Last week LinkedIn launched a significant integration with Twitter, enabling professionals to expand their personal brands to their professional networks and vice-versa. To show our users how that might work, today we’re asking you: What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received?
The best business advice I ever received seemed to be something of an oxymoron. As an entrepreneur, you’re told frequently, “Be persistent! Follow your vision! Flatten obstacles!” But on the other hand, you’re urged to “Learn from the market! Adapt to changing conditions! Take a different course!” Knowing when to persist and when to be flexible is more of an art than a science. So in a fluid, fast-changing world, sometimes you stick to your vision, and sometimes you adapt quickly.
Unfortunately, that’s more than 140 characters! So watch the video to see how Biz and I resolve our best advice to the unique Twitter format. And tweet your best advice today with #in.
Here’s how you can share the best business advice you’ve received on LinkedIn and Twitter
1. LinkedIn and Twitter users can participate by tweeting the best business advice they’ve received with the hashtag #in.
2. If you’ve already linked your accounts, this hashtag will automatically update your LinkedIn status, enabling you to share your wisdom with both networks simultaneously.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: Join LinkedIn now, even if you have a job to go to every week. If you get laid off, you’ll be glad you don’t have to scramble to piece together an entire network of professionals willing to go to bat for you.
The piece also links to our VP of Marketing and Advertising, Patrick Crane’s ABC7 video interview that was filmed awhile back.
LinkedIn Tips for the Job Hunter:
1. LinkedIn Jobs helps you find or fill that next job using the power of your network.
Job seekers can utilize inside connections at potential employers to help land their dream job.
Hiring managers can tap into a network of over 20 million professionals to find the ideal candidate with the specific skill set and experience needed.
2. The right person, talent, or knowledge you’re looking for is already on LinkedIn. Use search to find what you need to be more effective professionally:
Search by name and other distinguishing characteristics to quickly locate the person you are looking for.
Use the advanced search to target specific skill sets or find subject-matter experts.
Conduct reference searches on potential job candidates and business partners.
BusinessWeek did a profile on LinkedIn’s Co-founder, Chairman and President of Products Reid Hoffman. Senior Writer, Stephen Baker describes the business trajectory both of Reid and LinkedIn over the past years. The piece takes a unique look at why professionals need LinkedIn and why you should manage your personal career as if you are a small business.
As industries struggle, he says more workers shed the illusion that they’re safe and protected inside companies. They face what Hoffman calls the reality of the modern career: “Essentially,” he says, “every individual is a small business.” He predicts that workers increasingly will be networking outside their companies, looking for the right leads or morsels of knowledge—and for this, millions of them will turn to LinkedIn.
The piece is live on the net now, but it will also be in the November 17th hard copy issue.
LinkedIn Tips for the knowledge worker:
1. Connect with your “real-world” connections on LinkedIn
Use webmail import to see, in seconds, all the people you know who are already on LinkedIn. You can then select who you wish to invite to join your trusted network.
Upload a contacts file from Outlook, Palm, ACT!, or Mac Address
Hi Everyone. I’m writing today to announce the launch of LinkedIn’s applications platform that will enable over 30 million professionals on LinkedIn to communicate, collaborate, and share information even better than before.
This initial roll out features productivity applications that range from gathering information that professionals around you are generating to enhancing your abilities to collaborate and communicate more effectively. You’ll be able to work much more closely with your contacts on LinkedIn with tools such as file sharing, project management, business trips and many more.
The nine applications that you see live today on LinkedIn include productivity enhancing applications from Amazon, Box.net, Google, Huddle, Six Apart, SlideShare, Tripit, and WordPress as well a Company Buzz application developed by LinkedIn. Each of these applications will help you stay current and competitive as a professional in today’s rapidly changing business world.
The video below gives an overview of our application platform featuring many of the application partners mentioned above.
This is the direction that the LinkedIn platform will take in the coming months to help make you effective and competitive as a professional.
For the thousands who read last week’s blog post on LinkedIn user Andy Cohen (Caring.com’s CEO) and the others who watched the video, we’ve got more. Check out our most recent interview with Bruce Carlisle, CEO of “one of the fastest growing private companies in the San Francisco Bay Area” – Digital Axle. (San Francisco Business Times)
Bruce who’s been on LinkedIn “since the beginning of time”, talks about how the service has helped him reconnect with classmates he has lost connection with for the past 15 to 20 years. He also uses LinkedIn to stay in touch with his colleagues (past and present). Finally he talks about how he uses LinkedIn to collaborate with partners, associations he’s a part of as well (such as SF Interactive) as well as with CEOs of other agencies within the interactive industry.
Check out the video interview we shot with Bruce (see below) followed by a few tips-and-tricks that we gleaned from that discussion (after the jump). Check out the Digital Axle blog here.
3 LinkedIn Tips from Bruce
1. Reconnecting with former colleagues or classmates
Reconnecting with former colleagues or classmates is as easy as importing your webmail contacts. Here are the steps to make that happen:
* Click on either colleagues or the classmates tab to reconnect with lost connections
Please Note: This functionality is only as good as the depth of information you’ve added to your profile. Fill in the blanks about your past work experience here.
As Bruce mentioned, collaborating with other companies is a key need for him & other entrepreneurs that LinkedIn helps fulfill. Finding partners. CEOs in the marketing services business or in any other industries is a breeze. If I were to recommend two features that enable this interaction, one would have to be Company Profiles, which we launched recently.
And of course, another possible way to collaborate with your peers in your industry would be through LinkedIn Answers. Let’s say you have a question within the “Advertising and Promotion” vertical, you know where to turn to!
Data portability is on a lot of people’s minds right now. You don’t need to be an A-list blogger trying to export your massive friend list to know that your address book is your own, nor to recognize that toting around your network can be cumbersome. You shouldn’t have to reinvent yourself — and rediscover your colleagues — over and over again.
At LinkedIn, we’ve always believed that users should own and control their data. And we’ve walked the walk by offering one-click export of your connections to .csv and .vcf since 2004; using microformats since 2006 to mark up your contacts with XFN + hCard and service provider recommendations with hReview; and in early 2007 we released the first major hResume implementation. It’s not just open formats either. Last year we started building APIs and a developer platform which will soon include support for OpenSocial applications.
LinkedIn is committed to helping professionals be more productive in their everyday work life. These technologies are among the powerful tools that enable us to do this. So it makes sense that we would support efforts like DataPortability.org and Social Network Portability. We’re happy to share what we’ve learned along the way with the community and look forward to learning from the experience of others.
At the same time, we firmly believe in users’ rights to privacy, not only when it comes to who has access to their data but also by which means and for what purpose. Accepting a connection from another does not and should not grant them carte blanche to collect and keep your information for their own purposes — and we know that. And as we join this new conversation, we promise to continue to keep privacy firmly in focus.
(Note from Adam – I was very happy to see the warm response to my first post here on the LinkedIn blog. Based on some of the comments I received, it seems like many people specifically found the reference to my mother’s profile on LinkedIn interesting. As a result, I thought it would be fun to share these comments from Dr. Sharon Nash, Ph.D., a.k.a my mother. She joined LinkedIn soon after I joined the company, and I thought her insights and experience would be worth sharing here.)
I always think of myself as a pro-connection type of person.After all, as a psychologist, I spend my day helping people connect with others in a healthy way. I have always valued my own connections and have gone to great lengths to stay in touch with friends from every phase of my life (in fact, I met my husband at the Bronx HS of Science 44 years ago). I have a group of 7 friends (my “birthday club”) that I have invited for dinner every July for the last 17 years. I belong to three psychotherapy consultations groups, the longest-standing of which has been together for 15 years. You could say that I’m a relationship junkie.
I joined LinkedIn on June 1st, 2007 at the invitation of my son, Adam, who had signed up 4 years before he started working there in May. He is a great proselytizer and believer in the product; nevertheless, I was skeptical at first.It wasn’t quite clear to me what value being LinkedIn would be to a non-techie type who was happily self-employed. During Adam’s previous 4 years at eBay, he even launched eBay Express for people like me who were intimidated by the vigilance demanded by an active auction site. Still, I am ashamed to admit, I never had the courage to give eBay a try.
LinkedIn is different.Once invited, it became very easy (and very seductive) to make my links to friends and colleagues “official.” It hasn’t always been an easy sell for my cohort, whose technological skills are challenged by the demands of email. As my best friend in high school just replied to my invitation, “why would I want to get LinkedIn to you, when I can just email you?”
The psychologist in me has been fascinated with the responses I have gotten to my invitations to LinkedIn.It’s like a projective Rorschach Test of friends’ personalities.There are the loyalists who enthusiastically respond, “I’m not sure what it is, but if it means I’m linked to you, I’m joining!”.Then there are the skeptics and the Luddites who are afraid that connecting will involve an intolerable level of self-disclosure and fear of unwanted solicitation.Most of my friends are unaware, but open-minded enough to welcome articles on LinkedIn so they can understand what it all about.
Adam has teased me that of the 83 connections I have to date, I may have the highest percentage of people with only one link–me!The reality is, once you’re LinkedIn, the site begins to sell itself.As one friendsaid in an email titled “New Addiction”:
“I am spending so much time on LinkedIn now, it’s not funny. I figured out what it is: it’s My Space for working people.The truth is, I guessI was looking for something to do to avoid dealing with [my son's] Bar Mitzvah. When I was working, I had that to fill my time, now I need something else, so I busy myself trying to build connections so I don’t look like a Link Loser.”
Another friend who is a journalist noted:
“Adults like me don’t spend as much time as my kids do on Facebook-like online activities. But maybe that was before LinkedIn . . . Boy, did I feel like someone in the know when I read Michelle Slatella’s column [New York Times Thursday Style] last night and saw the mention of LinkedIn. “I know what that is!” I said to [my daughter] Molly . . . I’m at LinkedIn. Thanks for keeping me current, Sharon.”
I must admit, I am thoroughly enjoying perusing my links daily. It is particularly interesting to learn things about the background and experience of friends and family. It has been a kick to track classmates from college and graduate school, fellow therapists and clinical faculty. I check their links, although I am still timid about asking them to forward invitations to their friends and colleagues. As a means of staying connected and current with those I know and respect, it’s been a fun ride. I do confess, there is that temptation to keep setting the LinkedIn bar a bit higher. After all, I am so close to 100 connections…
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