The following is a great example of merging the power of online and offline networking to create incredible synergy. Sheila is one of my students who purchased the LinkedIn Power system. She sent the message to the people in her LinkedIn network. She is also a BNI member – the worlds largest face-to-face networking organization.  She is giving a lot of value to the people in her networks. What do you think this is doing for her? At the very least she is gaining visibility – I’m writing about her here, aren’t I? However she is also getting credibility as someone who is caring, supportive and helpful.  Are these the type of qualities you would like to have in a travel agent?

Notice how she promotes herself and what she does very subtly. The spotlight is on others not her. This is the difference between advertising and product placement. One screams and interrupts. The other one is subtle and part of the context.

LinkedIn

Sheila Cannon has sent you a message.

Date: 7/30/2010

Subject: Connection Highlights – How can I help you?

Hi! How is your summer going? I hope you’re managing to stay cool. I’ve noticed that the leaves are starting to fall already, so perhaps we’ll have an early winter.

This summer I took a trip to Italy and an MSC Mediterranean cruise with my family. We had a great time. Rome was just amazing, with ruins right next to new buildings all over the city. The highlights of the cruise for me were Tunisia (totally different culture) and Pompeii.

Once again, I would like to highlight selected people in my network that I know personally can offer real value, helping you to offer a new benefit to those people in your network.

If you are looking for something specific yourself, please let me know. Conversely, if you would like to get the word out about a product or service that you offer, I would love to hear more about it.

I am proud to say that I know personally that these associates can help make the lives better of those that you like, know and trust. Please take a look at the recommendations below to see if you know someone who could use this service. If you do, kindly introduce us. If this is something you would rather not participate in, please let me know and I won’t send these highlights to you.

1. A friend of mine recently had his last several tax returns reviewed by my CPA. He did the happy dance in the elevator after meeting with her, because he was going to be getting $57,000 back from the IRS, which was 1/3 of his annual income! If you have a friend who would like their taxes reviewed to see if they are owed money, let me know and I’ll put them in touch with her.

2. Who do you know that has a new teen driver in the family? They may want an insurance company that helps inexperienced drivers develop safe driving habits through their safety education program for those with less than nine years of driving experience. Jean at State Farm in Redlands and her staff of great ladies give speedy, personalized service and will make them feel like valued customers. She’s got a great program that includes a premium discount for qualifying drivers. She also offers a Good Student Discount for students who get a 3.0 or higher. Keep your teens from harm and call Jean at State Farm for a quote. 909-798-5318. Tell her Sheila, the travel genie, sent you!

3. Do you know someone who is having trouble finding a dentist who will take his insurance? I’d like to tell you about Raymond whose insurance coverage changed and his dentist did not take his Aetna PPO plan. He put off going to the dentist for three years and got gum disease. He finally found this great dentist (a father and daughter team) who takes Aetna PPO insurance (and many others). He’s now getting his gum disease under control with their help, by going in every four months for a cleaning. If you have a contact looking for a great dentist who takes their insurance, contact me and I’ll put them in touch with this dentist.

4. Do you know any Beatles fans out there? You can let them know about a free festival called Tribute to the Beatles at the historic Santa Monica Pier, August 26, 27 & 28, 2010. They can find out more about it by visiting www.tpclive.com. Also, my agency, Connection to Cruise, is presenting three different “Tribute To The Beatles” cruises, featuring The #1 Beatles tribute band, Abbey Road! Please have them contact me at 818-385-7092 or Sheila@ConnectionToCruise.com for more details.

All my best,

Sheila 
Travel Genie 
Connection to Cruise

The value of LinkedIn is primarily in building and leveraging relationships. One of the challenges that people face is how to take the initial contact with a stranger and turn it into a meaningful relationship. Furthermore, how to do this in a systematic, time-effective way?

The way I do it is by sending a message to my new contacts offering them the gift of inspiration through a program called QuoteActions. It is very effective, fast and scalable. Below is a response I just got from a recent LinkedIn contact.  In addition to already have made a very positive first impression with Mark, he will now be receiving something from me every week (that he requested and opted in) which will continue to further my relationship with him. Best of all, this whole thing took less than 1 minute to set in motion. Very powerful indeed

Click here to subscribe to my YouTube Channel to see more videos like this

The key to being successful with Social Networking is building relationships. Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point talks about how small actions done over time will add up to a moment when things explode.

This same principle applies to building relationships.  Making new connections on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn is very easy. Turning those connections into relationships takes some work.

The good news is that you can use technology to help you turn contacts into relationships. Remembering and recognizing someone on their birthday is a very powerful tool.

Yesterday I sent one of my casual contacts an electronic birthday card – I was notified that they had a birthday through Plaxo. The action took me less than 30 seconds to complete.

I just received a message from her telling me how I made their day! Who would have thought that this would be the case? I now have a much stronger connection with her thanks to a small action on my part.

Making someone’s day and delighting them is a great way to build relationships. The more we do this the more we are building our relationship capital (RC.)  RC is a form of currency that will yield fabulous results.

How do you build your RC?

Great news. You are now able to reorder the various sections on your LinkedIn profile to have the information displayed in the order that you would prefer. For example, I have a video embedded in my LinkedIn profile (click here to learn how to do this) and it used to be way at the bottom and many people missed it. I have now been able to move it right up to the top and now more people can see it.

Click here to watch a short video on how to reorder the sections on your LinkedIn profile

In order to be successful with any Social Networking activity you must have a strategy. I’ve you’ve been following my blog, you know that I advocate the VCP model – Visibility/Credibility/Profitability.

Your LinkedIn’s status update can be used as a way to help you gain Visibility and Credibility. Below is a comment to one of my updates that resulted in one of my contacts adding to both my Visibility and my Credibility.

What can you post that will help YOU increase your Visibility & Credibility on LinkedIn?

In my LinkedIn presentations I often ask the following two questions:

1- How many of you are on LinkedIn and have a profile? I usually get about 80% of the audience to raise their hands.

2- How may of you are generating business out of LinkedIn? I’m lucky if I get more than 1 or 2 people who raise their hands. More often than not, I get zero.

Most people who are on LinkedIn don’t understand how to use LinkedIn to generate business.

I would venture to say that this is even more prevalent on Twitter. And I would count myself among those who don’t fully understand how to generate business using Twitter.

I just finished reading an article that has an excellent  (and short) case study of how to use Twitter successfully to generate business.  I do believe that if people were exposed to more examples (case studies) of practical, tactical activities that lead to success using Social Networking, it would make it much easier for them to embrace it. You can read the article here.

I you have or have heard about other specific examples involving Twitter such as the one covered in the article, please share them with me.

In my previous post I wrote about how to get to the 100% completeness mark with the LinkedIn profile.  One of the areas to be filled out is the Specialties area.  I got some questions regarding what to put in that area.

Remember that LinkedIn is a search engine and that it will search for keywords.  The specialty area is one where you can insert the keywords that reflect what you do as well as who you help. This way when someone searches for those keywords, your profile has a chance to appear among the results.

Since one of my specialties is helping BNI members triple the number and quality of referrals they give and receive, I listed that under the specialties in my profile. I also want to attract people to my Corporate Training business and one of the areas I specialize in is in Conflict Resolution among executive teams. So I have that as one of my specialties.

You can list as many specialties as you want. Just make sure that they are relevant to what you do and who you are looking to help.

To maximize your networking ability on LinkedIn, it is important to have your profile completeness at 100% .  Anything less than that hurts your chances of increasing your Visibility and/or Credibility.

LinkedIn does a great job of telling you what you need to do to bring your profile to the 100% mark.

The image on this post is from one of my clients who wanted to know how to bring her profile to the 100% mark. As you can see, she needs to complete the Summary and Specialties sections of her profile. Once she does this, she will be at 100%.

LinkedIn has a list of 6-10 elements needed for the profile to be at the 100% mark. One of those is having a minimum of three recommendations showing on your profile. So if you have fewer than three, make it a priority to get those posted on your profile. One of the best strategies to do this, is to offer some recommendations to others. Many times, these folks will reciprocate and do give you one in return.  I cover this in detail in my LinkedIn Referral Success Program.

Remember that LinkedIn is a giant search engine and that people are constantly looking for specific people to help them solve their problems. By being thorough – and strategic – you can increase your odds that someone who is looking for what you offer, will find you.

They key to success is action. Immediate action produces immediate results. Delayed action produces delayed results. Thinking about action produces dreams about results.

There are hundreds of motivational quotes services out there. And they are wonderfully inspiring. However they don’t translate to action. When I created QuoteActions, that was one of the elements that was a differentiator. That’s because inspiration + action is a wonderful combination.

Read Copyblogger’s  wonderful post on this topic.