Lesson 18 is about being active on LinkedIn.

One key to leveraging social media is to have a presence where your contacts hang out - such as LinkedIn. There is no doubt that LinkedIn is the MOST powerful social media tool for business networking.  The other key component of social media is that you MUST be active.

It does no good to acquire 1000 contacts who hear/see nothing from you. Collecting contacts or connections and doing nothing with them is a complete waste of time. The more your contacts see your activity - meaningful activity - they remember you, refer you, recommend you, and want to engage with you. If you are not willing to share valuable content with your network - STOP right now - everything you're doing is a waste of time in social media.

What is meaningful content?

Meaningful content is offering blog article links from YOUR OWN BLOG, blog links to articles you've found interesting (along with some context/insight you had from the article), links to websites that might prove helpful, questions you ask that stimulate discussion, and responses to questions that are "deep" and reflect your thought leadership. Sometimes being a little more controversial than "bland" helps to establish your brand, identity and recognition.

Good examples of controversial folks who are active in social media include myself (you know how opinionated I am when it comes to the subject of hiring), and Gini Dietrich who challenges her readers on issues of Social Media implementation.

Here's where a lot of the tools, collection vehicles, tracking techniques I've mentioned in previous Lessons and Blog Postings start to come together to make providing meaningful content to your network a very quick, efficient, simple, easy and low time investment activity.

I use tools like OneNote/Evernote to collect, catalog, organize information I want to share with my network. I use Google Reader/Feedly to track and organize the variety of blog information I stumble across that I think might be useful to my network. Finally, when I come across an interesting article/blog posting, I save it out of Feedly directly into Delicious Bookmarks using a variety of tags to organize the content.

Once again, you can see my bookmarking/organizing through looking at my bookmarks at http://www.delicious.com/Barry_AT_IMPACTHIRINGSOLUTIONS

So, you might ask, how do I GET ACTIVE on LinkedIn so my network can HEAR/SEE me (without being a pest by flooding them with information). An appropriate level of high communication would be:

• 3-4 Status Updates a day through posting links/content/questions. These appear in the status update feed on each of your contact's home pages on LinkedIn.
• 1 link per day of an interesting and relevant article posted into each of the groups you belong to (this can be automated - for example I can post the same link with a little intro/overview/insight into 50 groups concurrently with one message)
• Posting a question/request/stimulating a discussion in each of your groups at least 2-3X per week
• Scanning daily each of your group's discussions and answering/sharing information around each specific question. In some groups, this might be once a week and in others it might be twice a day - all depends on the size of group and level of interaction.
• Searching the Q and A section of LinkedIn for appropriate questions to respond. Posting questions that are appropriate to CEOs in the Q and A section.
• Making sure your Twitter Account is linked to your LinkedIn Profile - both for status updates and for the Twitter Application on your LinkedIn Profile
• Communicating with members of your network through their book lists, reviews of books, comments on books through the Book List Application
• You can also use the Profile Organizer Tool under the Business Pro Account to send/share information with a specific group of contacts. For example, you might want to share certain information with just your members, your A list of prospects, or your Trusted Advisers.

LESSON 18 ACTION STEP

1. Starting right now, begin posting 3-4 status updates per day with interesting and relevant links, questions, ideas for your network
2. Starting today, become active in your groups by posting a link, comment, discussion item at least once per day
3. Make sure you are connected to the book lists of every one of your network connections
4. Use the Profile Organizer to send a weekly message to your A prospect List through the use of the tagging feature

Lesson 18 DISCUSSION POINTS

How active are you now in using status updates?

Do you view the status updates of your connections?

Have you started to engage in the groups you've joined?

Did you sign up for the Business Pro Account and segment your connections through the tagging feature?