Twitter debuted is new Lists feature in late 2009.

Lists let you organize the people you follow into groups. It is a way to group Twitterers into common topics to streamline your reading experience.

I use this tool to put all my technology follows on one list, while all of my social media follows are on another. When I read through my tweet stream, reading them grouped by similar topics focuses my attention and prevents the distraction of jumping from topic to topic.

By putting people on Lists, you streamline your experience of reading tweets. If you are like me, you like to mentally check off tasks as you complete them. By organizing people I follow into Lists, I can group their tweets for quicker consumption.

If you prefer to keep your follows in a single stream, you may find it hard to keep up with the various streams of conversation because each tweet will jump from one topic to another.

By grouping follows into Lists, you maintain a manageable degree of similarity from post to post so you don’t have to do so many mental acrobatics to follow the thread of a conversation.

Some Twitterers use the number of Lists on which they appear as a measure of their reach and influence. This is akin to the sheer number of follows and followers a Twitterer accumulates as a badge of their popularity, and can be a competitive effort to see who can appear on the most lists.

As I constantly say, focus on the quality of your content and contributions – not the quantity. Popularity rises and falls with the times but quality will endure.

You may find it useful to peruse the Lists of others as a way to find interesting new people to follow, especially when you are new to Twitter.

Lists can be made public or private, depending on your preference.

See the Twitter help page for detailed steps to creating a List and adding people to it at http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/76460.

A Tweet Before We Go

Twitter is a popular, easy-to-use tool that engages users with frequent updates to topics that interest them and simplifies the process of sharing information across your social network.

I recommend diving in feet first with Twitter to experience it in full, then decide to what degree you want to pull back to make it both useful and not overwhelming. Finding balance takes some exercise, but you will quickly gauge what works for you.

Twitter is an incredible resource that will endure and evolve but it can feel like drinking from a fire hydrant for new users. Learning to moderate is the key to enjoying your Twitter experience.

Contribute, engage, share and always be of value are the primary goals to remember as you tweet, tweet, tweet.

How Do You Tweet?

Tweet us a Comment and we’ll tweet you right back. Tweet me @geofftucker.

Twitter provides a simple double-O graphic as the default image for users. You are going to replace that with a photo of you.

Select a headshot of yourself that clearly shows your face, and is not a full body shot.

Avoid grainy images or taking the photo yourself. The perspective of a camera aimed down the arm toward the face is not a good choice. Pointing a camera into the mirror to take a photo is not a good choice either.

Have another person take your photo against a neutral background, and focus on your face. Give a nice smile and that’s it.

You want your followers to connect your tweets with your face.

Don’t skip this step by substituting a photo of your pet or kids, or your favorite sports team’s logo. Build a brand that is about YOU.

Background Design

Twitter offers a handful of background designs for your Twitter page. You can select from their default options, or tweak the color schemes to suit your tastes.

You can also build your own. Try Mashable’s how to for specific instructions. For now, choose one of the options that Twitter provides since this option is one of taste, and not one that impacts your activity.

Mobile

Twitter was built on the premise of being used mostly on cell phones.

Click the Mobile tab to set up your cell phone to access the service. Check with your cell phone provider to find out if or how they charge you for text messages and tweets before proceeding. If you have a high volume or unlimited text messaging plan, this should not be an issue.

Notifications

After you complete the set up process on your phone, Twitter will send a code via text message. Send that code to 40404 in the US, 21212 in Canada or +44 7624801423 in all other parts of the world.

This sets up your phone to send and receive tweets. Remember, though, that once you start following a lot of people, you will not want your phone going off every few minutes with updates. To prevent that, send the word “stop” or “quit” to the Twitter number for your part of the world (as noted in the paragraph above).

Twitter also provides a variety of notifications to you via email or cell phone when certain actions happen.

Among the choices available, opt in for when you receive a direct message from any follower. If you are not checking Twitter on your computer or phone regularly, this alerts you immediately to tweets that probably need your attention. You can reply from your phone or computer.

You can choose to allow selected users’ tweets to update your phone as they’re posted if you prefer. Simply send the message “on [username]” to the Twitter number. All tweets by that user will now appear on your phone as they are posted.

I recommend experimenting with this approach. You may have certain follows that you want to tweet with throughout the day when your phone is your only means of access. Having this feature on full-time will become tedious and time-consuming if you have too many updates coming through. Turn it on and off at will, based on your preference. The users you select for this feature will not know you are changing your settings.

Before you begin to tweet or follow other people, let’s work on your profile so that others will know who you are and what you are about.

When you follow a person, he receives an email from Twitter saying, “Jane Doe is now following you on Twitter” with a link to your profile. Most likely, he will click through to see who you are, especially if he doesn’t know you. Let’s make sure he gets the right impression when he clicks through.

Click the Settings link in the menu along the top of the screen.

Let’s start with the Name tab.

1. Enter your full name.
2. Enter your user name. Twitter will confirm if it is available or not.
3. Enter your password.
4. Enter your email address (more on this below). Choose if you want Twitter to send you updates about their service.
5. Enter the words the reCAPTCHA box to prove you are not a computer or spammer.

Twitter asks for your email address so it can send certain notifications to you. It is not shown publicly or accessible by others. Choose one that you use often to monitor when other people follow you or send you a direct message (more on this later).

See If Your Friends Are On Twitter

Click “Skip this step” for now. We want to fully prepare your profile before you begin tweeting, following others, and attracting followers. Why? When people start following you, you want them to find a fully developed profile when they click on your name to learn more about you.

Twitter will present you with a suggested list of people to follow. Click “Skip this step” again for the same reason.

Finish Up Your Profile Basics

Twitter will send an email to confirm that you are who you say you are. Be sure to click on the link in the mail to verify your identity, then continue with the steps below.

Your name and user name will be pre-filled on the screen. If you need to change your email address, you can do it from here.

Time Zone

Select your time zone. Note that all your tweets will be time-stamped with your local time as you post tweets. The same applies to all other Twitterers and tweets.

More Info Link

This link is an ideal spot to use your LinkedIn profile link. If you have a blog or personal web site, you can use it here instead. Keep in mind that you only get to post one link so choose wisely where you want people to learn more about you.

One Line Bio

So, tell me about you. In 160 characters or less.

As I said, Twitter is a master of brevity.

Refer to your LinkedIn Summary to select 3-4 words that define you. List them, then add one more that paints who you are as a person. Some examples are below:

“Financial advisor, sharp networker, MBA, and avid gardener to prune the weeds from your retirement.”

“Business writer, traveler (not tourist), operations manager, and frenetic dad of 4.”

Experiment with writing these one-liners about yourself, and add a little zing at the end to better stand out among a sea of weak efforts.

Location

Including your location can make you easier to find online, particularly if your local or target market is an important part of how you want to be known.

Twitter also offers to geotag your posts. This is a small bit of code that provides your geographical coordinates on the globe. By geotagging your tweets, Twitter makes tweets become hyperlocal. That is, you can search for what is going on among Twitterers in your immediate vicinity by radius. This is helpful for following people who are tweeting at conferences or events, or just surfing the collective conscience of those around you at any given moment. Try it from your favorite coffee shop sometime.

Language

Select your preferred language. Twitter has a handful of choices for now.

Privacy

The point of tweeting is to participate in conversations. You can choose to limit who sees your tweets to only people who follow you.

This narrow-casting approach has its merits for some.

Since you are focused on building your online presence, leave it blank for now.

Your Twitter profile should be every bit as compelling and descriptive as your profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook. Unlike those sites, though, you have to say a lot in a little space.

Twitter will help you master brevity like no other medium.

Your Twitter User Name

Making your name easily findable when searched for online is always your best strategy for profile names.

If people know that your Twitter user name is simply your name, they only have to enter the URL to start following your tweets.

My Twitter user name is my name:

http://www.twitter.com/geofftucker

If you choose a user name at random, you are forfeiting valuable real estate in establishing your online footprint. The exception to this is if you are known by a particular designation. For example, Brian Clark blogs about writing copy (content) in a variety of mediums. His blog is titled Copyblogger, and @copyblogger is his user name, too.

If you are well known for a particular expertise, with an established reputation for that subject matter, this strategy makes sense.

If you are new to Twitter, I recommend using your own name.

Does another user already have your name? Experiment with alternatives by using your full first name, your middle initial, your profession, or other keyword to set you apart. The other advantage of using your own name is that it is easy to remember.

If you decide that you dislike your Twitter user name, remember that you will give up your list of followers when you migrate to a new one. Making sure everyone follows you over to that new user name can be a herculean task that risks losing people along the way. Building that list of followers is not an effort to regard lightly.

Optimize Your Profile

After you register your user name, pick a password and confirm you are not a robot in the reCAPTCHA box. This is Twitter’s effort to thwart spammers.

Twitter provides a tool scans your online email accounts for Yahoo, Gmail and AOL. It scans your address book to determine if anyone you know is using Twitter, and it will suggest them as people to follow.

This tool will also present a list of all your contacts not on Twitter so you can invite them to join.

Twitter demonstrates how publishing on social networks is evolving into two-way participation. Successful users create conversations – not content. Communities form around these conversations.

Twitter was formed by Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Jack Dorsey in 2006 as a dispatch service accessible via texting on cell phones. They were working on Odeo, a podcasting company at the time. The service was used as an in-house method for contacting one another with status updates on projects and tasks needing urgent attention. However, it morphed into a whole different tool from there.

Twitter bears a frequent misconception by those unfamiliar with it. “It’s people telling you what they’re doing at every single minute of the day. I just don’t care.”

When it morphed into a popular forum, Twitter’s user base was predominantly 18-24 year olds, and such postings were common. The age and motivation of its user, like Facebook, has likewise changed in its first three years.

Co-founder Jack Dorsey said, “The working name was just ‘Status’ for a while. When we came up with this vehicle, we were trying to give it a good name. We liked the SMS (short message system, or text messaging) aspect, and how you could update your friends and colleagues from anywhere and receive from anywhere — even in very obscure places where you wouldn’t be able to have cell phone reception.

“We wanted to capture that in the name — we wanted to capture that feeling: the physical sensation that you’re buzzing your friend’s pocket. It’s like buzzing all over the world. So we did a bunch of name-storming, and we came up with the word ‘twitch,’ because the phone kind of vibrates when it moves. But ‘twitch’ is not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word ‘twitter,’ and it was just perfect. The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds.’ And that’s exactly what the product was.” (Wikipedia, 2010)

Twitter achieved popular fame and usage when it won an award at the 2007 SXSW Festival, the annual technology/music conference in Austin, Texas.

Twitter was estimated to have achieved 18.1 million registered users in 2010, and, that year alone, attracted over 10 million visitors per month. While its traffic grew 2,500% from 2007-2010, its user base has grown more slowly. This signals that Twitter is not for everyone.

According to Twitter’s blog, about 50% of Twitterers follow and are followed by just 10 people (“Twitter Power” by Joel Comm). That means you can be in the top 10% of Twitter users by attracting only 80 followers.

And who are these Twitterers? In 2010, Twitter’s largest age group was 35-44 year olds, with 60% of the service’s traffic originating outside the US.

More so, Twitter has attracted high profile users such as the 44^th U.S. President Barack Obama who used it as a very successful campaign tool during his run in 2008. The American Red Cross has continued to use it as a way to communicate updates about local disasters.

Not-for-Profit organizations have also utilized Twitter to raise instant funds — at the click of a button – that keeps them afloat during times where accessing local support is less likely.

What It Is, What It Isn’t

Like a micro-version of Facebook, Twitter lets you set up a brief profile, post a photo of yourself, and send status updates of personal or professional interest to you and those who “follow” you.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter, to date, does not let you post series of photos, audio or video recordings, or long chunks of content.

Facebook is a well-rounded, complete picture of you and your life – depending on how full you make your profile. If all you do is complete your profile but never interact with Facebook, people can still find you, perhaps contact you via the information you share, and get an up-to-date impression of who you are (or who you portray yourself to be).

One of the agreed upon values of Facebook comes from the content in your profile and your interaction with your friends on the site.

Twitter, in contrast, is more like a stream of consciousness tool. It includes the basics like your photo, your location, your website link, and your latest tweets, or postings to Twitter. But its core value comes from how you engage in the conversations you follow. To make Twitter relevant to you or your followers, it will require participation, not passivity. Like a garden, it must be attended to or the connections dry up.

Whom you follow will make a big difference in how you tweet, too.

Where Twitter differs from text messaging is that your tweets are posted to your stream (a web page that shows your tweets in reverse chronological order) on the web. People who choose to follow your streams are “followers” and the people you follow are “follows.”

For example, if I follow a person and notice that his tweets are frequent but adding no value to the conversation (e.g., “Oh I like this a lot!” with a link to web site with a picture of kittens) then I usually unfollow after a week of valueless tweets. Don’t be shy about unfollowing. To unfollow means to remove a person from the list of people you follow.

Twitter requires consistent interaction to derive value from it. Try to deliver the kind of value you want to derive from it.

Saying A Lot In A Little Space

You get 140 characters and that is all.

The 140 character limit comes from the service being originally designed for use primarily on cellphones. If you use text messaging features on your mobile phone, there is a limit to how long your messages can be. This is a technical limitation imposed by the cellphone carriers.

These short messages are referred to as “tweets” in the Twitter nomenclature. They are also referred to as microblogging since your tweets are essentially very short blog entries, but tweet is the most common reference.

You can follow or unfollow anyone at any time. You can also block someone from following you. Notifications are sent to you when a new follower begins following your tweets, but nothing is communicated when you are unfollowed by a person. The same applies when you follow and unfollow others.

By posting your tweets on a web page, it’s like sending a text message to hundreds or more of people with one simple effort.

The value of Twitter lies in who you follow, who follows you, and what you tweet about.

Twitterspeak

Before moving forward, let’s orient you to how people and activities are commonly referred to among the Twitterati.

Twitter uses avian references to itself (its logo is a stylized bird). There are many bird-related references and mashed up terms beginning with “tw-.”

For example, the people whom you follow can be referred to as “tweeple.” Topical conversations are called “twendz.”

The jargon might leave you feeling like Elmer Fudd so use the terms that you are comfortable with but be aware of what they all mean. Visit Twitter Glossary for a complete dictionary of popular terms.

As you read tweets, you will notice that a tweet will contain a reference to another person but it will have the @ symbol before the person’s name. User names always have the @ symbol before their name. To refer to another person in a tweet with the @ symbol before her name is akin to pointing at the person in real life. It directs the reader to finding the person by clicking on her user name.

Another common use of one’s user name is at public events. Next time you attend a conference, look around to see who is using their Twitter handle instead of their name or below it. This is a good practice to start with your next name tag. By doing so, you make yourself publicly findable in a crowd and simplify the connection process.

Twitter as Community

As I’ve mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, many people mistakenly assume that Twitter is for narcissistic people who want to announce to the world that they are hungry; that they are walking to the store; that they are bored at work, stuck in traffic, using the bathroom, and a thousand other mundane aspects of daily life.

Yes, in fact, there are many who use it that way. But I recommend you do not follow them.

Instead, look for people who are using Twitter wisely. Either as an extension of other online activities they practice, or who use Twitter as their primary social networking tool.

For example, Twitter has become an extension of how people use their blogs. When the writer posts a new entry on his blog, through a simple addition of a utility to his web site, he can post a tweet that he just added a new posting to his blog.

This immediacy is what empowers Twitter to provide a real-time stream of content. Like a virtual postcard updating friends, it gets sent out to audiences (followers) that are usually interested.

For example, many top blogs such as TechCrunch and Mashable post tweets about new articles on their site as they are posted as a way to drive traffic to their sites. Before Twitter, they waited on users to visit their sites. With Twitter, users can quickly scan a day’s worth of postings by headline and click through to the ones they want to read. This drives people to use the sites more often than before. Such attention may facilitate direct purchasing for people selling products or services via the websites.

Twitter also makes sharing content very simple. By “re-tweeting” another person’s tweet, all of your followers see an item that you have deemed interesting enough to share. This passive endorsement suggests to your followers that you thought it was worth passing along, so it’s implied that they will find it useful, too.

This draws on the concept of crowdsourcing, where we rely on the judgments of groups of people to divine what is worthwhile and what is not. The good stuff bubbles to the top while the mediocre sinks downward to microniches or obscurity.

If celebrity news is your thing, Twitter was made for you. Nearly every celebrity around has a Twitter following and either has a ghost twitterer to update fans or tweets herself to be closer to her following. If famous people are your thing, get ready to drink from the fire hose like never before.

Twitter and You

If you choose to blog, and you blog frequently, installing a simple Plug-In (a small piece of programming that adds new functionality to your blog) to your blog will copy your blog post’s headline to become a tweet. It will automatically send this out and include a link to your blog posting. Tweeting done.If you use Facebook primarily to update your social networking status, there is a plug-in available via Facebook that performs the same function.

Pay attention that you don’t exceed the 140 character limit to avoid tweeting partial entries. That may confuse readers.

If you use Twitter as your primary, or optional, update tool, you’ll find it easy, if not addictive, to use throughout your day.

When you first join Twitter, it’s a good idea to read what others tweet about for a while and get used to the lingo, formatting and topics. When you’re ready to join the conversation, jump in. Just remember, add value to your reader and you’ll get back value or at least a more substantial following.

A great way to start tweeting is to use the “share this” feature found on most content sites, like newspapers and magazines. These publishers want their content to spread like a lively virus across the web so they add this feature to make it simple to do so.

When an article grabs your interest, and you think people in your immediate circle would also like it as well, like one birdie to another, tweet it.

This approach is part of how you build an online persona that establishes what your interests are and areas of expertise.

For example, I know an interview coach who frequently posts links to advice columns that discuss questions he addresses with his clients. This is a value-added benefit to his followers and clients alike. Intermittently, he inserts a tweet that encourages you to take a free 30-minute consultation with him to improve your interviewing skills. Check him out on Twitter by clicking on FIND PEOPLE and searching for  @interviewcoach.

Many small businesses have begun using Twitter as a way to create professional visibility and promote their company’s offerings.

Healeo (@healeo) is a health food store in the urban neighborhood of Seattle called Capitol Hill. Healeo tweets throughout the day when they begin serving fresh batches of soup and pastas made that day. They tweet about beverage specials; that the visiting massage therapist is on site and available, or just comments about how busy their store is on a given day.

These tweets cost nothing to produce aside from a few minutes of time. They generate business for this small company, help Healeo measure their audience, and determine which followers use the coupon codes that only appear on Twitter.

Dell Computers is another commonly cited case study of business using Twitter for fostering and tracking sales. Dell uses Twitter to promote specially discounted computers, sales that are not available anywhere else. By using this free tool, they estimate generating an additional $2 million in sales through their tweeting alone. In the old days, $2 million might have been Dell’s entire advertising budget.

In our personal lives, Twitter offers an excellent resource for finding answers to questions.

Whether you’re a student conducting research or a traveler looking a good hotel while on a trip to Chicago, you can tweet to ask for referrals – or slog through pages of user reviews from two years ago and make your best judgment call from there.

Whatever your need or desire, Twitter is a tool for putting your query out there for a quick answer. And when you see others asking questions, try to provide a useful answer.

Since this is all done publicly, you are adding to the knowledge of others along the way.

Flashmobs, or Instant Gatherings

Despite the strong arm efforts of repressive governments to limit or suppress free speech, technology offers clever workarounds that are near impossible to shut down.

Twitter has proven its usefulness among dissenters and protesters time and again as a tool for organizing, communicating banned information and locating one another.

For example, Iranians opposed to the current regime have used Twitter to great effect to organize themselves beyond the purview of government officials. When the law limits how many people can gather in a place at any given time without a permit, Twitter lets everyone gather simultaneously without skirting the law – and achieve their collective goals.

URL Shortening on Twitter

When you post a link, the link may be longer than your 140 character limit. To work around this, use a URL shortening service like Bit.ly or Twitsnip.

This online service converts your long URL (the web site link) down to a small URL so there is more room for your tweet. With Bit.ly, you will have the option to accept the random series of numbers and letters it generates or customize the URL with plain English of your choosing. Sign up for a free account to customize the link.

An added advantage with Bit.ly is that it also tracks how many of your links are clicked on. If you are into data, that’s a fun measurement to watch as you tweet more and more links to stories across the web.

I have used these Bit.ly customized links throughout this series as a shorthand to point you to various off-site resources.

While we’ll cover the steps to joining Twitter and setting up your profile in the next section, this unit focused on how you can utilize Twitter for the best results.

Build Your Nest, Little Birdie

Twitter is a terrific and powerful social media tool. Want to talk about getting started or how you like it so far? Post it in the Comments section for a response.

With it, you can create a search agent that monitors the web 24/7 for any series of search terms you want to follow. Many people use this to follow specific news topics, celebrities, companies or sports teams.

Use it to monitor yourself, too.

You will need a Google account to use this feature. Sign up at:

http://www.google.com/alerts

Enter your name inside quotation marks. This Boolean search technique limits results to only instances of your name.

For example, “Todd Myers” yields only results with that particular spelling in that sequence.

Select “Comprehensive” for Type. This searches the broadest array of sources across the web.

For “How Often,” select the frequency you want to receive results.

Enter your preferred email address in “Deliver To.”

If you dislike any activity associated with your name, act to clean it up (whether it is you or not), and dissociate your reputation from your twin’s.

Found Your Doppelganger?

Yeah, that is a big word! Have you found any one with your name also but nefarious activity to boot? How do you distinguish yourself against the other person? Post your ideas in the Comments section for a response.

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.

In the world of Facebook, your Wall is how you build and connect with others. To call it a billboard is a more accurate definition.

Your Wall is what you see when you log in to Facebook. It publishes the Status Updates and activities of people in your network in reverse chronological order.

For every Status Update you post about yourself, there will be a corresponding entry in the timeline on the Wall’s of everyone you friend on Facebook.

When you consider the size of your network, the amount of updates posted to your Wall can quickly become overwhelming. There are tools to manage how much you do or do not see – we’ll touch on those later. Nonetheless, as you continue to grow and cultivate your network, this is why you will want to consider each new addition before impulsively saying “yes” to every friend request.

Status Updates

Status Updates invite you to answer the question “What’s on your mind?”

It is perfectly acceptable to post updates here related to your work life. Use good judgment on what you write!

There are many people who have lost jobs, been passed over for interviews, and lost control of their work situations for posting careless, unconsidered statements.

Many people use Status Updates to share what they are doing at a given moment, or an event they will be attending.

Why should others care?
Using Facebook intelligently yields stronger relationships with those you have a strong affinity.

Into horror movies? Share the update you’re going to see the latest sequel to “Saw” at 3 p.m. and the theatre where you’re going. Adding these details make it easy to create a group event quickly and on the fly. It also generates topics of conversation.

“Oh, I read you went to ‘Saw’ the other night. How was it?”

The same approach applies for theatre, concerts, sporting and political events, or other activities.

If you want to organize a group of people around a common point, using Facebook to find them and coordinate the event is very simple and fast.

Remember how detailed you were in completing your profile in the previous unit? This is where that thoughtfulness pays off. By including as many relevant interests, commonalities or other factors, you open yourself to contact by others with similar interests. Imagine how hard it would be to find similarly interested people without these tools.

This is why Facebook has grown to be THE social networking platform in the world.

By posting news articles to Facebook, you can create spirited conversations among your network. Posting news articles also provides a way for the hottest news of the day – among your network – to surface to the top. Don’t have time enough to read the newspaper or catch the news? Check your Facebook to see what people are talking about.

Many news organizations feed their content to a Facebook Page now. Rather than visiting the news organization’s web site, or receiving email updates, you can simply fan their Page on Facebook to have their updates appear on your Wall.

Unifying your preferred information sources with your network will streamline your information intake through a mixture of knowing what your friends and family are doing plus what’s going on in the world.

Given that the average Facebook user is on the site for 55 minutes, you can see why this consolidation of streams yields such a lengthy visit time.

Photo Albums
Facebook’s Photos feature enables you to see the latest pictures posted by people in your network.

Just like Status Updates tell you what people are doing, the Photos update shows you what they are doing.

Again, use good judgment when posting photos. Use good judgment as well in your privacy settings to control who can see what.

Photos get people into more trouble than Status Updates because they do not think about who might see them.

Do you want to be the guy remembered for being nice to his dog, or the guy passed out on a couch with beer and liquor bottles surrounding him?

Like it or not, we make judgments about people based on what we see. And photos seem to have an infinite lifespan on the Internet. One click of the mouse, and the image can be saved to a person’s computer – ready for emailing or posting elsewhere, and you cannot regain control of that situation.

For details on how to upload photos and create photo albums, plus how to share these images and keep them private, visit this link on eHow.com

Climb the Bean Stalk…err…Wall

Ready to scale that Wall but need a few footholds first? Post your question in the Comments section for a response.

It is easy to get caught up in the excitement of joining a new site and wanting to add all the people you know.

The downside to this enthusiasm is “over-friending.” This means adding people indiscriminately no matter how well you do or do not know the person.

Research suggests that we can know about 150 people before our relationships become less meaningful and more tenuous. Adding more people also means more updates to follow and more interactions to manage.

You will see members with hundreds of friends. This does not mean the person is exceedingly popular – unless he or she is a high-profile figure – but usually reveals a person who confuses numbers with popularity.

Only you know how many connections are right for you. My recommendation is to add gradually, assess for a period, then remove the ones who do not bring value.

How do you judge value? If the person is constantly suggesting you become a Fan of various Pages, or suggesting you should join various Groups, or sending you requests for “bits of flair” or “farm animals” (taken from popular games on Facebook), then the person is more a source of annoyance than value.

If you are concerned about the person seeing that you removed the connection, you can also Hide their updates from your Wall to reduce the status update clutter.

In short, be considerate by adding only people you know in real life and or who agreed to friend you online.

Did Someone Take It Too Far?

Are you guilty of over-friending? Have you been a victim of a drive-by friending? Share your story. We’ll bring the coffee and wine. Post your story in the Comments section for a response.