Setting the bar high!

I found David Kearsley when I read this blog posting on JobMob. David's website has to be the best implementation of social media that I have yet seen. Everything is there, all in one very attractive package. As a computer geek I've always put the "look and feel" aspect of my work below the functionality (to my detriment), but David's site just exudes professionality. Since he's put such high quality into his website, would you doubt that he's going to do the same in any project he's involved in?

I'm interested to see where David's personal branding efforts take him. He's off to a great start!

Groups to display on profile

This posting from Jason Alba brings up a very good point; "I used to show all Groups, but selectively went through and took off the ones that added no value to my brand messaging"

This does not mean that you need to leave the groups that don't contribute to your personal brand, it is just a matter of de-selecting the option; "Display the group logo on my profile" in the visibility settings for the group(s) that you do not wish to appear.

I am a member of 50 groups, but only 6 of them are visible in my profile.

Blog Renamed

I have renamed this blog, to avoid any potential issues with LinkedIn in the future. LinkedIn is protecting their name and discouraging anyone from including their brand name on their blog, etc.

Blogger has a great tool for exporting and importing blog postings, so this was a relatively painless process.

Disconnecting

Patrick O'Malley has done an excellent job of explaining how to remove a connection. I think the self-deprecating humour is funny.

Leave a comment if you have any questions about linkedin.

The Dreaded "I don't know ...."

Normally in our house this is just my response to a question from my wife;

what do you want to eat? - I don't know
where do you want to go? - I don't know

You get the picture.

But; "I don't know" in LinkedIn has much bigger consequences.

In my early days of trying to expand my network, I started inviting everyone I could. I'd find a profile for someone who used to work at the same company and send an invitation. After all, we knew of each other. I'd see a profile with an email address and - you guessed it - I'd send an invitation. After all, recruiters want to be connected with potential candidates - don't they? Sometimes - no.

When you reach the magic number of "I don't knows", you get a nasty-gram from LinkedIn that indicates you've been restricted and asks you to confirm your agreement to the terms and conditions. Ouch. After agreeing, you get a message from LinkedIn that you've been unrestricted.

What if you get more "I don't knows" after that? Then what happens?

I don't know.

I certainly didn't want to find out, so I quickly withdrew a bunch of outstanding invitations.

I'm now much more careful about who, and how, I invite. I only invite directly those I know well - just like LinkedIn wants me to. Those I don't know so well; I "invite" outside of LinkedIn with just an email message.

Note that it's not until you reach the "magic number" of "I don't knows" that you get restricted, so it's a good idea to review your LinkedIn mailbox (sent view) to see if it's happening at all. This way you can adjust your invitation practices before LinkedIn sends the "nasty-gram".

Network updates

Rather than relying on opening the LinkedIn home page regularly to view updates on connections, status changes, profile changes, etc. it is possible to receive the updates via RSS.

LinkedIn does however recommend not using a web-based reader (ie. like Google Reader) for this.

See these instructions for installing RSS Feed Readers (for both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux).

Profile Picture

I suppose I would have thought to post on this subject eventually, but Walter Feigenson has already done such an excellent job covering it on his blog in this post; How to add your picture to LinkedIn

My current picture doesn't meet all the recommended criteria I've read about (most notably it doesn't have a light background), but I'm going to stick with it for a while.