The tip is simply this: Never respond to a personal attack.

If you participate in the question and answer forum or the group discussions long enough you will eventually have someone that disagrees with you go beyond normal debate and start to attack you.

The smart thing to do in this instance is to not respond in any way to the personal attacks. By responding you will make the discussion bigger and possibly nastier. This is not the way you want to display yourself in the public forums.

You may even find within the personal attack some factual items re the content of the discussions to which you disagree, but don’t respond to those either. Any response you make is an incentive or opportunity for your attacker to respond and make the discussion worse.

If you should ever get in such a situation where you have made some posts in response to a negative post or personal attack, I suggest that as soon as you realize the conversation is going down hill that you simply delete and withdraw all of your comments and responses in that line.

In my opinion this is the only way to handle this situation on LinkedIn or in any other public forum. You’ll find that most of the other options work similarly to pouring gas on a fire.

There are some traps to avoid and methods and techniques that you must understand to really monetize LinkedIn fully. Some of this information is in my Success Kit – see the link below my picture to get your copy – its FREE! But that’s not enough.

Knowing LinkedIn isn’t enough

In my Power Networking System for LinkedIn which shows networkers how to monetize LinkedIn, mid way into the materials is a 30 minute video that talks about the marketing part of what you need to do to be successful in monetizing LinkedIn.

In making the video it occurred to me that it is not the LinkedIn mechanics alone that make your networking successful. There are thousands on LinkedIn this very minute who have large networks and or are very active and yet they aren’t getting more business or not as much as they’d like.

The truth is that monetizing LinkedIn is as much about your marketing methods as it is about the more sophisticated networking strategies and techniques. The reason for this is that all of these LinkedIn techniques are based on marketing / selling strategies for there success.

When you invite someone to connect you are basically making an offer or in a light form selling proposition asking someone else to do something you want them to do.

For example: I have invited thousands to connect with me and never received and IDK. I have often invited complete strangers using a LinkedIn invitation and never had a problem. In fact 99% of the people I ask to connect actually do so.

Why so much success. I believe it is in the way I position myself and the messaging I use to engage others. It’s the marketing application of the LinkedIn user methods.

Additionally, I generate many different opportunities within my network and on LinkedIn. Opportunities come from being able to take the next step beyond having a connection. The key to success is putting yourself in the right position to talk business. This too is a function of how you are positioning and marketing yourself.

To be successful on LinkedIn you must have the following.

• You must have an approach and presence that gets you connected to others and drives them to view your profile.
• A unique selling proposition that will bring people from your profile to your website or into a conversation.
• You must also have an effective way to be proactive in creating opportunities that will not be perceived as prospecting or selling. You must have an effective “networking” approach.
• And finally you must have a good way to engage those that come to your site or call you so that you can develop a relationship that has the potential to produce business.

Summary

Thought you must be able to maneuver around the obstacles of and barriers of LinkedIn, real success comes in how you position and market yourself to the LinkedIn population.

Successfully monetizing LinkeIn is all about mastering the correct “tone” and the proper “content” of your communication. In a networking environment like LinkedIn these are the some of most important factors for success.

From Flyn

If you are interested in these things and find this blog valuable, please get my success kit (link under my picture) as it contains a mini (FREE) version of my LinkedIn Power Networking System. Then consider upgrading to my full system before my Flagship membership program closes (shortly). All the details are on the membership site where the success kit resides.

I will be doing a free LinkedIn networking seminar on Tuesday Sept. 8th see the events page on this blog that will be up by tomorrow.

Once again I would like to encourage readers comment on my posts and ask me questions. I want this blog to make you successful and the only way I can do that is to know that you are getting good information from it and finding out what you don’t know so that I can provide it.

This post is a bit unusual as it is the first post that on the surface may seem to not really be about LinkedIn. I would submit to you that in fact this has everything to do with LinkedIn and all of your marketing efforts via networking.

The skills of networking are intertwined with other skills such as communication, sales, negotiation, marketing, and many others. To be a real master of networking you must also study these other diciplines.

Background

In the post I’m going to share a marketing formula that is probably as old as marketing. The principles of this formula were derived early in the history of marketing. Much of the basis for this formula was probably given to us by one of the founders of modern marketing Claude C. Hopkins author of the wonderful book “My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising.”

I would also like to give credit for this material to another book called Monopolize Your Marketplace by Richard Harshaw. It is his reconstruction of these principles that originally brought this information to me. Both books are must reading for anyone in marketing and sales – and since networking is about selling in a refined way, I would say networkers should read them as well. Not to mention that most networkers are business people and this data is crucial to business success.

Marketing for Networking Success

So let’s get to it. Here in simple terms is the marketing formula.

Step One: Interrupt

In order to sell one’s product or service on first must be seen or observed. The first step in the formula is the step of getting attention. On LinkedIn and other social media resources this occurs when you demonstrate your expertise and potential as an invaluable resource.

In a normal ad you would try to use one of the following areas to get attention: something familiar, something unusual abnormal or strange, or something threatening.

By being invaluable and supplying people with great data on LinkedIn you start to make yourself “unusual.”

Step Two: Engage

In the engage step you tell people what you are going to tell or give them that will be helpful or useful in making the decision at hand. In other words you hook them on the fact you have the information they want.

Step Three: Educate

In step three you give them the information that you promised in the “Engagement” step. You give them the great information they were looking for.

Step Four: Offer

This is the one step almost everyone leaves out. Look at 100 small business web pages and you will be lucky to find anyone who takes this step.

In order to bring in a new prospect you must start by making an offer that will be valuable to the common person that would have interest in your product or service. That offer must be of great value and be of low risk. In other words, you want lots of value and very little risk on the part of the prospect so that he or she is willing to accept.

Offing someone a free consultation though valuable is much higher risk as the prospect has to make a commitment to meet with you and feels that creates an obligation. Offering a free report in exchange for and email address and a name is a much lower risk offer that gets the prospect engaged.

Summary

I have not gone into great detail as this subject deserves much more investigation and study than the space here will provide. I suggest that you read the above books and learn these principles.

Then use them in all of your communication on LinkedIn and in the materials that you are using to attract others to your product or service such as your profile, your resume, your website, and you company collateral.

This is a very powerful formula that works and it can be applied to networking with great success.

LinkedIn unfortunately doesn’t provide a good way to manage your connections, so I’m going to give you some ideas on how to do it off-line. This will in turn provide a backup of your connections list just in case something happens to your account.

Because of the way this operates you should still regularly back up your LinkedIn connection’s list to your system unless you are manually adding each of your new connections as you get them. This is necessary since there is no way to synchronize the new additions to your original downloaded list.

Step #1 – Download your connections from LinkedIn

This is very simple to do.

• Click on the “Connections” link under “Contacts” in the right hand menu.
• Now scroll to the bottom of this page and look in the white border for the link “Export connections.” Click that link.
• Now chose the file type from the drop down menu – I would chose the “Microsoft Outlook (.CSV)” file unless you are using one of the other products.
• Now type in the security code and “Export.”

This will save the file to your hard drive where you can open it with Excel or import it to your database program.

Step #2 – Clean up the file

Open your connections file in Excel – you can use Excel as your management tool  if you want. Excel provides  a simple inexpensive way to manage your contacts and will work just fine for this purpose. Better of course would be use a contact management system like ACT or Maximizer. If you’re going to import the file into the program of the file type you chose to download, you may skip the rest of this step. If you wish to just use Execl, continue.

Double click on the lines between the column letters to make the data fit the columns for each of the columns containing data. That will probably be; First Name, Last Name, E-mail Address, Company, and Job Title. You may have to scroll to the right to see some of these columns.

Now find the columns without any data and right click on the letter box at the top and delete them. If there are multiple columns in a row with no data you can drag your cursor across the column letters at the top with the mouse button down to select multiple columns and delete them all in one shot.

Unfortunately, since there is no way to synchronize LinkedIn with your own system you will be forced to put the new contacts in as you get them. If you wish to simplify this task, you can simply add only those new connections on which you get more data.

Step #3 – Tracking

You will be sending people your thank you for connecting message and then you may have some other messages you send out such as an invitation to engage. You may want to add a column (of field if you’re using a database of some sort) where you can indicate what you have sent and when.

You may also wish to keep a note as to the original connection date and add a field that distinguishes the engaged contacts for the ones you haven’t engaged. That way you can sort them out when needed.

Step #4 – Networking Data

I would call this column, or name this field, “About.” You will use this column to enter any data you discover about your connections, such as their wants, needs, or interests.

Once you have done this and saved the file, you will have a place to put key information about your connections that will help you in your networking. Excel and the database programs will all let you search for specific terms thus finding what you need easily.

If as you engage your connections, you find out what their wants needs and interests are you can use this data to help you provide value to them in any number of ways. With this information you will be able to determine what resources might be of value to them and who you might be able to connect them with in your network.

Summary

When you meet or connect with people on LinkedIn you’ll now have a way to take the information they give you about their needs and wants and make it useful to your networking effort.

You can obviously get more sophisticated that I’ve described here, but I just wanted to provide you a simple method and guidelines that will let you manage your contacts as LinkedIn provides no such apparatus and probably never will.

There is however one other thing you should consider managing off line  and that is your Questions and Answers. This is the subject of Wednesday’s post (7/29/09). In tomorrow’s post (7/28/09) I will talk about what you need to learn about your connections if you wish to position yourself to succeed.

A Great LinkedIn Tactic for Cutting Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face

I just received a note from one of my new connections telling me that if I don’t open up my connections  that they would disconnect. (I thought they were, and my settings say they are, but for some reason this person couldn’t get in to look at them.)

Personally I don’t believe a “threat” is ever the right way to start a relationship especially a networking one. The exception would be to threaten to help the other person!

This person is right on one issue, my connections should be public. However, in my opinion this is not a good policy or way to act on LinkedIn. I do believe that it’s a great example of cutting of your nose to spite your face.

Here’s why…

Yes, it’s true when they are closed that others cannot go through your contacts — but if you have any kind of a network at all, you aren’t going to go through everyone’s contacts anyway — with just one power networker with 20K connections it would take you months — so it really doesn’t matter if you can’t get into a few of your connections contact lists anyway – you still have plenty to look through in the rest of your network.

However, more importantly, by disconnecting you are removing all of that person’s contacts from your network, thus losing or giving up visibility and access. Even though the person’s list is private, the contacts still come up as 2nd and 3rd degree connections in your network so they still have a lot of value and potential.

One other more subtle point — when you say to someone upon connecting GIVE TO ME or I’ll disconnect, you lay yourself out not as someone of value, but as a prospector or someone just out for themselves.

That is not a good reputation to get on LI or as a networker — it is much more profitable if you focus on becoming an invaluable resource to others.

Someone with this philosophy does not know that the measure of a networker is not how many connections one has, but how many they have made. The only reason to make such a demand is for one’s self not for the benefit of others.

I would suggest that one not make any such a demand, especially on the initial contact (or any for that matter) and focus on becoming a valued connection by being of value and giving thus improving the relationship.

Remember, you don’t need access to someone list of connections to get lots of business from that list in the way of referrals and introductions. But you won’t get that if you don’t become of value.

Please comment on my posts and ask questions, I will respond and I would love to hear what you think.

I’ve found that most people who oppose the open networking concept do so because of the irritation open networkers have caused them. Additionally, it is my belief that they that this is due to a misunderstanding about the of the real value and power of networking.

The term “open networker” could be defined as someone who is simply someone who will connect with and engage anyone that is willing. They both seek out and accept all invitations to connect. Some open networkers do this in very unobtrusive where others take approaches far more agressive approaches that have the potential to  irritate others.

The Objections

The first objection I usually hear against open networking, besides irritation, is that one cannot possibly know  all of these thousands of people and that you developing quaity connections.

This is partially true. It is true that the valued quality connections will likely be more productive that the ones you don’t really know. And it is true that you should always be pursuing quality connections. The problem with this idea is that you don’t know the value of  a connections until you investigate. If you turn down a connection you may in fact turn down and opportunity that is currently invisible as the real value of networking is not the person to whom you connect, but their sphere of influence.

Networking is like advertising, it is a method of getting exposure. It is also a way to get leverage in the creation of opportunities. As we all know you cannot sell yourself, your company, or your product until someone knows it exists. In networking and especially on LinkedIn the bigger your network the more exposure you will get.

With 35 million plus users it would be hard to argue that there are not potentially hundreds that would be interested in what you offer and that you would consider “quality” connections. Since you cannot find all of these opportunities yourself you need to let them find you.

My Conclusion

The open networking concept is valuable because it builds a larger network. This means that every time you announce what your doing, change your profile, your photo, or answer or ask a question in the Question and Answer forum this is announced to your network, you reach more people who potentially need you.  Additionally, when you engage one of your connections, either by answering or asking a question this too is transmitted to their network. You now become visible and get exposure to many people you would not have without this connection.

The reality is that the more time you are exposed to the networks of others the more likely that someone who needs you will find you. This is how you attract opportunities.This is the value of open networking is visibility. In a sense it could be considered a form of  marketing.

More Information

In my program the LinkedIn Power Networking Profit System I teach strategies and tactics that maximum visibility and accessibility to opportunities.To learn more about this program please go to www.onlinebusinessnetworker.net/charter. Additionally, if you would like some free information that will help you succeed on LinkedIn go to www.onlinebusinessnetworker.com.