These groups are an excellent approach to enriching your network. They offer a low-threshold way to connect with liked-minded people, or to find people in need of your expertise.

Whatever your reason for joining a group, let’s explore how you can search for groups, join them, and begin to participate.

Finding Groups Relevant to You

Start by logging in to your LinkedIn profile. Click the Groups button in the toolbar along the top.

The default tab is “My Groups.” Here you will see the Groups you belong to. You can rearrange their order by clicking on “Edit the order of your groups” at the top right of your list.

Since you are probably starting your list now, you won’t have any groups listed.

Let’s Join a Group

Click on the “Groups Directory” tab and let’s explore the types of groups you can join.

LinkedIn hosts some groups that attract tens of thousands of members. These are are shown along the right in their Featured Groups category.

Read through this list to see if anything catches you eye.

You will see groups with political affiliations, university alumni, and professional or trade industry.

Selecting groups relevant to your career is a smart first stop.

Another way to find relevant groups is to use the Search Groups function on the left hand side.

You can choose Categories and Language in your search filter. I recommend choosing a category that’s relevant to you and your preferred language, but leave the search field blank. This returns the broadest array of results for your review.

Let’s say you want to attend conferences as a way to build your network. Select the “Conference Groups” option in English. As of March, 2010, that returns 7,880 groups!

Run your search again using one keyword to narrow this down. In this example, I’m using “marketing” as my keyword.

That reduced the list to 301 – much more manageable!

Now I want to restrict the results to my locale since I am not able to travel around the world to conferences.

Click in the Search Groups field again. “Marketing” is still there but add a city to it. I’m using Chicago.

This delivered two results: Marketing To Women, and Marketing to Men.

Now I have targeted two events that may interest me. I would not have known about these otherwise most likely.

The Marketing to Men event strikes me as the more interesting of the two.

Click on the link to learn more about the group and find links to the event’s site. Even though this group only shows 17 members, the conference itself has likely attracted 100+ attendees.

If you are really aggressive, you will research who is a marketing professional in Chicago for companies for whom this type of marketing is important, and reach out to those individuals for input on whether they are attending the event. If they are, you have set up a new networking contact in another city that can help you meet others along the way.

How to Joining a Group

When you find a group that piques your interest, click the yellow “Join Group” button. Most groups provide instant membership but some group moderators prefer to review applicants before granting membership.

This is commonly found among Groups who focus on alumni of universities or companies. Trying to join groups when you don’t have a legitimate affiliation mark you with questionable intentions. You can contact the group moderator directly if you need to appeal to their reasoning and you have other circumstances.

That is, you may have worked at the company for a brief period and do not want it known publicly on your profile but still want to connect with people in that industry or field.

Once you join a group, it’s time to share your input.

In the Overview tab, you have options to “Start a Discussion,” “Submit News,” or “Share group.” To share a group means inviting people in your network to join the group, too. This viral effect is a great way to reinforce your network.

If you want to discuss a given topic, use the “Start a Discussion” link. In the example above where you wanted Chicago hotel recommendations, this is the right place to post that question. When you read the article about Starbucks’ new store concept, you would use the “Submit News” link instead.

Explore the other tabs of the group to see what content has been posted.

Some groups share job leads by posting them in the Jobs tab. Others are such large groups that they have divided themselves into subgroups to provide a tighter focus on specific topics relevant to the group at large.

If the group’s manager has empowered you to have administrator’s rights, you have the ability to contact members through individual or group emails, and edit other people’s membership in the group.

If the time has come for you to leave the group or adjust your privacy settings, click the “More…” tab to adjust your settings.

Connect With Others

Monitor the group’s activity to see who regular contributes and who doesn’t.

If you are looking to grow your network base, you can reach out to other group members whose profile and interests match your own.

Send a message to that person with a short introduction of yourself, and why you would like to connect. Don’t use LinkedIn’s default sentence – it’s not personalized and people recognize it. If you don’t take the time to write a sincere introduction versus using a canned sentence, others are less likely to care about connecting with you.

Two to three sentences is plenty but make sure they are your sentences, not a pre-written one.

That does not mean you have to write a fresh message every single time. Instead, craft a basic message you can repeat with others. The point is to be authentic and human. I use this technique by keeping my standard notes saved in a Word document for my networking activities. This saves me from having to dig up old emails each time to remember what I wrote before.

Finding More Groups

Continue to explore the Groups section of LinkedIn to find at least 10 groups that have subject matter or activities relevant to your needs.

Managing Membership

While you can join as many groups as you like, remember that you will want to monitor their activity levels through the periodic updates that LinkedIn sends out.

Many groups are formed with the best of intentions but quickly wither and dissolve due to a lack of nurture by the group’s owner, or the group was only meant to serve a temporary purpose whose time has past (and the group owner didn’t delete it yet).

I recommend reviewing your groups at least once every three to four months. Look at the ones with regular updates, ideally at least once a week. Those who haven’t updated in several weeks or more are candidates for removal.

Remember that a key part of using social media effectively is not spreading yourself too thin. Focus your energies and resources on where you will get the most return because belonging to a group also requires contributing in some way.

Contributing to Groups

A nice advantage of belonging to a group is that there are always people in it who stand out and help others.

If you need a recommendation on a good but affordable hotel near a conference in Chicago, this is one good way to utilize your networking instead of scouring hotel review sites. Recommendations from others like yourself tend to be more reliable than trusting even the best written – but essentially anonymous – postings in travel review sites.

Social media is an excellent resource for surfacing the best recommendations because you get an honest answer from the people answering your questions.

Another way to participate is to post links to articles in the media relevant to your audience. Don’t just post a link though – you need to add value to your posting.

Keep the posting on topic for the group (i.e., don’t post sports stories in a financial advisors group on the assumption that someone in the group likes the same team – that’s not why people are in this particular group).

When you post the link, add some analysis or opinion to the story.

For example, Starbucks has begun opening a new style of cafes that mimic local, independent coffee shops. Their intent is to blend in to the neighborhood better by being a part of the neighborhood versus installing their standard blueprint store with its consistent branding, push-button coffee dispensers and merchandise for sale.

If you are a Starbucks regular who has experienced one of these new concept stores, what did you think about the experience? How would you have executed the idea differently?

By demonstrating your thought processes and ideas, you strike up conversations. Others will respond, with their own pros and cons.

The point isn’t that you have to defend your ideas. The point is to start conversations, and nurture them until they naturally dissolve. That is, don’t start a conversation and abandon it once people begin posting their comments. Respond to each and every poster – this is how you engage and participate.

Creating a Group

I encourage you to explore extensively the groups that match your interests before creating a new group.

However, if you cannot find a group that matches your needs exactly (for example, there is not a version of the group you need in your city), then create a group.

Before you create it, though, take time to prepare for how you will manage and nurture the group’s growth and sustenance. The motto of “Build it and they will come” has deluded many an internet enterprise into believing a massive audience was waiting at their doorstep when really only a few were interested. Don’t fall into this same trap.

Considerations for Creating a Group

Be sure your group has a broad enough base of interest to attract a viable membership base.

What are your group’s goals? Is it to foster networking among a particular group? Is it to coordinate actions to achieve a common goal or objective?

Perhaps you are self-employed and you want to establish your presence as the go-to professional in your field. Having a LinkedIn profile is not enough. Add a group that focuses on your business, too, as a way to corral customers and recommendations around what you do and the value you provide.

This is free advertising, and provides a forum where you can speak to people who are opting in to hear your messages.

Make Your Group Thrive

But what do you do with them once they show up?

Brainstorm with a pad of post-it notes by writing down one idea on each sticky. Each idea can be a topic you can write about, advice you can provide, stories you can tell about success you’ve had with your clients, or news about upcoming events.

Now place these in a sequence that makes sense. It may be by event date or a multi-part series with each component building on its predecessor.

Congratulations, you’ve just created an editorial calendar.

Update whatever calendaring system you prefer, whether it’s a printed day planner, Outlook, Google Calendar or other tool. This becomes your to-do list so you can focus on the content and not stress over what to contribute.

Wrap Up

LinkedIn Groups offer the quickest access to expertise across the expanse of disciplines considered professions. You can easily connect with others near and far away. Start a Group if you cannot find one that meets your exact needs but be prepared to nurture it, keep it vital and of value to others so it will grow.

Let’s Have Coffee

Which Groups have you found to have the most value for you? Have you created a LinkedIn Group? Pull up a chair and share in the Comments section for a response.

Currently, LinkedIn provides a free app for the iPhone and Palm Pre only. A version for Blackberry is forthcoming.

Visit http://www.linkedin.com/mobile to access either edition.

If your phone does not support apps, there is also a mobile phone version of the web site at http://m.linkedin.com. The site does not require the installation of any applications or other software.

Direct your browser to this address, and bookmark it. You will need Internet access on your phone to access the site at any time.

LinkedIn App Features

The LinkedIn app is a slimmed down version of the site. It provides many of the core functions of the site.

Specifically, the app lets you:

• See all the latest updates on the members of your network
• See the current status updates of all the members in your network
• Updated your own status
• View your LinkedIn inbox for connection invitations; email messages, and sent items
• View profiles of LinkedIn users
• Search for individuals

This can be handy to look up someone when you are at an event, or check in for the latest updates to pass the time at the airport.

If you are frequently away from your computer due to travel or other obligations, this app is a smart solution to easily manage your connection invitations and updates until you return to your computer.

As said before, your LinkedIn profile is how you make a first impression on others. Whether you know it or not, you are being regularly researched online. For the job seeker then, it’s exceedingly important you make that recruiter pick up the phone and call you.

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile

Just as it’s important to be descriptive for the person reading your profile to understand who and what you’re about, it’s equally important that search engines understand you, too. Why does Google, Bing, and Yahoo matter? When people research you, they typically don’t go to specific sites to find you. They enter your name and probably your location into a search engine, then start sifting through the results.

Associating your name with relevant keywords is why optimizing your profile for people and machines matters.

For example, let’s say you are an independent accountant. You focus on providing accounting and tax preparation services to small businesses in your city. You have no staff, no marketing budget, and a rudimentary network. How do you promote yourself?

One way to help you get found is to write your profile to include keywords that people searching for you will use.

Make a list of the types of businesses you want to attract. Let’s say you want to focus for now on lawn keepers because it’s summer:

• Lawn maintenance services
• Lawn mowers
• Gardening services
• 98122
• Small business accounting
• Small business tax preparation

This simple example lists search terms that you can incorporate into your profile. The search engines look at relevancy and proximity of terms to one another to determine context. That is, if your profile says the following, then a search engine is likely to score you a high match to the searcher’s query:

David Thompson is a small business accountant with 10+ years experience providing small business accounting and small business tax preparation for lawn maintenance, gardening services, and lawn mower small businesses in the Seattle area.

Make LinkedIn Profiles Work For You

As you write entries about your work experience and history, use specific terms. Avoid generic statements like, “Successfully achieved first quarter results for my division.” Instead, you can say, “Generated 24% rate of return on physical inventories in the first quarter of 2008 using CPERP inventory management system.”

Put Some Flair Into Your LinkedIn Profile

The impulse with LinkedIn profiles is to write dry, conventional resume-like statements. I encourage you to show more color in your profile. Certainly profanity is out of the question for most people but I have seen profiles that use mild instances to good effect. You know what is acceptable in your industry, so use good judgment.

By injecting some color into your profile, you reveal yourself as a well-rounded person – not another resume. And everyone wants to connect with a real person, not a piece of paper.

Honor the Facts

Tempting as it may be to stretch the truth here and there, you can better compensate for any shortcomings by using gentle humor or short-and-sweet sentences to fill in the gaps.

New to the work world and fresh from an internship this summer? Show what you learned but also show how you grew and enjoyed it.

“Advertising Account Specialist freshly minted from Northern University wants to surprise and delight your clients like I learned from Watson Advertising the summer of 2008. I listen to what they want, craft a brief so the creatives get it right, and know to fetch coffee if you need it.”

When In Doubt, Imitate

Look at several profiles in your profession on LinkedIn. When you find one that impresses you, study what makes it work. Pick apart the formula, then swap out the keywords that person used with the ones you need. You are better off imitating than being boring.

Looking for Some Mutual Optimization?

Want to review a statement before going public? We can’t give you lawyerly advice but we are great with a thumbs up or thumbs down and reasons why. Post your optimized profile in the Comments.

Your profile is the first impression you make on recruiters, business partners, vendors and maybe even a future spouse. Yes, LinkedIn gets used that way, too.

Profiles are based on your resume. Pull out the latest edition of your resume now.

Start by signing up for an account on LinkedIn from the home page at www.LinkedIn.com.

Register with the email address you check most frequently. Be sure this email address is suitable for professional use, too. This is not the place to use silly or nonsensical names. Ideally use your first and last name at a common email service provider, such as “Tom.Moses@GMail.com.”

If your email is currently not set up this way, take a moment to sign up for a free account with Google or Yahoo. They are the most commonly used email sites.

Many people still use AOL but some regard it as dated. Save the AOL address for family and friends. For career, appear current by using the popular services.

LinkedIn will email you a confirmation email to verify your identity. Follow the steps in the email, and your account is created.

Adding Your Name, Professional Headline, Location, and Industry

Enter the name you use professionally. If your name is a common one, differentiate yourself by including a middle initial, suffix, or other distinction.

Your “Professional Headline” is a clever recycling of your present or desired job title.

For example, if Human Resources says your job title is “Data/Financial Systems Analyst III” that means little to the outside world. Instead, consider the Professional Headline as a tag line or slogan similar to a product. Use “Expert Financial Systems Analyst” as a more approachable title in this example.

One concept that has emerged during the current economic situation is “personal branding.” Similar to an elevator pitch, personal branding entails building an idea of who you are in the minds of others. One aspect of personal branding includes defining your profession.

This is where personal branding is important. Write down five key traits you want associated with your name. Experiment with adding those to your headline.

If you have eight or more years in your field, preface your headline with “Experienced” or “Seasoned” or other term that conveys a solid history. Do not include the number of years if you are concerned about age discrimination – a common trend in the current economy, by the way.

Include your ZIP code – an important way that local search results are narrowed only to people in a given area.

Select an Industry from the pull-down list. Again, this puts you into the right search results of other people.

Choose the industry with which you want to be associated. That may not be the industry where you work now. If you are looking to enter a different field, associate your name with the crowd you want to join.

Finally, remember that LinkedIn also supports German, French, and Spanish if you want profiles in languages besides English. Create an additional profile in those languages if that is pertinent to your needs.

Here is how mine looks:

You must enter info in these fields at the least

Include thorough, well-written descriptions

Status Update

Regularly updating your status keeps your network posted on your latest activities.

This spotlights the events you are attending, interesting projects or organizations you support, and generally providing good, useful information.

Since LinkedIn provides users a choice of daily or weekly email updates to members, your Status Update should be refreshed at least one to two times a week. Doing so ensures your name appears in every update members of your network receive about their connections.

Unlike Facebook or Twitter, the pace of your status updates is not a constant, all-day stream of what you are doing at any given moment. Think in broader strokes (days and weeks) versus short, impulsive ones (minute to hour).

Employment History

Assuming your resume employment history is current, the easiest way to enter it is to copy it from your resume and paste it into LinkedIn.

After pasting, clean up the formatting in the paste field. Format it so that bullets are aligned, quotations are in the right place and no odd spacing occurs. A clean visual appearance adds to your first impression.

Your “Current” position is where you work now. For the job seeker (employed or unemployed), this requires more finesse. Your LinkedIn profile is not the place to scream desperation.

Many people treat LinkedIn as a billboard to announce their employment status – employed or unemployed. Begging, sounding overly needy and being a downer will not get you the right kind of attention.

If you are in job search mode, focus on clearly communicating what you want. Do not write, “Looking for the next great opportunity with a terrific company.” That is generic, bland, and will keep you looking for a very long time.

Write a concise, targeted statement that shows a potential employer who you are and how you will benefit their company.

Search LinkedIn for people in your field of interest and examine what they wrote. If writing is not your strong suit, note the ones that catch your eye, and mimic the formula.

Good examples are:

• Dynamic, seasoned Fortune 500 business development executive grows revenues 10% in six months through 500+ extensive nationwide network
• Targeted email marketing manager generates visually appealing, weekly newsletters on-time and within budget; digital strategies to dominate your market

Education

Credentials matter. They are how we quickly measure other people. Whether we admit it or not, a person’s education signals value assumptions we make about their worth. That is why we reward college degree holders higher than high school diplomas, without regard to the actual societal value the person contributes. There’s an inherent assumption that a four-year degree denotes greater intelligence or talent. Regardless of your position on the subject, be aware that it factors unconsciously into estimations we make of one another.

Include your education history starting with college or university.

Enter the name of the institution from which you graduated, the degree achieved, any honors or citations, and graduation year. Include all institutions that conferred an accredited degree to you.

If you do not have a degree but you completed a portion of its coursework, omit the degree and graduation year. Use the name of the program instead.

For example:

• Completed coursework Accounting
• Marketing Management, Senior year
• Systems Analysis

This shows you have made efforts at higher education. Address it tactfully and respectfully if it comes up in conversation.

If you are in school now, enter “Anticipated graduation” followed by the month and year you expect to finish.

If you have no higher education, but you have completed certification programs, include those. Omit the year achieved unless in the last 36 months to keep it fresh.

Recommendations

Know that if people have written Recommendations for you, and you approve what they wrote, only the number of them you have received will be shown here.

Read Chris Brogan’s post for details about Recommendations and best practices.

Connections, Connecting with LIONs

Networking can be a numbers game for some. However, don’t focus on how high that number is. Develop a quality network who will help you when you need it, and who you can help in return.

Your network should be a curated corps of allies, where there is a mutual exchange of value and benefit among all members.

Studies have shown that we can actually, at best, know about 150 people. Much more than that, our relationships become tenuous, less meaningful. There are simply too many connections to maintain with any vitality.

If you see a person with hundreds, if not thousands, of connections, don’t be intimidated – or overly impressed. The person may be a frequent linker for the sake of connecting; or in sales or recruiting. These roles need large numbers of connections as a job function.

In my own practice, I do not accept LinkedIn Connections from people I have not met in real life or connected with through another. Why? Because I want to validate that the connection is legitimate; is not linking to me for the sake of connecting; and is a real person (not spam).

Decide on a personal policy that makes your comfortable but meets your needs. Strike a balance between privacy and need.

There are members on LinkedIn known as LIONs: LinkedIn Open Networkers. LIONs will accept Connections from literally anyone.

LIONs serve one very good purpose. Let’s say you want to connect with a second- or third-degree connection. You can ask for an introduction to the person through a second-degree connection. But what if you have no one in common?

You need a connection point so that LinkedIn will grant your Connection request.

If you don’t have a person in common – save for the LION – then you still have a direct pathway to the person you need to reach.

By connecting to LIONs, you may find that is your only link to the person you want to reach.

Connecting with Web Sites and Twitter

If you have a blog or personal web site, include the link in the field for this. This significantly boosts your ranking in search engine results.

This is a good time to review your blog or personal site to ensure that the content is safe for work. If it’s overly personal, or doesn’t put you in your best light, don’t promote it until you can update the content. First impressions count only once.

Since the search engines regard LinkedIn as a high ranking site, links coming from it to your site receive higher scoring; thus, boosting your name higher in the first few pages of search results.

For search results, the goal is that you always appear first in any searches for your name.

Google yourself now and see where you appear. It’s very enlightening.

If you find others with your name in the list, consider how you can differentiate yourself from them.

For me, there are other men with my name in England, South Africa, and Australia. Luckily, we are all in different professions so people don’t get us confused. The different locations help, too.

As of November, 2009, LinkedIn connects to Twitter. Remember that when you update your status on LinkedIn, it can optionally update your Twitter account simultaneously by adding “#in” to your tweet. Don’t worry if those words mean nothing to you. Pop over to the Twitter section for details on hashtags and other social media jargon.

Public Profile

Your Public Profile contains a generic link that LinkedIn generates for your account. It uses random letters and numbers. Edit this link to use your actual name instead.

You may have to test different entries to get one that not already used. Experiment with your full first name (“William” instead of “Bill”), or add your middle name or maiden name. Each link is unique and the Bill Johnson’s and Mary Smith’s of the world claimed theirs long ago.

The goal is to assist the search engines in returning your name further up the page in search results. It also simplifies how people can locate you manually on LinkedIn.

Include the personalized link:

• On your business card
• In the footer of your resume
• As a part of your email signature

Finishing the Basics

Once you have entered this information, click the View Profile button to see how your Profile appears to the world.

If you’re satisfied, save the changes. If not, save the changes but return and edit some more. Once you’re satisfied, you’re done!

But wait, there’s more.

This is the bare minimum you should do in building a profile. The next steps will walk you through optimizing your profile so you achieve a score of 100% and begin using LinkedIn as not just a fancy business card, but also a tool to expand your network and find what you need.

Be Au Courant, Not Stale and Pale

Did you find a great profile? Share it here. Ready to road test your profile? Post the link below for constructive feedback and to share the tips and tricks you know.

Relationships matter. Relationships are about individuals connecting to share information, discover meaning together, and expand their mutual knowledge.

As social media expands its presence among the facets of our lives, the professional realm receives special focus.

Long considered the premier social networking site for business professionals, LinkedIn boasts over 50 million members in 200 countries in 170 industries as of October 2009.

Whether for meeting a new recruiter, business partner, vendor or job candidate, you can expect to be researched on LinkedIn. It is regarded as the web site to research people and companies.

Salespeople use it to mine for leads. Recruiters research job candidates before deciding to move resumes forward. Job seekers use it to uncover who they know at the companies they are targeting — and who those people know by extension.

Think of LinkedIn as an expanded edition of the yellow pages: not only can you find the right person at nearly any company but you can review their history and relationships, too.

Use it to create awareness of you among people you do not know but want to know. You can also use it to demonstrate your company’s strengths and build business relationships.

Who’s Using LinkedIn?

Who are those 50 million users?

• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies
• Entrepreneurs seeking new clients and investors
• Recent college graduates connecting with classmates and instructors
• Sophisticated job seekers
• Independent consultants of all stripes
• Individuals building professional networks for career and business development

What You Get From LinkedIn

Rather than exchanging a business card (buried on your desk never to see daylight again), LinkedIn keeps your connections vibrant and sustains your interactions with them by you maintaining your profile and network regularly. Otherwise, your connections can easily turn into that forgotten business card.

Many companies post job openings exclusively on LinkedIn to attract higher caliber candidates, and to recruit for those golden slots in the hidden job market.

Thousands of Groups, Discussions, and Answers offer a wealth of free expertise to help you solve specific problems. Just ask!

The more active you are by posting Status Updates, building new connections, participating in Groups and Discussions, and providing Answers to questions asked by others, the more value you gain from LinkedIn. With daily or weekly email updates, you are easily kept up to date with the goings on of your network, too.

Making Introductions

A terrific feature of LinkedIn is the ability to introduce your connections to one another. Since we can’t always meet in person, this enables you to connect two people who can benefit by getting to know each other.

Whether it’s a candidate interested in a recruiter’s company, or a friend needing services from a firm you recommend, the ability to introduce and build connections demonstrates the value you offer your connections. This value grows your network into a potent resource others will want to tap.

Degrees of Connection

As you build your network, people you connect with one-on-one are “first-degree” connections. Their connections are “second-degree” and those connections are “third-degree,” relative to you.

You might think a first-degree connection is better than a second- or third-degree connection. It’s counterintuitive but second degree connections often prove more vital.

This is because you cannot know everyone. But the people you know bestow a level of trust in the people they connect with, just as they do with you. This shows that if they trust you, they likely trust the other person also.

By extension, you can probably trust this person, too. Ask for an introduction through your mutual contact if you can offer value to that second-degree connection. Don’t just connect to ratchet your numbers higher. Building a network is not solely a numbers game but your number of connections strongly correlates with your reach.

Growing your network organically allows you to curate your base of contacts. Choose quality over quantity.

LinkedIn Tutorials

For a quick but thorough lesson on getting started, try LinkedIn’s online how-to’s for step-by-step instructions.

http://bit.ly/linkedin101

Looking for a Jump Start?
Unsure of how to create a profile or what certain settings mean? Post your question in the Comments section for a response.

Etiquette Matters

Although social media is famous for having somewhat loose standards of formality, propriety does hold a central place in any society, like it or not. Every social media platform (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) lays claim to its own particular cultural rules and mores. Be sure that you understand the customs and expectations of each platform before you make a gaffe, lest you cause tongues to wag, or worse, offend society.

Conversation Matters

The most prized currency in any refined society is the witty, charming conversation of its habitués. Your conversation may be clever and amusing, but do stop short of being overly self-promotional. It is a delicate balance, to be sure, but eminently achievable by the accomplished practitioner. How? Strive to focus on other people, be courteous, be helpful, be modest, be kind. Avoid gossip and vulgarity at all costs.

Connections Matter

No, you needn’t be the cousin of every A-list blogger or member of the Twitterati. Rather, you should strive to cultivate a true circle of friends who share your interests, whose trials and triumphs you can share, and with whose problems you can empathize. Try to make connections between people who should meet, but have not yet; be a matchmaker where one person’s needs and desires meet another person’s strengths and qualities. Create networks of friends who are sincerely glad to know each other, and give them frequent opportunities to connect and help each other.

Love Conquers All

Share your passion, and those who share your passion too will find you and follow you. Speak from your heart, do not endeavor to deceive, and all shall be well.

Which Fork Do You Use for Salad and Which for Entree?

Jane would tell you but she’s busy preparing for guests. Have an etiquette question or a pet peeve to share? Post your missive in the Comments section for a response.

With the economic situation affecting millions of lives globally, we are connecting and reconnecting in new ways. People are attending networking events in droves to learn new skills and meet new people. Groups with mutual interests are self-forming and self-directing collectively without any formal structure – and producing great work.

And with these behaviors comes the impetus to open up, to be transparent, to admit our vulnerabilities, to drop selfish agendas and begin looking beyond ourselves to meet not only our own needs and desires but those of others.

One tool that answers this is social media.

Connecting with others is a social activity. Connecting with others in a meaningful way is networking. And networking with a collaborative view in mind in an online, virtual way (called web 2.0) will surely change the way we work with others. For a history on this kind of social change through social media, see Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom by Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta.

In the past few years, social networking and social media have become prominent topics in the ongoing transformation of life online.

By now, you have surely heard of Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, probably Twitter, and maybe even read a few blogs. But what hidden value does each of them hold for you?

Consider that social media is changing the way we connect, work together, and sustain relationships, and you will quickly see why it matters.

Social media is the technology that knits together, online, what you do in real everyday life: talk to people, bond over commonalities, and form mutually beneficial relationships.

Social media thrives on participation and making connections. It is media in which you can easily participate and add your contribution. It is an arena where your unique perspective has influence and your precise credibility is prized. Whether you’re a high school drop out or an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, your offerings may be a real value to others and a key motivator for you to keep active in various virtual communities.

Once you understand how to use the various tools (the ones most relevant to you), you will find that they extend your reach by many degrees.

Social media is the set of tools, the digital manifestation, the driving the need to share important information in ways that are simple and efficient.

As social networking sites like Facebook have exploded–especially for the babyboomers—we now share with other people in our network more about our lives and the lives of those we know.

It’s been said that, “It isn’t who I know that matters so much as who my friends know” that makes the difference. Those second-degree connections (what Malcolm Gladwell calls loose affiliations) have proven to have the most value in networking and in marketing. Now technology makes it easier to uncover who knows whom. Ready to play private investigator without being called a stalker?

Browse through a friend’s LinkedIn connections. Did you know that David knows Charlie who knows Shawna, the same Shawna you happened to meet recently by chance?

Your circle just tightened by a degree through closing an outlying tangent. The added benefit is that Shawna is friends with the hiring manager of a company where you want to work. This is the magic of networking. Even economists like John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison are realizing the magnetic force of such networking. They call it the Power of Pull.

It’s also the power of social media: it flattens and equalizes the access to information that makes it possible to connect to people and ideas that are important to you.

When you share a New York Times article on Facebook, you share it with every one of your friends there. What conversations are you creating? What questions are you helping to answer? What sparks are you igniting? You may not always know but taking credit isn’t where the value lies. Inspiring another person is where your currency now trades.

With simple tasks you can do each day, this eBook teaches you not only the tools you need to use regularly but also how to use them in an integrated fashion that increases your online presence in ways that get you recognized as a go-to person. By taking ownership of your digital footprint, you begin to build Brand You. Brands (and careers) are not built overnight. Both require hard work. Now is the time to seize the (free!) tools to make you more agile, more connected and a great resource.

Adopt these behaviors today – not only when you are job searching.

A Bit of Background
The year 2009 was one of significant change for many people, myself included. Like millions of others, I lost my foothold on the American Dream when WaMu Bank (my employer) began to crumble. And like millions, I believed my unemployment was my fault, though I could not identify any one thing I could have done differently to change the outcome. And when I began to job search, I discovered it was a whole new ballgame with undefined rules, with way too many players, and not enough knowledgeable coaches.

This new ballgame was a tough lesson to learn. Seattle has a reputation for not being the easiest of cities to meet people and form meaningful connections. I had been here four years already by 2009, and had a small group of friends. But I knew I needed to get to know many, many more people to make my job search fruitful. Being a natural wallflower, I disliked the idea of networking – with all its attendant baggage – but I took the plunge.

What I Learned From Networking
Networking has an ugly connotation. It conjures images of desperate salesmen in bad suits, unemployed middle-aged middle managers who are overly eager to be your friend, and overpriced luncheons with bad service in hotel ballrooms. Did I really want to do this?

I researched some networking opportunities near my home, and went for a cocktail hour at a downtown bar. I promised myself all I had to do was meet at least two to three people, maybe get their cards, and see where it would lead. You never know who knows who.

That first evening out was mostly good. Aside from the oddball person you ALWAYS meet at these events, the people I connected with were authentic and tried to be helpful. The scariness receded, my confidence increased, and I resolved to attend more of these.

As I continued meeting people, building my network, and finding worthwhile connections, I began to see how deeply we were all in the same boat. I also was surprised by how many people were not using LinkedIn to build their networks. They said they didn’t understand it, or found it not useful. Knowing the value of what is offers with a little sleuthing, I could not believe what I heard.

And that’s how my book was born.

On April 9, Cindy Pain presented how to get the most out of LinkedIn at the School for Visual Concepts (SVC is offering limited seating at 50% off for all classes for folks unemployed in the last six months. Call 206-623-1560). Cindy is VP, Career Management Consultant / VP, Career Coach at Lee Hecht Harrison.

I began using LinkedIn in 2005. Since 2007, I have focused on growing my network and refining my profile. I’ve read many how-to’s, tips and secrets, including Rita Ashley’s handy and smart LinkedIn to Power Job Search. Definitely get your free copy of that jewel

I recruited two friends to attend with me, and I wanted to learn what I haven’t yet found out. While the session was geared toward newbies, it’s always good to revisit the basics. Now I know what’s on my profile maintenance list!

Below are my notes from the session. These assume a basic working knowledge of the site but post a comment with any questions. I will respond.

That’s the sum of 90 minutes of excellent presentation by Cindy. Please comment your thoughts below.