when you practice it with a Pay It Forward attitude; your own good deeds will extend beyond your own virtual network and will attract even more connections and valuable relationships.
It is “Digging Your Well Before You’re Thirsty” on a scale that is only possible through social media. Windmill Networking is about being authentic, and never forgetting the importance of “The Personal Touch.” It is rooted in the belief that the more you genuinely give, the more you will receive when you really need it.
Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty is a classic networking book written by Harvey Mackay. It illustrates how you can build up a network that will always be just one phone call away to help with whatever need you may have. By adding value to others and keeping in touch—by doing something for someone without the promise of personal gain—you take an important step towards creating a future network that will serve as your support system. Creating your Windmill Network is built upon the premise of digging your well before you need it.
The Personal Touch is about being real and genuine. It is about being truthful when writing your online profiles. It is about being genuine in your willingness to help someone. Finally, The Personal Touch involves going the a mile and showing that you care. The Personal Touch is the key to adding a sense of warmth to online connections that can often seem cold and distant. Being genuine can make potential connections within your virtual network feel they have already met you. This is especially important if your LinkedIn Objective relates to business. People buy from people they like, not from those who send them a random email. The Personal Touch really does differentiate the successful from the failures in social media, because so many are tempted to send you irrelevant communications, which is easy to do through LinkedIn.
By Plugging Your Windmill into the Grid, YOU determine your networking potential, which far exceeds anything that a limited physical network can provide. With a clear objective, supported by time and energy, you will undoubtedly connect with, and help, others while finding those who may be of assistance to you.
You plug your windmill into the grid when you sign up for a social networking site, introduce yourself to the community in a meaningful way, and then establish connections with people that are not part of your physical network. It is this last action that is crucial to fully plugging your windmill into the grid. Without making a personal connection with someone, your Windmill is simply visible on the map. Without action, it will simply remain in the same dormant position. This action should be guided by objective.
When using a social networking site like LinkedIn, it is important to decide what style of Windmill Networking best fits your needs. But without connecting with others and “networking,” you may be missing out on fully exploiting all of what Web 2.0 has to offer. It is only in the last several months that the pieces of the social media puzzle are coming together in a way that is beneficial for those that understand them. Reading this book will help you understand the concept of Windmill Networking and how it can be used to gain value from LinkedIn. You will become one of the growing numbers of pioneers who can truly harness the power of social networking in a Web 2.0 world.
Chapter 2: Your LinkedIn Objective & Brand
•An Introduction to LinkedIn
•Why You Need to Be on LinkedIn
•What is Your LinkedIn Objective?
•What is a “Brand?”
•Creating Your LinkedIn Brand
•My Top Five Tips to Write a Great Profile
•Your LinkedIn Home Page
An Introduction to LinkedIn
With 40 million primarily professional members, LinkedIn is by far the biggest social networking site that caters to the professional demographic. There are other social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, that have several times more members; however, their targeted demographic differs from LinkedIn (albeit Facebook is slowly changing).
The concept behind LinkedIn is very simple: Professionals put up their profiles and “connect” with people they know. I will explore this idea later in the book more closely; for now, note that LinkedIn clearly states that they only want you to “connect” with people you know. On the other hand, when you sign on to LinkedIn and open an account, it gives you the chance to import your entire email address book. You can send an invitation to connect with anyone who appears in your Inbox or Sent Items. Google Mail, or Gmail, archives any contact appearing within an email header; without you knowing it, you could be inviting people that you don’t really “know,” thus violating LinkedIn’s policy. Such is the paradox that you will quickly understand LinkedIn to be: A site that suppresses this concept of a virtual network while also encouraging you to connect with people and enlarge your network. With this in mind, please be sure to read the User Agreement at the bottom of the LinkedIn site page before implementing any of my recommendations.
Once you have a profile, you may begin inviting other people to connect with you. You will also start to receive invitations to connect with people you know, as well as with those whom you don’t know. This is how you build up your LinkedIn Network with your immediate 1st degree connections. With each additional 1st degree connection, you are able to see that person’s 1st degree connections—who then become your 2nd degree connections. You will also have visibility into your 2nd degree connections’ 1st degree connections, who now become your 3rd degree connections. Figure 2.1 gives you a view of what your network will begin to look like.
Figure 2.1. Your Windmill Network and LinkedIn Degrees of Connection
As you can see, the math is always 1st degree connections < 2nd degree connections < 3rd degree connections. As your network grows, you will be able to see these figures and realize the numbers behind the power of your extended network by looking at your “Network Statistics.” This information can be found under “Contacts” in the left-hand navigation bar.
So is LinkedIn merely a collection of profiles? Not exactly, but by entering your profile information, you become part of the huge LinkedIn database, which features an excellent search capability as its foundation. You can not only find and contact old colleagues and classmates; you can also see their recent photos and where they have been working. The visibility of this information depends on both parties completely filling out their profiles. You will be pleasantly surprised as to how many people thoroughly do so.
This is the bare minimum that LinkedIn can provide you: An updated contact database, complete with photos and resume summaries, for your “real” or physical network. I have met many people, especially executives, who primarily use LinkedIn in this way—to reconnect. There is so much more to get out of LinkedIn, should you take the time to leverage its capabilities.
The rest of this will book will delve deeper into these sections. LinkedIn has such an incredibly extensive, easy-to-search database. LinkedIn users come from a diverse background of countries and industries and include professionals from almost any company that you can think of. As a result, LinkedIn can be used as your platform for any of the following:
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WindMill WISDOM
Potential Uses of LinkedIn
•Finding people to get back into touch with or to find a specific person to communicate with and potentially
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