target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_944378b1-a1b5-5816-992b-2f67d42ef852">FIGURE 1-2: Only three degrees of separation can give you a network of millions.
The account in Figure 1-2 has 517 first-degree connections. When you add all the network connections that each of these 517 people have, the user of this account could reach more than 424,000 different people on LinkedIn as second-degree network members. Add over 359,000 LinkedIn users who are members of groups that this account belongs to, plus millions of third-degree network members, and the user could have access to millions of LinkedIn users, part of a vast professional network that stretches across the world into companies and industries of all sizes. Such a network can help you advance your career or professional goals — and in turn, you can help advance others’ careers or goals. As of this writing, the LinkedIn community has more than 722 million members, and LinkedIn focuses on your first-degree connections instead of your second- and third-degree network members, but the concept is still valid. Your network can be vast, thanks to the power of LinkedIn.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A USER AND A LION
Given all the power and potential to reach people around the world, some people — LinkedIn open networkers (LIONs) — want to network with anyone and everyone who’s eager to connect with them. Their goal is to network with as many people as possible, regardless of past interactions or communications with that person.
One of your most prominently displayed LinkedIn statistics is the number of your first-degree connections. After you surpass 500 connections, LinkedIn displays not your current count of first-degree connections but just the message 500+. (It’s kind of like how McDonald’s stopped displaying the running total of hamburgers sold on its signs. Or am I the only one who remembers that?) Part of the reason LinkedIn stops displaying updated counts past 500 is to discourage people from collecting connections. Many LIONs have thousands or even tens of thousands of first-degree connections, and the 500+ statistic is a badge of honor to them.
LIONs encourage open networking (that is, the ability to connect with someone you have never met or worked with in the past) by advertising their email address as part of their professional headline (for example, John Doe; Manager [email protected]), so anyone can request this person be added to his or her network. LinkedIn offers a formal program — Open Profile — for people interested in networking with the larger community. You can sign up for this premium service any time after you establish a premium account. When you enable the Open Profile feature, you can send and receive messages with any other Open Profile member. I discuss this in the upcoming section, “Understanding LinkedIn Costs and Benefits.”
I’ve been asked many times whether it’s okay to be a LION and whether there is any meaning or benefit to having so many connections. My answer is that I don’t endorse being a LION at all! Although some people feel that they can find some quality hidden in the quantity, LinkedIn is designed to cultivate quality connections. Not only does LinkedIn heavily discourage users being a LION to the point of almost banning them, but also the random connections make it next to impossible to tap the real power and potential of LinkedIn.
Discovering What You Can Do with LinkedIn
Time to find out what kinds of things you can do on LinkedIn. The following sections introduce you to the topics you need to know to get your foot in the LinkedIn door and really make the site start working for you.
Building your brand and profile
On LinkedIn, you can build your own brand. Your name, your identity, is a brand — just like Ford or Facebook — in terms of what people think of when they think of you. It’s your professional reputation. Companies spend billions to ensure that you have a certain opinion of their products, and that opinion, that perception, is their brand image. You have your own brand image in your professional life, and it’s up to you to own, define, and push your brand.
Most people today have different online representations of their personal brand. Some people have their own websites, some create and write blogs, and some create profile pages on sites such as Facebook. LinkedIn allows you to define a profile and build your own brand based on your professional and educational background. I use my profile as an example in Figure 1-3.
FIGURE 1-3: Create a unified profile page to showcase your professional history.
Your LinkedIn profile can become a jumping-off point, where any visitor can get a rich and detailed idea of all the skills, experiences, and interests you bring to the table. Unlike a resume, where you have to worry about page length and formatting, you can provide substance and detail on your LinkedIn profile, including any part-time, contract, nonprofit, and consulting work in addition to traditional professional experience. You also have other options to consider; for example, you can
Write your own summary.
List any groups you belong to.
Describe any courses you have completed and test scores you have achieved.
Show any memberships or affiliations you have.
Cite honors and awards you have received.
Identify any patents or certifications you have earned.
Provide links to any publications you’ve written or published.
Give and receive endorsements of people’s skills. (I discuss endorsements in Chapter 7.)
Give and receive recommendations from other people. (I discuss recommendations in Chapter 9.)
Indicate your professional interests or supported causes.
Upload presentations, graphic design projects, or portfolio examples for others to view.
Upload videos that demonstrate a particular skill or past project.
Post website links to other parts of your professional identity, such as a blog, a website, or an e-commerce store you operate.
The best part is that you control and shape your professional identity. You decide what the content should be. You decide what to emphasize and what to omit. You decide how much information is visible to the world and how much is visible to your first-degree connections. (I talk more about the power of your profile in Chapters 2 and 3.)
Looking for a job now or later
At some point in your life, you’ll probably have to look for a job. It might be today, it might be a year from now, or it may be ten years from now. The job search is, in itself, a full-time job, and studies show that as many as 85 percent of all jobs are found not through a job board such as Indeed or CareerBuilder, or a newspaper classified ad, but rather through a formal or informal network of contacts where the job isn’t even posted yet. LinkedIn makes it easy to do some of the following tedious job
