their profile and add

them to folders using the Profile

Organizer feature. That way you

know who you know—and who you

need to get to know.


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2. Tag Your Connections

Add tags to organize your

contacts quickly and easily.

For example, I’ve created a

“leads” tag that allows me

to put quickly look at people

I might want to contact

when I have news to share

or when I’m looking to drum

up business.


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3. Build Your Company Profile

LinkedIn now lets you trick out

your Company page. It’s easy to

build, but a lot of work to do

well. Traction has a “Toolkit”

you can use a content strategy

template.


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4. Get Recommended

I could tell potential clients this stuff until I’m blue in the face, yet it would not be nearly as

powerful as a real customer saying it in their own authentic voice. When you wrap up a

project that went really well, ask your customers if they’d be inclined to recommend you.

Do this all the time.


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5. Get TwinkedIn

Anyone who logs onto the LinkedIn homepage can see that you can sync your tweets and LinkedIn

status updates, but there are some lesser known features worth looking at. Twitter.com allows you

to discover which of your LinkedIn connections are on Twitter. If you’re a tweeker, this is great

because you’ll find the most relevant people to follow (and who will follow you back). You can

also use LinkedIn to create a “dynamic twitter list” of all of your LinkedIn connections.


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6. SEO (Skills & Expertise Optimization)

LinkedIn has quietly introduced

the ability to add skills to your

profile. This will tie in to new

portals for “Skills & Expertise”

that could potentially become

go-to resources for recruiters,

hiring managers or companies

seeking partners.


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7. Feed Your Expertise

LinkedIn Answers is a great way to contribute content to the platform in a

manner that shows your expertise on a topic. Problem is, it’s a pain in the ass

to hunt down questions you want to answer. Solution: grab an RSS feed of a

topic you’re interested in and paste it into your Reader. Then relevant

questions come to you, allowing you to be an “expert” passively. For active

bloggers who are looking for topics to write on, I often find that Answers that

I write make great posts with minimal edits.


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8. Create Campaigns

Like Google AdSense, you can easily create campaigns on a CPC

or CPM basis with a set daily budget. Because of the profile

information LinkedIn has on their members, you can create highly

targeted campaigns.


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9. Customize Your Feed

Get the information you want on your home page to make LinkedIn the most useful tool for your needs.


10. Connect inPerson

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Overall, LinkedIn Mobile is not amazing. Where

Facebook makes there app feel like a core part of

the experience, LinkedIn’s app feels like an

afterthought.

However, one feature that is unique to mobile is

very cool. LinkedIn inPerson allows you to

connect to nearby users with Bluetooth. This is

great because if you’re at a conference or event,

you can browse who is there and introduce

yourself virtually to someone who looks like a

valuable connection. It’s honest and effective and

far less creepy than looking at people’s name tags

before you make eye contact.

{ © 2010 Traction }

The end.

Business

A power user’s guide to LinkedIn