Archive for July, 2009

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In the early days when Internet was still new, people could only connect from home or at work. Connections started to improve in speed and later on, the method of transmission became wireless. Because wireless gives you more freedom to go online, more people are starting to travel with their laptops and other mobile devices so they can access their favorite sites on the go. Web applications and social networking sites including LinkedIn can be accessed as well so you can be a lot more productive while travelling.

But when people are on the go, they tend to access the Internet for specific purposes. Some access LinkedIn to check for messages while others want to meet up with other LinkedIn contacts. Utilize these cool features to turn LinkedIn to your ultimate travel companion.

LinkedIn Mobile

LinkedIn Mobile was announced well over a year ago supporting a variety of handsets including Blackberry phones and iPhones. It is accessible by pointing the browser to http://m.linkedin.com where you can login using the same information you normally use online and then have quick access to important areas such as LinkedIn updates and alerts. Phones with big screens will obviously have the advantage here.

MyTravel Application

MyTravel is the application of choice for business travelers. This application allows you to check out all the people in your LinkedIn network that are near your current location as you travel. This is perfect for laptop users that may travel to remote areas and see anyone that is nearby. The application may also double as a social application as well since you can pretty much use it to hook-up with friends that are in your LinkedIn network or make formal meetings.

Mobile Number Tracing

If you are in a remote area with a laptop and Internet connection, but have no real means to contact a person if that person isn’t online, you can use LinkedIn from your laptop to search for that contact’s mobile phone or land line so you can communicate through that channel. Mobile tracing can easily be done through LinkedIn’s search features.

Friend Finding

LinkedIn may be a professional service, but you can still use it for your own convenience. If you happen to be in the mood in meeting new professionals for social purposes, you can use the search function to find people that are in your area.

Job Seeking

LinkedIn is a great tool to use if you recently moved to a new place. You can begin your job hunting quickly whether you are in your new place or a local coffee shop with Wi-Fi access. Just do a search for professionals in the area that are looking for people to hire and you can surprise them by telling them that are you just around the corner.

LinkedIn developers are continuing to roll-out new features that benefit travelers. Their current set of features should already be enough for people to keep in touch with other professionals no matter where they go. It is all a matter of making full use of all these features.

LinkedIn is a site that gives you all the tools to interact with other professionals around the world and gives you the chance to connect with old friends and colleagues with ease. But what you really do in LinkedIn is entirely up to you. You have full control of what you can put on your profile and which web applications you wish to add. You decide who you want to message and what people you want to interact with.

Still, everyone’s objective in LinkedIn is to show their professionalism to others and have as many connections as possible. In order to achieve that goal, it always helps to practice a few good habits to ensure that you are making the most out of what LinkedIn has to offer and witness positive results sooner.

Tie a Blog to LinkedIn

Create a Wordpress blog that is geared towards professionalism or link your existing blog if you prefer to be more open. The main objective here is to keep the blog updated so your network will always have something new to read or learn about. Other people that may see your LinkedIn profile can also see your blog posts which can create better impressions since blogs are meant to make you stand out more.

Update your Blog and Profile when Major Achievements Occur

There will always be certain days in your professional life where you achieve a milestone that is worth posting in your LinkedIn profile or blog. Once these are posted, they remain on your profile for everyone to see so it is important to commit these updates immediately.

Stay Updated with the Latest LinkedIn News

Although LinkedIn does show you updates on your main page after logging into LinkedIn, LinkedIn also has its very own blog that can be viewable by both members and non-members. Use your favorite RSS reader to subscribe to the LinkedIn blog at http://blog.linkedin.com so you can see what is under the hood from the LinkedIn team and developers.

Keep an Eye on Your E-mails and any LinkedIn Alerts on your Page

If your profile is complete, there are bound to be people that will message you and ask you business-related questions about what you have on your profile. To maintain your professional integrity, you should be responsive and answer their queries as soon as you get those messages. Logging into your LinkedIn or checking your e-mail daily is a great habit to lessen the waiting period that prospects have to go through.

Try starting off with by engaging in some of the habits and then slowly work your way up. You will be surprised with how much more progress you are getting with LinkedIn when more people contact you.

Spread Out your LinkedIn Profile Link

There are tons of professionals out there that may not be members of LinkedIn or haven’t even heard of it. Get your LinkedIn link realized by using the widgets that are available in your LinkedIn homepage. You can scatter them in blogs, forums, websites, and other social networking sites for better exposure.

The Internet used to be nothing more than a fantastic place to look for information through the many hosted websites on the World Wide Web. Now it has become a huge center where people are connecting with one another regardless of location and sharing information as well. People enjoy staying in touch with others online and recently businesses have been taking advantage of the technology. Social networking sites continue to thrive with new members coming in each and every day.

These people have their own personal purposes for being on these social networking sites. Some of the younger folks enjoy social networking to meet new friends online while others just like to see what all of their close friends are up to.

Even professionals use these modern social networking sites to keep in touch with clients and prospects. But not all the professionals are successful in connecting with other professionals because most of the social networking sites cover a general audience. This is where LinkedIn came in and started to expand on its own social network where all the professionals link together. LinkedIn seems to the perfect world to be in when looking for a job, looking for old colleagues, or seeking professional help. But you might be wondering what you should do with all the other social networking sites. LinkedIn is not designed to replace these sites, but work with them. Here are the modern social networking sites that work very well with LinkedIn.

Facebook

Facebook is highly renowned for its huge network and wide variety of different applications that you can add to your profile. There are several LinkedIn applications that give some of LinkedIn’s core features directly to Facebook. These applications also keep your LinkedIn contacts much closer as you are connected to them both professionally and personally. There are new applications in development every day so you should occasionally check for any LinkedIn applications that come out.

Twitter

Twitter is rising in popularity everyday with more people engaging in the somewhat addictive microblogging service. Even LinkedIn has its very own Twitter link and is seriously considering adding features that tie the two services closer together. There is no official integration right now, but you can place these two services together using a WordPress blog as the bridge. Both Twitter and LinkedIn have WordPress support so once you successfully implement their widgets, bring some traffic to your blog through regular advertisement methods so people can recognize use as a professional and Twitterer.

These are the top two social networking sites that LinkedIn is closely tied to. LinkedIn also has applications of its own that integrate well with lesser known services including TripIt and Company Buzz. It is expected for LinkedIn to create more applications to accelerate the professional features of any popular service. Make sure that you subscribe to the LinkedIn blog and other blogs of your favorite social networking sites for any LinkedIn related news. LinkedIn is slowly catching up with the mainstream social networking sites and becoming globally recognized by professionals.

Social networking is all about getting noticed so you can link to others without the need of chasing everyone down. This is exactly how it should be when you are trying to make your résumé stand out in LinkedIn too. Not everyone has the spare time to go scouting for other professionals that are willing to entertain any of your queries and see how good your résumé is. Often times you might end up looking in the wrong areas because not everyone is registered in LinkedIn to hire people.

If you follow these tricks, your résumé should be exposed to greater crowds resulting to people going to you instead of you going to them. The best thing about these tricks is that you can do them all once and just wait patiently for the results.

Preparing your LinkedIn Profile for Prime Time

Because you are expecting people to stumbling across your profile, you need to make sure they get a good first impression. First you should go over your LinkedIn profile and make sure all the details are up-to-date without any missing fields so that there is much to see. You can even go beyond that by making use of LinkedIn applications such as the Files application by Box.net. This is a great application to utilize for showcasing your works no matter what file type they are. Make full use of Box.net’s organization features so you can have people go through all of your stuff. Give your profile one last check and then proceed to exposing your résumé.

Getting Noticed inside LinkedIn

There are millions of users registered in LinkedIn with a good fraction probably in the same field as you so your résumé may not be noticed right away until you “shaken things up” a little bit within LinkedIn’s community. You can participate in group discussions by joining groups and answer questions posted in LinkedIn answers. When doing this, remember that you shouldn’t be scouting for people so never give any hints that you are desperate for something. Instead, just stay focused on the discussions and make the most of what you are good at. The more you are active, the more people that will be interested to check out your résumé.

Getting Noticed outside LinkedIn

Once you are finished making a scene within LinkedIn, you can start gaining more exposure by doing activities outside LinkedIn. The quickest way to do this is to set up a blog. Blogs are great to use because they are almost effortless to set up and the LinkedIn widgets make it easy to link the blog to LinkedIn. It is recommended to use blog services that are compatible with LinkedIn so that blog entries can be fetched. You need to be fairly consistent with blogging and you should also advertise your blogs in other social networks for added exposure. You can even try including your LinkedIn link in your profile so other contacts can check you out.

Try to dedicate a few weeks in doing this and ensure that your profile stays up-to-date. You will be surprised with how many more inquires you get regarding your fantastic résumé.

Social networking is the biggest buzz right now around the Internet with many of the most popular websites and companies having their own dedicated profile buttons leading to their respective social networking profiles. Early sites like YouTube and MySpace took the center stage and now there are buttons for LinkedIn as well.

This is a big surprise because LinkedIn has a targeted crowd unlike the other social networking sites. If you visit the LinkedIn homepage, you will see that professionals are the main target. If you are already a member in LinkedIn now, you’d probably agree and consider yourself a professional as well.

But the fact that LinkedIn buttons are made visible to the public leads people to believe that they are showing off their LinkedIn profiles for everyone to see. As a professional, you can say that your own profile is for professionals to look at, but how would non-professionals react to your profile if you expose it to them. If you don’t see yourself as a professional right now and saw someone else’s LinkedIn profile, you too might be wondering if LinkedIn is the next social network to hop into. In general, the main question here is: Is LinkedIn for non-professionals too? Despite what how LinkedIn describes itself, LinkedIn is definitely a network where anyone can get involved. Although it is obviously not for kids, there are a few facts that back up this claim.

There are No Strict Requirements to Join LinkedIn

There is no need to be intimidated in joining LinkedIn if you are not a member or inviting a non-professional person in your network. Registration doesn’t cost a thing unless you decide to take on the upgrade plans which aren’t recommended until you are more familiar with LinkedIn. You don’t have to submit any special documents or credentials either. Filling up your profile with useful documents to share will help in networking with others, but there is no major rule that is enforced.

High School and College Graduates may find LinkedIn Useful for a Head Start

A high school and college diploma are two things that must be present in any profile if you are hoping to get a good job. This happens to be one of the fields that you can enter in your LinkedIn profile. Even if you haven’t started with your first job as a professional, you can still slowly fill up your profile and connect with others early. LinkedIn doubles as a people finder and you might even hook up with others that graduated in the same school as you.

LinkedIn is like a Modern Job Directory

Professionals are not only searching for other professionals, but they are also searching for ordinary people who are willing to become professionals. Therefore if they see that your profile doesn’t have much credentials, but has a lot of information highlighting how ambitious of a person you are in relation to your interests, other LinkedIn professionals may come to you. LinkedIn could be the site to thank when you finally become a professional.

LinkedIn will continue to say that it is a site for professionals. But understand that anyone can and make full use of the services that they offer for their own benefits as long as it doesn’t violate their Terms of Agreement.