Updating your status on LinkedIn can both help and hurt you on LinkedIn. Used properly, they can be a very powerful component of your LinkedIn strategy. On this post I’ll focus on how they can help you.

Your updates should be used to increase your and/or your network’s Visibility / Credibility. You can also use the updates to promote – as long as they are subtle! Remember that people on LinkedIn want primarily relevant information and connections. They don’t want to be sold!

I recently posted that I had booked a presentation while traveling abroad to the U.K. (I live in San Diego, CA.) My main purspose with this update was to increase my credibility as an International Speaker. However, I also got an unexpected bonus – see below:

I had recently connected with this person on LinkedIn and thanks to my post we started a conversation and we are now likely to meet face-to-face in a few weeks.

This is the magic of integrating online and offline networking

Online Visibility is very important in this day and age. People need to know who you are before you can help them or do business with you. Getting your name in “the cloud” increases the odds that someone will first meet you virtually and then decide to contact you.

Also, by taking part in conversations with others and recording them online, helps increase your Credibility as well.

I was recently interviewed on the Real Coaching Radio-TV Network and here’s an excerpt of this interview.

New Media Radio-TV - Broadcast your self LIVE

I received an email earlier this week asking for my help to bring some visibility to the short video I’ve embedded below. When the video gets 1 million hits, Medline will be making a huge contribution to the St. Vincent Medical Center, as well as offering free mammograms. All of this is part of a campaign to promote breast cancer awareness.

So after reading the rest of this post, please take 3 minutes to watch the video. You’ll both make a difference and have some fun at the same time. Feel free to use the ReTweet button here as well.

As far as Social Networking goes, this is a great example of it’s power. One of the things I love about Social Networking is experiencing the way networks work. A contact who lives in Minnesota whom I originally met on LinkedIn sent me the email. Our relationship has been growing and we’re at the stage where we are both helping each other. I’ve built enough trust with her that I’m willing to help her with this project. In the process I’m also able to indirectly help a whole bunch of others as well.

The skeptic out there will be saying – “that’s all great, but how does it help you generate more business?” The answer is a combination of facts and faith.

The fact is that I’m building Social Capital. Social Capital is a new kind of currency that you earn when you help others achieve their goals. When you do that, it is the equivalent of putting money into a savings account to be spent at a later date. By helping my contact, she is now much more likely to want to help me in return. Why? This is human nature. Do this hundreds or thousands of times with enough people and you can be building huge reserves of Social Capital. With these kind of reserves you can easily have people helping you earn more money.

The faith part is connected to the law of reciprocity. You get back what you put out there. Some people call it Karma. Whatever it’s name, you must have faith that it will work. Interestingly enough, this is a circular rather than a linear process. What I mean by this is that sometimes the reciprocity doesn’t come directly from the person(s) you originally helped. It comes from seemingly “out of nowhere.” Personally I have experienced many instances where help has come my way “out of nowhere.” Some people call it luck. I choose to attribute this to the law of reciprocity. That’s where faith comes in.

So please enjoy the video and earn a bit of Social Capital in the process.

One of the three pillars of building an effective Social Networking strategy is increasing your credibility. When people trust you they will listen to you. So I’m always looking for ways to increase my credibility online.

ReallyWho.com can help you increase your credibility online. They have a pretty slick system that allows them to verify that you are indeed a real person with a real physical address. This greatly reduces the chances that spammers would use their service – since the last thing that they want is for people online to know their real name and/or location. As you can see from my picture below, they add a verify banner to your image that you can then place on your Social Media sites to increase people’s trust in you.

Remember that trust and credibility are built over time and in little increments. This is one step that will help you. I highly encourage that you at least check them out.

I’ve written before about the Visibility, Credibility & Profitability (VCP) process in Social Networking. Simply put, to make Social Networking work for you, people first need to know who you are (Visibility.) Then they need to trust that you are genuine and that you will add value to them (Credibility.) Only when these two stages are met, people will be willing to give you their direct or referral business.

Earlier today I sent a message to my network contacts in Ecademy.com about my latest article published on The National Networker. Ecademy is a Social Networking site that is very big in Europe and is gaining a lot of momentum in the US.  I have met some very friendly and valuable contacts there. One of the reasons I joined was because I saw an interview with Ecademy’s Chairman, Thomas Power, where he spoke about his reasons for starting Ecademy and also his values about networking.

Thomas Power happens to be one of my contacts. In fact, he was the first person who invited me to be part of his network when I joined. My assumption is that he invites EVERY new Ecademy member to join his network. While this is a nice touch, there isn’t anything particularly noteworthy about it. It is just a sound business strategy.

However here’s the part that IS noteworthy: he actually responded to my message! With nearly 53,000 contacts, I find it very impressive that he took the time to respond to my request. That shows the man is walking his talk. With so few people nowadays doing this, it is refreshing to find out that people who run large organizations, still understand the value of a personal connection. With this simple human touch, he won my loyalty.

If you have yet to discover Ecademy, I encourage you to sign up. Membership is free and well worth it. Plus you will probably have Thomas in your network as a result!

Seth Godin’s blog post Personal branding in the age of Google is a perfect example of how everything we do can either benefit or hurts us. I’m not talking about Karma here. I’m talking about day-to-day actions that will show up somewhere that will either hurt us or benefit us. The good news is that thanks to Google we can now find just about anything we are looking for. The bad news is that thanks to Google others can find out EVERYTHING about us.

Your LinkedIn profile is the first step you need to take after you register to start using LinkedIn. Laurie Cantus owner of Go2Girls Virtual Assistants has an excellent post on do’s and don’ts for your LinkedIn profile.