Tip 1: Never send a standard or default invitation

I almost felt stupid including this as a valuable tip, but I received 4 invitations this morning and 3 of them were the default text.

The first reason to follow this rule is that you will probably reduce your chances of getting IDKed by a factor of 100 as any kind of a legitimate request to connect will probably be accepted or archived without incident. This is assuming you don’t break the next rule.

Tip 2: Don’t send a prospecting or sales oriented invitation

The worst thing you can do in an invitation is ask someone for business. Your invite should be about developing a valued relationship with the other person, NOT about getting their business. Any hint of prospecting will probably cause you to be denied the connection and possibly get an IDK if you don’t know the person already.

Tip 3: Provide value

Offer the new potential connection something of value. If you want people to connect with you, just like trying to get their business, you must offer them something of value.

This might be simply your offer to help them get connected on LinkedIn, or information or resources (that are free) that you can provide them to help better their current situation.

Following these three tips will help you get connected more easily and with less chance of getting an IDK.

“I participate in a lot of groups fairly actively but its not leading to any business. What can I do to get business out of my efforts?

I think this is probably a very common question so I thought I would share my answer.

The first thing you need to realize about using LinkedIn is that participate is primarily “visibility.” Though you can get business by being visible (more on that in a moment) that isn’t how you get business.

The way you get business from visibility is by demonstrating your wisdom and expertise. This is why I tell people when they answer questions or participate in discussions don’t hold back or be lazy in what you say. Take the time to give a serious answer that really gives value.

Many people have questioned me on this in the past saying you can’t give away everything – or no one will ever do business with you. To this I say, not true. By giving real value you develop reciprocity in others. You also develop a very solid reputation for being an expert.

So let’s get back to how you go about getting business.

Business is developed by cultivating “valued relationships.” This is a relationship where someone is connected to you because of the value you provide. If you bang out enough great answers in the forums and question and answer sections of LinkedIn you will start to get a constant flow of people who connect simply because what you say is of value to them and they want to stay close.

Now that you have a “relationship,” a connection you can continue to build value and in that process put yourself in a position to talk business. Getting in that position is accomplished by being able to make helpful recommendations and supply useful and valuable resources on that subject.

These specific business items give you the opportunity to talk business with your valued relationships.

From Flyn

I have gotten hundreds of wonderful comments about the quality of the material in this blog. I truly hope that my material is helping YOU get more business on LinkedIn.

I would also like to encourage you to ask questions. I am happy to help in any way I can and I will respond to your questions. Please send them to Flyn@OnlineBusinessNetowker.net.

If you like this blog please publicize and tell others about it. Feel share my name with anyone that may need help or has questions about LinkedIn. And don’t hesitate to give my name and invite others to connect in your thank you note to those that connect with you. It’s a great way to develop value in those new relationships.

Thank you.

Remember here that we’re talking about someone that really doesn’t know you yet – a first contact so to speak. So what you share with them has to be of a general nature, but yet it must have real value.

Sometimes depending on the subject it is easy to find things to share. For example my knowledge of LinkedIn and marketing allows me to easily share a suggestion for my new contacts profile or website that will be of real value.

In the case were you don’t know someone or there business directly you must find information that will be of real value. This can be a very difficult challenge in many cases and we must default to an introduction or the sharing of a resource.

Some simple examples might be; a recruiter sharing a tip or two related to the person’s profile or resume; or a writer or marketer suggesting a different sentence or message within a profile.

I apologize for not being able to provide more examples but this is a very individualized thing dependant on both the giver and the recipient’s businesses. You may have to really dig depending on your area of expertise to figure out what kind of tip or suggestion you can make.

The secret here is that finding something will make a huge impact on your first contact with those to whom you connect.

As for resources and people, on LinkedIn someone like myself that can help others succeed on LinkedIn is a great thing to provide. The second thing I have found people really appreciate is the recommendation of a great book (make sure the subject is relevant of course).

From Flyn

Just in case you aren’t aware I am running my Free LinkedIn Power Networking seminar to day at 2PM PST – you can still sign up at:

www.OnlineBusinessNetworker.net/webinar/6

]]> http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/2010/04/monetizing-linkedin-and-a-most-valuable-skill/feed/ 0 http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/2010/03/linkedin-if-you-make-a-mistake-how-to-fix-it/ http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/2010/03/linkedin-if-you-make-a-mistake-how-to-fix-it/#comments Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:05:24 +0000 Flyn http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/?p=565 You cannot participate on LinkedIn actively for any length of time without making mistakes. Since I just had an unpleasant situation, I thought I would share it and show you how to protect yourself from further pain or issues with LinkedIn management.

My episode really isn’t all that serious and I am quite sure I actually did nothing for which LinkedIn management would be upset. But the fact is that you can do things that can cause problems without realizing it beforehand and you should be aware of the best course for correcting it.

My mistake was posting a question related to politics – to be specific a video on the health care bill. My intent was two fold, one I think this is an important issue and wanted to see what I could learn form other. Also the video was quite chilling. It was also possibly a spin on the facts, to what extent I don’t know. The second thing I wanted to accomplish is getting people involved in the issue because it is so important and will affect us all.

What happened is this discussion quickly got very ugly. I responded to posters with questions and opinions to find out what they though and believe. One specific conversation got particularly nasty (not on my part) and the person threatened to contact LinkedIn management.

At this point I realized that the question was too hot and withdrew it immediately. The second thing I did way to contact LinkedIn management and tell them exactly what had happened. I asked them to delete the question completely from the server even though I had already hidden it. I also sent them my side of the story and the note from the person who was upset. Though I would probably have been justified in complaining to LinkedIn for the nasty message I told them I was not filling any complaint – I simply wanted them to know my question got out of hand and caused some ruffled feathers and that I had pulled it as soon as I realized it was out of hand.

I tell you this story to point out to you that your best course in any bad situation on LinkedIn is to act immediately with all the parties involved and send LinkedIn management a note with copies of your handling and an explanation.

If you did something that was improper tell them you will correct it. I can assure you that this is always the best course. With regard to networking on LinkedIn this is one of the benefits of my free and paid courses; you’ll learn how to do things in ways that avoid problems and still allow you to leverage this fantastic tool called LinkedIn.

Lesson – that’ll be my last political question. (Maybe I’ll have to stick to less sensitive subjects like “sex” and “religion” …lol).

From Flyn

Please know that I welcome your comments, opinions, and questions. This blog is here to help you succeed on LinkedIn. If you would like to know how to do something let me know and maybe I’ll publish a post on the topic. Please stick to networking strategy and tactics and avoid user function questions as they can simply be looked up in the help menus.

Please share this post using the social media below and post your comments below.

You should of course have such an item connected with your website so visitors to your profile have a reason to visit. But you can provide yourself with lots of potential value items very easily by using the “Google Alerts” feature.

Search Google for “Google Alerts” and then fill in the form for the alert. Whatever your area of expertise; then simply enter a keyword phrase and select the various options. Google will send you email alerts as to that subject showing up on the web.

I suggest that when you find alerts that are useful, that you save them in a document with their links. Organize them in whatever way you can so that when you get a new connection or are surfing your own you can connect the two.

Sending people regular links to resources is a great way to increase the communication and affinity between you as well as to monetize LinkedIn.

If you want better relationships with your connections and thus more opportunities, all you have to do is communicate more frequently. You can do this by posting questions or answering the questions of others. You can also do it by paying attention to what’s going on in the world that is interesting and forwarding those things of value to your connections who would potentially benefit.

In addition, and it’s my favorite, you can simply send your connection a message asking how you can help, or if they’d like to chat and investigate how you can help each other.

Whenever you increase the amount of communication that takes place you also increase the amount of affinity between you and that other person.

This actually reveals another secret of LinkedIn. By making yourself visible in valuable ways (great questions, answers, content, or communications) you develop in others an affinity for you.

Whether people are connected to or not seeing your posts, receiving your communications, and just reading more about you will develop in them an affinity for you. In the future there may be some point where your paths cross. At that time you may greatly benefit from the affinity you have built up without ever knowing it existed.

Asking questions is one of the best ways to engage others on LinkedIn. Asking questions has advantages over answering them. Learn how and why in this blog article. Many people on LinkedIn don’t ask questions, they answer them.

You should realize that when you answer questions you really only get to engage one person, the questioner. However, when you ask questions you have the ability to engage many.

The engagement is easy as you can use their answer as the focal point for the start of the conversation. You can complement them on their opinion or ask a sub question, or even just investigate them and start a conversation re your interest in them.

If you chose your topics correctly you can get 20, 30, or even more people to participate in your question. This gives you the ability to start a conversation with each of them.

One of the keys to asking questions is choosing a hot topic. In almost every field of endeavor there are subjects that are highly contested or disputed. There are also new trends where only the early adopters are participating. These are subjects that will get you lots of responses and opportunities to engage others in conversations.

There is another opportunity in asking questions that most people don’t realize. Although I would be the first to tell you that when you ask a question you don’t want to use the LinkedIn feature that sends the questions to your connections, I do suggest that you can use your question to engage people that you don’t know.

How? By going to the profile of people that are expert or likely knowledgeable of your subject and sending them an email via the “Send Message” link and asking if they might provide their input based on their expertise.

This message should be similar to an invitation in that you tell the person why you would like their opinion and give them a great reason for selecting them to ask.

If you are careful and very professional you should not have any problems. And though some may not participate some will.

You could also reverse this process in an interesting way by researching a person (or group of people) first – then asking a question that would be perfect for them. The invite them to answer your question is the way suggested above.

A connection of mine recently sent me a copy of his new follow-up to any one connecting to him. In the note he provided a number of values to his new business networking connections including five or six names of people he recommends connecting with.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the above strategy. However, it can be empowered by giving less more often. By giving one or two names or value items in the first message and then sending another some time latter and so on, you get much more bang for your buck. Someone seeing your name and getting value from you once is great, but if it happens three times they’ll never forget.

When I asked him why he had not split up the message in the first place he indicated he had no way to track the folks.  It occurred to me that there is a LinkedIn solution to this. Its not the greatest but it would work.

Using the tag feature of your connections list you could simply tag them with a date represented by number 030110 followed by a letter representing the message thus: 030110B.

You could then send your first message, tag the connection and use the tag to know when to follow up – if you scheduled them all for Friday’s for example you could make retrieval and follow-up a bit easier.

Though this is not the most streamline version of a follow up program it is a workable one that has the potential to make a huge impact on your business networking activities.

Though I have focused this on LinkedIn, the method is sound for any networking activity or social and business networking.

Your comments and sharing of this post are appreciated.

Use your new relationships to feed your old ones more value buy appropriately connecting them to your existing contacts. As your business networking efforts generate new people, introducing them to existing contacts adds value to both.

In making these connections you must of course make appropriate referrals. Don’t just connect people to connect them; do it in a way that it will provide value to both.

Keep in mind that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a “business” reason; it could simply be that the person you are sending them to is simply a valuable business networking contact. In fact, a good networking contact may be worth more as a referral than a specific business lead. The power networker will help your existing connection in building more of their own valuable relationships.

You will find that when you regularly connect others in your business networking efforts that your network will grow in strength and power. And you’ll also discover that the reciprocity you develop with your network turns in to a windfall of opportunities for you as those you have helped decide to reciprocate.

From Flyn

Please share this post and your comments with others. Tweets, DIGGs and other social promos are much appreciated.

Tomorrow I will discuss some “excuses” for making contact with your connections so as to build those relationships.

I don’t particularly like the “LinkedIn Invitation” as it is usually done far too impersonally. I prefer a much more straight forward approach. However in some cases it can be use the introduction or nothing.

I suggest to you that before you ask for an introduction that you do two things. The first is to try to make the introduction a 1-hop connection instead of two. The more people your introduction goes through the more chances it won’t be passed on.

I have had relatively few instances where my network wouldn’t pass something on, but you can severely reduce that by reducing it to one-hop.

The key action in your effort to get introduced is to  reach out to the person (if you don’t know them) you want to introduce you before you ask for the invitation. If you have any kind of a relationship or first hand knowledge of the person you are asking to pass your invitation on, you have a far better chance it will be passed and at least some chance for some good words from the person passing the invitation.

When I say reach out I mean, make a call, or send an email to this connection inviting them to chat and see how you can help each other out on LinkedIn. Don’t worry about whether this person “looks” like they can be valuable to your or not – as your real goal is be to be of value to them in some simple way – passing them a resource, a connection, or helping them with some other issue.

Once you have established whatever value you can create with the connection, you can now come back to this person and say – “By the way I noticed you are connected to so and so and I would like to get connected with them.” Don’t forget of course to send a note along to the person you are trying to get introduced to telling them why and of what value you might be to them.

Because of your efforts you now have a much better chance of getting a great introduction.

If you have followed this process, and you happen to have a double hop invitation, you can now potentially ask your first connection, since you have some relationship with them, to tell the second connection in the chain that you are a good person and that they should forward this invitation to the intended party.

You will find that this “relationship based” approach is very valuable.

From Flyn

FYI – Technical issue

Just a not for those of you who may have noticed. I am having some technical difficulty with my links in the groups when posting in the news sections. Some of them are being corrupted and sending viewers to a page that says account suspended. No one has yet figured out what is going on, my apologies for the inconvenience.

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Last Chance for Special Pricing on My Premium Course

Finally, I am getting ready to publically announce and launch my Power Networking Profit System course for LinkedIn – this is your last chance to benefit from the pricing on the “charter memberships” before it changes.

At the moment you can try out the course for the first month for just $1 – The trial includes an introduction chapter plus chapters 1-5 of the course. This is 67 pages of text material, 5 audio chapters, and 17 training videos – a pretty good deal for a dollar even from my prejudice point of view. Not only that, but while you’re a member of the course you can also attend my free coaching call each week. Click here to enroll.