Archive for linkedin
Increasing Demand for LinkedIn Training
Posted by: | CommentsIt seems that as the economy continues to tighten that people are waking up to the fact that they need to ratchet up what they are doing something proactively to reach their personal and business goals.
I’ve been receiving lots of emails and requests from people and groups to do presentations on using LinkedIn to achieve personal and business related goals.
So I’m setting up a special section on my website called Social Media Savvy where I’ll be posting where I’m speaking both live and via teleseminar or webinar. I’ll also be posting links to other training and events which help our readers sharpen their social media skills to really make the most of the tools and opportunities that are just waiting for you to master.
I’ve also just released our first of a series of LinkedIn eBooks. Check ‘em out!
If you have events that you’d like me to promote to our readers, please reach out to me via our Contact Page.
If you’d like us to speak to your group of 30 or more – live, via teleseminar or webinar – reach out to us.
And, as always, if there’s any way I can be of service, I’m here.
Xobni – An Outlook Tool to Transform Your Experience of the E-mail Jungle
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Inbox spelled backwards – it does just that. It turns your experience of your email on it’s ear. And it’s FREE
Instead of having to fish through thousands of emails in your inbox, or setting up complex rules – that sometime work, sometimes don’t work – Xobni’s add-on to outlook shows you all the key data related to your contact, the 
communication you’ve had with that contact, and the documents that you’ve exchanged between you.
All this happens outside of Outlook itself – in Xobni’s indexing process. This means that you can preview all of these pieces of the interaction jungle before you need to open any relevant communications.
You can easily search for people with their built in search bar and it calculate the pattern for when you receive emails from the contact. That way you know when you are most likely to catch them at their computer. The analytics tell you how many emails you’ve sent, how many you’ve received, and ranks the contact via the number of communications you’ve had. .
Are you interacting enough with the key people in your network? Quite an eye opener
Another very cool function is the "Schedule time with" link. It will check your Outlook calendar and open up an email with your availability for the next 5 business days so you can send it to your contact to set meeting. Very Handy!
Xobni also has a built-in LinkedIn function which allows you to click right over to a contact’s LinkedIn Profile.
All in all a very handy tool
A special thanks to N2N Student Toni Allen who called me raving about it’s functionality.
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Your Outsourced Business Development Training Partner
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Law Firm Marketing – Seven Steps for Using LinkedIn.com as a Business Development Magnet
Posted by: | CommentsOriginally published in the inaugural Edition of The Rainmaker Advisor – for attorneys
Let’s face it – you’re busy. You may even fall under the classification of “very busy”. When it comes to developing business, you are faced with all kinds of options: a website, blogging, networking, referrals from current clients. The question is often where do I start? And how do I manage the ethical considerations? Especially because I’m so busy.
My advice – start with what you’ve already got. Then leverage it.
Enter LinkedIn.com, a free online social networking site for professionals.
Unlike Facebook.com or Myspace.com, LinkedIn® focuses on a business demographic1:
- Average Age – 41;
- Average Years of Experience – 15;
- Average Household Income – $109,000;
- 46% of it’s users are Decision Makers;
- Executive from All Fortune 500 companies are represented inside LinkedIn®.
These are folks who use legal services.
I train my clients to view LinkedIn® as a technological backbone to place underneath their already existing network of relationships. With 21 million people using the service, you may be surprised to find that many of the people that you know professionally are already users.
Add three levels of depth (seeing who your contacts know, and who their contacts know) and a search engine to explore those resources, and you have an extremely valuable resource to leverage.
By having a systematic approach, you can use this free service to become a magnet for referrals, business opportunities, and profitable alliances.
Here are the Seven Steps for Using LinkedIn® as a Business Development Magnet:
1. Perfect your Profile
Your LinkedIn® Profile is an online hub for Business Development Objectives. A well designed profile lets your contacts, prospective clients, and prospective referral sources know who you are, what you do, and what you are looking to accomplish. Make sure that you spend plenty of time perfecting it. Fill out all of your education. Fill out your past employment and experience. People feel like they know you when you disclose those things. Because LinkedIn is a Social Media, you want to bring down the barriers that people experience to getting to know you and your firm. This step is critical.
2. Learn the system
The power of LinkedIn® is the platform. The social software allows you to do advanced searches, connect to your current websites and blogs, promote your profile to current connections and people who could be connections, answer questions of users who are looking for someone like you and your firm, etc. Understanding the capabilities of LinkedIn® will allow you to leverage them once you’ve built out your network in their system.
3. Reach out to people you already know and build your network
You’ve spent a lifetime making connections. You already belong to multiple networks: your firm, your law school, your alma mater, your professional organizations, your place of worship, the PTA. All of these people know people. They all have connections that have potential value to you. And you have connections that have potential value to them. By reaching out to your already existing contacts, you will quickly reproduce your existing networks and be ready to use the technology to explore the opportunities that already exist in your first level connections, as well as your second and third level connections. You will never know if you don’t build it.
4. Get strategic
Know exactly what you want to accomplish. Write out your Business Development Objectives clearly and concisely such that anyone who read them could tell if you reached them or not. Are they specific? Are they measurable? Once you are clear, consider that you have an enormous network of resources available to you via your LinkedIn® network. Now answer the following questions:
- · How are you positioned with the people in your network?
- · Do they really know what you and your firm offer? If not, why not?
- · How could you communicate that to them?
- · Does your firm have a newsletter? Put a link in your profile so people can subscribe.
- · Do you blog? Via your profile you can direct people to your blog so they can read more about you.
- · Who refers you on a regular basis and why?
- · Do you have enough of these people in your network?
- · Do the people you know have contacts that could be referring you?
- · Do you know the characteristics of the people who refer you?
Once you have the answers, look newly at the network you’ve built. You will see opportunities that you didn’t see before. They were always there. Now leverage them.
5. Use the system to manage relationships
The advanced features contained in the toolbars that LinkedIn® offers give you powerful tools to manage your interactions with the people in your network. Download them and learn to use them. You can keep track of birthdays and overlooked emails. You can get updates from the people in your network as their profile information changes. You can keep track of your searches. Via a scan of your regular emails, you can find new people to connect with and continue to build and cultivate your network.
6. Reach out to meet new people through your contacts
Once you’ve built out your network and cultivated deeper relationships with the people you already know, begin to browse their networks. Look to see if they know people that will help you achieve your Business Development Objectives. You can even do deep, specific searches to find experts, vendors, specific people, and specific companies. Using the built in features of LinkedIn®, reach out to those people through the people that you already know. Use some of that Social Capital that you’ve built up with people. You’ll be surprised how willing they are to help you achieve your goals.
7. Be Consistent
The key to any Business Development strategy is consistency. Schedule 10 minutes a day for the next 90 days to work inside the LinkedIn® system. Not only will you find it enjoyable discovering new sources of business, but you will also build a habit that will transfer into your day-to-day habits and translate into a profitable world of new opportunities.
Social Networking is not a new thing. Professionals have been doing it from the dawn of commerce. Social Networking Software like LinkedIn, however, provides an opportunity to take those networks you’ve built over a lifetime and put them to use.
By developing a systematic approach to developing your network, and a technological backbone to uncover the hidden connections contained in that network, you have the opportunity to set yourself apart from other firms, and produce the kinds of result that Senior Partners in the big firms produce on a regular basis.
In our next article, we’ll address privacy concerns, ethical concerns, and demonstrate how LinkedIn®’s system is built to handle this.
Meanwhile, enjoy building what will likely be one of the best Business Development
tools you will ever encounter.
Raymond Chip Lambert, of Network2Networth, is a Business Development expert who works exclusively with seasoned professionals to leverage their existing relationships through time tested Business Development strategies and online Social Media strategy thereby unlocking the value of their existing network connections. He can be reached at 602-635-4541 or www.network2networth.com.
1Linkedin.com-http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=advertising_info&trk=hb_ft_ads
LinkedIn – In Plain English
Posted by: | CommentsLee LeFever Strikes Again!
One of my original posts to this blog was one of Lee LeFever’s videos on Social Networking.
I just got an email from a friend with this new video that does a great job of explaining the power of LinkedIn.
Please pass this on to the people in your network who are asking you what this "LinkedIn thing" is all about. You will be their hero.
And if we can help you or your organization – or even the organizations of people you know - master the use of the system for your bottom line business results, please contact us.
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Your Outsourced Business Development Training Partner
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The Power of Affiliation
Posted by: | CommentsI just got off the phone with Stacy Burleson co-owner of Beyond Zebra. Stacy was referred to me by Eileen Burick who did our linkedin training.
Now while I was talking to Stacey, I was looking at her LinkedIn profile and noticed that she was an ex-Disney employee – she was a member of a LinkedIn Group for those folks.
Although she said I came "highly recommended", the rapport that opened up in our conversation was amazing. That one piece of information transformed a stranger into a friend – someone I had something in common with.
I shared with her that I still point using the signature sweeping gesture that I was taught at 16 when I worked in the park as a sweeper.
I then started sharing about my speaking engagement at the LACBA Small and Solo Law Firm Conference and that I was speaking to large groups of people about using LinkedIn for marketing and business development.
The world opened up.
You see, she is on the board for the Women’s Business Enterprise Council – West. And they look for speakers that can make a difference for their organization.
Now – I don’t know if it will turn into anything, but she left our call excited that she’d just found a resource for her group. She’s going to pitch the idea of my speaking to her membership.
And that’s the power of affiliation and LinkedIn!
If you’ve had any success stories like this, please let me know. I’d like to interview you and possibly share your story with the folks who are following this blog.
Have a happy 4th of July.
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Your Outsourced Business Develop Training Partner
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Linked In for Realtors – Just found an interview I did with David Crumby on Google
Posted by: | CommentsThought you might have an interest in listening to an interview I did with David Crumby of Assist2Sell that he posted for his franchise network.
I found it with my Google Reader search for my own name (something you may want to consider as people are more and more writing online).
Here’s a link to the post "LinkedIn Expert Audio Interview" on the Assist2Sell Today blog.
Or you can click here to listen to it.
I’m beginning to really use LinkedIn as a way to get the idea that a network is a powerful thing and that it takes strategy to work a network.
I’m of the opinion that most people work networks from a tactical perspective, and I hope that this interview, which was originally designed as a conversation for LinkedIn for Realtors, sheds some light on that.
Let me know what you think.
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Your Outsourced Business Development Training Partner
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An Open Letter to LinkedIn – Let us Really Adopt Your Platform!
Posted by: | CommentsI just posted this as a comment on the LinkedIn.com blog.
I’d been on a phone call with a gentleman I met 18 months ago and was reconnecting because we share a common market. My frustration is this: After this communication, I had to go to LinkedIn to send an invite, go back to my CRM to enter the Email communication, and then set a follow up task to make sure that this opportunity didn’t get dropped. Multiple steps in disjointed systems – They don’t talk.
But what if they could? What if I could do this all in the same place? And it was integrated?
"I am a huge fan of the site! I love the work that you are doing to create a rich, relationship environment.
Some suggestions though:
- Add the functionality to really manage relationships. The Outlook toolbar is a great example of this. I can be reminded to touch base with people if we haven’t emailed in 60 days. I can see when their birthday is and stay on top of it. I can use my Explorer Toolbar to capture people that I want to learn more about. But there is no comprehensive way for me to manage my relationship inside the application itself. I already use LinkedIn as a huge part of my business development strategy. Adding this functionality would move me out of my Outlook environment completely.
- Let me bring my contact’s full info into the application. Then this becomes my platform for everything. You guys are tight with Google – Integrate this with their Apps, Calendar, CRM and email and you’ve got THE KILLER BUSINESS APP. Nothing could touch it. I’d pay handsomely for a system that could do that because I could quintuple my efficiency.
- Let us fully adopt this. Right now it’s fragmented. It’s an additional step. I understand what your focus is – connecting people. Let us take it to the next step to use it as the platform for managing all of it.
As I said, I’m excited about what is happening within LinkedIn and am training people to use it in the small business arena. Add this functionality and you can revolutionize the way business gets done.
My 2 cents."
I’m more than willing to continue to operate inside the current Terms of Service. I understand what the system is for – It’s a Social Medium. So let me add it to my current business processes so I can more closely map the reality of my everyday business experience. That’s the point isn’t it?
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Outsourced Business Development
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"Can You Hear Me Now? How About Now?" AKA It’s the Network
Posted by: | CommentsIn the last several weeks I’ve had the privilege to speak to some pretty intelligent people who have had various levels of success in their businesses. And as someone who puts on live events (see our LinkedIn® Live! Event in Phoenix) I find it intensely interesting that people still don’t get that it’s not just about who you meet.
That got me thinking about how to effectively communicate what I know about networks, the nature of networks, and the impact that has on business development and referrability.
The first thing that came to mind were those annoying Verizon® commercials with the technician in the horned rimmed glasses. He was on the phone with one person – ostensibly testing the quality of the network – and behind him were the thousands of people that were BEHIND the network. The power of that message is that it’s not just about the one-on-one of the phone call – but the network that’s behind it. (BTW – read about how effective that branding campaign was) Can you hear me now?
The second thing that happened was a phone call I had with a gentleman from Oklahoma City, Kirk Shelley. Kirk is interested in what happened with the Ron Paul phenomenon. Grass roots organizing. Millions of dollars donated to an "unknown". A message that got out regardless of how the corporate media covered the story. Blogs. Social Media. This is the true nature of a network. Can you hear me now?
Then there’s the Internet. A network of networks. Think about how that has impacted your life. How you collect and manage information. What can you do today in 10 minutes that even 10 years ago was next to impossible? Google? E-mail? LinkedIn® Can you hear me now?
In my humble opinion, placing a "networked" technological backbone (known as social media software) behind humanity’s aspirations will revolutionize humanity the way the Internet revolutionized (and continues to revolutionize) information.
Go back and read the "Cluetrain Manifesto".
See how much it has influenced the online world over the last 10 years. See how much markets (which are networks) have begun to create technologies to be heard. (Blogs – You Tube – Social Bookmarks, etc.) Can you hear me now?
And finally, there was a poll in the Phoenix Business Journal about "21st Century Networking" and some of the responses highlight the current state of thinking – at least by respondents – around networking, social networking sites, and social media. People still don’t fully understand the implications.
Online social networking, is not necessarily about the one-on-one connections. It’s about getting access to what’s really in the NETWORK. Graduates of my Business Development Training know this. Of course real world networks are important – that’s what social media is about. It’s about connecting with people you know in real life. It’s about sharing resources, knowledge, connections, etc. It’s about discovering new tools that will make your life easier, more enjoyable, productive, or profitable and sharing those with the folks in your network. And with tools like LinkedIn®, MySpace®, Facebook®, etc. you can begin to meet your markets where THEY are – know what THEY think. Know what is important to THEM.
When you understand this – you can begin to speak what my friend Jon Ward refers to as their ‘Tribal Conversation’. And when you do that, you are no longer an outsider looking in. You are someone who is one of them – who has solutions to their problems. Who speaks their language. Who knows their friends.
And that, my friends, is the opportunity of a Network.
Can you hear me now?
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network2Networth
It’s Much More Than a Book of Business!™
Social networking is not new for business owners and entrepreneurs. Many of you belong to Professional Associations, Chambers of Commerce, Leads Groups, etc. For some of you, it may be your single largest source of business. Some of you have given up on social networking as a business generation strategy because it was a “waste of time”. Regardless of your opinion, when done well Social Networking can be an enormous source of leads, deals, and connections to resources.
Well, you’d have to be in a cave not to have noticed that the process has gone online – and that has some pretty staggering implications for business generation and lead generation.
Social Media describes a wide range of on-line applications which provide a technological backbone where you can manage and create relationships with current and potential customers, suppliers, vendors, team members, channel partners and experts.
In future articles, I will be exploring how Social Media can impact your bottom line by taking the documents, articles, photos, conversations, problem solving, and issue management that you deal with on a daily basis and involving the people in your networks in such a way that they come to know and engage you and your business deeply and profoundly.
Increasingly, the current and potential stakeholders in your business are going online to find out about you and your services. If you are not managing the process of strategically placing information about you and your business online, your current and potential customers will be migrating to your competition.
Where do you start? I recommend www.LinkedIn.com. It is one of the largest B2B centric Social Business Networks online. By completing the profile well, you will become instantly findable on the Internet.
In my next post, we will discuss the impact Search Engines have on driving business to you and examine why Social Media – worked into your already existing business networks – can make or break you as your stakeholders move online.
Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Deep Business Development
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