5 Tips to make the most of ‘education’ on your LinkedIn by Petra Fisher

Original Post 

How does the education section of your LinkedIn Profile look? Did you bother to enter any details at all? And if so, how much detail? Ever given it any thought as to WHY you should pay decent attention to this area? I’ll give you 5 reasons here and now!

The importance of education on your LinkedIn Profile

  1. List any relevant qualifications
  2. Prove your academic level
  3. Make yourself easier to find
  4. Reconnect to expand your network
  5. Start telling the story of the professional you are today!

1. List any relevant qualifications on LinkedIn

That seems to be stating the obvious doesn’t it? What if your qualifications are no longer relevant or you’re not sure if they are? Courses like online university for military might make some slightly unsure, but in reality these are just as perfectly valid credits and as valuable an education as any other. So, then should you still list them? YES I’ll get to that in the next 4 points. Firstly list all relevant qualifications.

2. Prove your academic level on LinkedIn

You should always list your highest qualification. Relevant or not. It does show at what academic level your thinking is (or at least once upon a time was).

3. Make yourself easier to find on LinkedIn

This is quite an interesting one! Keywords, does that ring a bell? What is your ideal client, employer or customer looking for? They’ll use the search option in LinkedIn of Google, so your profile needs to be keyword rich. What better way to tuck in some keywords than right at the bottom of your profile.

Have a look at my profile, Petra Fisher LinkedIn Profile, and scroll down to my college degree (2nd last entry under education). Can you see how I managed to fit the words training, trainer, coaching, coach and public speaker quite neatly and naturally even though I studied “Youth Welfare”?

4. Reconnect to expand your network

LinkedIn is a network and in order to network, you need to be connected. It is easy to find people you studied with (and be found by them) if you list your education properly with the right institution, course and dates.

5. Start telling the story of the professional you are today!

This is where the fun and games begin! Before you can start cooking up a brilliant LinkedIn profile, you need to gather the right ingredients. If you haven’t done so already, then read this post first to get yourself organised.

Your ideal client, employer or customer is looking for someone with the right skills and knowledge. Instead of just saying: ” Yup, got those”, why not SHOW you’ve got what it takes? Which of the skills or knowledge you need, did you gain/develop in your student days? Write about that in your education section.

Compare the two examples below:

education-linkedin-profile-example-01-petraf-fisher-trainer-expert

education-linkedin-profile-example-02-petraf-fisher-trainer-expert

>>> Happy with the education section on your profile?<<<

Post the description below for feedback (feel free to add a link to your profile).

Category: Business, LinkedIn | No Comments »

It starts with a Referral – Not a Salesperson

Harvard Business Review posted a recent article, with some interesting statistics. The headliner being :

84% of B2B Sales Start with a Referral — Not a Salesperson

Here is the article for you reading pleasure

 

Outbound B2B sales are becoming less and less effective. In fact, a recent survey found that connecting with a prospect now takes 18 or more phone calls, callback rates are below 1%, and only 24% of outbound sales emails are ever opened. Meanwhile, 84% of B2B buyers are now starting the purchasing process with a referral, and peer recommendations are influencing more than 90% of all B2B buying decisions.

Why are more and more buyers avoiding salespeople during the buying process? Sales reps, according to Forrester, tend to prioritize a sales agenda over solving a customer’s problem. If organizations don’t change their outdated thinking and create effective sales models for today’s digital era, Forrester warns that 1 million B2B salespeople will lose their jobs to self-service e-commerce by 2020.

The answer to the shift away from reliance on outbound sales could reside in social selling, the strategy of adding social media to the sales professional’s toolbox. With social selling, salespeople use social media platforms to research, prospect, and network by sharing educational content and answering questions. As a result, they’re able to build relationships until prospects are ready to buy.

This is different than social media marketing, where a brand engages many, aiming to increase overall brand awareness or promote a specific product or service by producing content that users will share with their network. Social selling concentrates on producing focused content and providing one-to-one communication between the salesperson and the buyer. Both strategies create valuable content from the consumer’s perspective and use similar social networks and social software tools. But with social selling, the goal is for the rep to form a relationship with each prospect, providing suggestions and answering questions rather than building an affinity for the organization’s brand.

Social selling makes sense for achieving quota and revenue objectives for multiple reasons. First, three out of four B2B buyers rely on social media to engage with peers about buying decisions. In a recent B2B buyers survey, 53% of the respondents reported that social media plays a role in assessing tools and technologies, and when making a final selection.

In addition, more than three-quarters (82%) of the B2B buyers said the winning vendor’s social content had a significant impact on their buying decision. A LinkedIn survey found that B2B buyers are five times more likely to engage with a sales rep who provides new insights about their business or industry. Another survey showed that 72% of the B2B salespeople who use social media report that they outperformed their sales peers, and more than half of them indicated they closed deals as a direct result of social media.

Social sales content also gets salespeople involved earlier in the sales cycle, which means they’re more likely to define the criteria for an ideal solution or the “buying vision,” and thus, more likely to win the sale.

It doesn’t take a significant amount of time to get started in social selling. B2B salespeople only need to invest 5% to 10% of their time to be successful with social. Salespeople should begin carving out a small percentage of their daily time for social media. Regular interaction with a prospect may not lead to a direct sale this week or quarter, but could result in a significant win within the year.

Salespeople should also collaborate with their social marketing counterparts to make the most of their social efforts. Marketing can train salespeople in social media systems, processes, and best practices. According to a survey, 75% of B2B salespeople indicated they were trained in the effective use of social media. This training can encompass everything from working in specific social media channels to using corporate social media software, understanding the business’s social media guidelines, and orienting social media content around customer interests and needs, rather than on brand features, benefits, and prices.

What’s more, sales and marketing can collaborate on information to ensure that their efforts are aligned and to identify common goals and metrics that both teams can support. Since sales pride themselves on their one-on-one relationships with customers, they can discuss with marketing customer successes and concerns, changing customer needs, customer questions, and industry updates.

Integrating systems and encouraging transparency will also go a long way. Salesforce, for example, emphasizes the importance of improved communication between sales and marketing citing an App Data Room and Marketo study that found sales and marketing alignment can improve sales efforts at closing deals by 67% and help marketing generate 209% more value from their efforts.

 

Social media is too important to be left to marketing. In fact, a recent study found skilled social media sales professionals are six times more likely to exceed quota over peers with basic or no social media skills. It is time to get started with social selling and meet your prospects where they’re spending their time. Your organization could be halfway there if marketing has already made the shift to integrating social media into their strategies. When marketing combines their long-game with sales short game in social selling, it can be a win-win for both teams — and for your overall business.

This article is was originally published Here
Category: Business, LinkedIn, Sales, Social Selling, Social Selling | No Comments »

How the New LinkedIn Inbox Helps You Get More Engagement by Brynne Tillman

As LinkedIn continues to change the UX (user experience) there are some things that have a significant impact on workflow, and this is a good one.

Over the years I have had to put hacks in place to make sure I engage with every new connection, but no longer. With the new feature in place, when someone accepts your connection request, you are notified in your inbox. This makes it is simple to send a welcome message that starts the conversation. You will see “Name has accepted your invitation” and if you have included a custom invitation, your note will appear in the messaging thread.

This feature makes it simple to reply with a welcome message. Here are two examples:

Name, Thank you for connecting with me on LinkedIn. After visiting your profile I noticed (SAY SOMETHING RELEVANT) and thought it might make sense for us to connect. If you are open to an introductory phone call, we could explore ways we may be able to work together now or in the future.  To make scheduling easier, here is a link to my calendar http://ScheduleaCallwithBrynne.com – please pick a time that best works for you.

OR if you don’t want a call, but would like to add value:

Name, Thank you for connecting with me on LinkedIn. I am not sure if you are using LinkedIn for sales, but if you are I want to share with you some of our LinkedIn messaging templates that can have a big impact on your business development effortshttp://sslink.co/PeopleLinxLinkedInTemplates.

Good Networking,
Brynne

BONUS: The “Keep in Touch” opportunities show up here now too!

 

Category: LinkedIn | No Comments »

Some Amazing LinkedIn Statistics

LinkedIn is one of the older social networks, surviving changes in technology, a tough demographic and a number of challengers along the way.

Here is a collection of interesting LinkedIn statistics, I thought you might like:

 

Statistics

Total number of LinkedIn users : 414 million (December ’15)

Number of new members per second: 2.3 (December ’15)

Number of users in the U.S.: 107 million (February ’16)

Unique visitors monthly: 100 million

Reach of LinkedIn: 200 countries and territories

Users outside of the U.S.: 70%

A professional photo on your profile makes you 14 times more likely to be viewed

Number of Linkedin member page views in Q4 2015: 3.7 Billion

Percentage of Male users: 56% (April ’14)

Percentage of Female users: 44% (April ’14)

Average Female network (U.S.): 101

Average user time spent on LinkedIn, monthly: 17 minutes

Average network size of a CEO: 930

Most over used word in LinkedIn profiles: Motivated (2014)

Users that have listed volunteer experience and causes: 10 million

Percentage of millennials (15-34) that use LinkedIn: 13%

Most used adjective used in Linkedin profiles: Responsible (’13), Creative (’12), Creative (’11)

Percentage of users that use LinkedIn at least once a day: 40%

LinkedIn’s percentage of sharing;

Global: 4% (’13)

N America: 5% (’13)

European: 2% (’13)

Asian: 1% (’13)

Users in UK: 20 millions (’16)

Users in Middle East: 10 million (’13)

Users in Asia: 61 million (’14)

Users in India: 31 million (’15)

Users in Australia: 6 million (’14)

Users in China: 10 million (’15)

Total long form posts on LinkedIn: 3 million (’15)

Total long form posts generated weekly: 130,000

Percentage of millionaires that use LinkedIn: 41% (’14)

Number of new connections made on LinkedIn in the UK 2015: 338.7 million

UK’s most represented industry: IT & Services (’16)

 

Category: LinkedIn | No Comments »

How to figure out which LinkedIn Groups your buyers are part of? By Ankur Chaudhary

The best of social sellers leverage LinkedIn groups to their highest potential to develop relationships while generating warms leads for themselves.

However, often, we are not sure how to identify which LinkedIn groups our buyers are a part of. If you are using the LinkedIn advanced search option to build your buyers list, it is very easy to identify Groups your buyers are active in.

After filling in the criteria of your buyers, press ‘Search’ to go to a list of all your buyers.

When you scroll down the list, you will notice a ‘Group’ option. The groups mentioned here are the groups which have a maximum number of your buyers involved.

If you are targeting only a few companies, simply add all your target companies’ names in the ‘Current company’ box and tick any other search criteria required. LinkedIn will still tell you which of your buyers are part of which groups.


Your job is not done yet. A group with a higher number of your buyers might not be the ideal group for you chose to target your buyers.
You will need to check the Group statistics and see if this group might serve your purpose.

Important factors which you should note are:

– Comments over the last week (See below)

Go to demographics section to note the following factors (See image below):

– Seniority percentage

– Function

– Location

– Industry

Then go to activity section, which can be seen in the following image:

Give priority to ‘Number of comments’ than ‘discussions last week’ or ‘promotions last week’ to better judge the relevancy of a group. This information shows if the group is actively used by members to engage in discussions or if it is just a dump yard for promotions.

Here is a helpful post by Chris Makara on ‘6 ways to use LinkedIn groups for B2B Lead generation.’ http://chrismakara.com/social-media/6-ways-to-use-linkedin-groups-for-b2b-lead-generation/

I generated two warm leads in April by developing relationships in couple of groups I’m active in. How about you? I would love to hear some of your success stories.

Category: LinkedIn, Social Selling | 1 Comment »

Your LinkedIn Skills Just Got a Lot More Valuable by Donna Svei

While the Skills & Endorsements section on your LinkedIn profile has always helped your SEO, it just got a lot more valuable to you.


New Search Filter for LinkedIn Recruiter

Earlier this year, LinkedIn said it would add a Skills filter to its Recruiter product. The filter lets users search for LinkedIn members by the skills they have listed in the Skills & Endorsements sections of their profiles.

The filter looks like this:

I’ve now seen two reports from users that the filter is live, one from Irina Shamaeva here and another from Randy Bailey here.

More Member Value

If you have built out this section of your profile and you have endorsements, this new filter will make you more visible to thousands of recruiters. Good job!

Your Skills & Endorsements Strategy

  1. Look at your listed skills to be sure they include terms that recruiters would use to find someone like you.
  2. Use LinkedIn’s standard terminology when you can. For instance, I could use “resume writer” or “resume writing.” I chose “resume writing” because LinkedIn suggested it.
  3. Activate your ability to be endorsed and to endorse. At the bottom of your Skills & Endorsements section, click “Add skill.”That will take you to this screen where you can follow the red arrows:


Do Endorsements Matter for SEO?

We don’t know how much the number of endorsements you have matters for your SEO, but it’s a safe bet it’s in LinkedIn’s algorithm. As a recruiter, if I’m using the Skills filter, I would want to see people who have the most endorsements for a skill given some priority in my search results.

Isn’t It Nice?

I’m glad to see LinkedIn start to deliver more value from Skills & Endorsements. The Skills filter is an element of the company’s Economic Graph strategy and an incremental step forward in utility for everyone. I’m always happy when a little friction gets taken out of the job market!

I write executive resumes and LinkedIn profiles. Save time. Get hired. Email me at donnasvei@gmail.com or call me at (208) 721-0131.

Donna Svei, Executive Resume Writer

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Have You Been Social Selling All Along? by Susan Marshall

Chances are, you’ve read a blog post, joined a webinar or attended a conference that celebrated the “social selling” revolution. Supporters of the social selling movement claimed that LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites would bring an end to the stereotype of pushy, disconnected, quota-hungry salespeople and give rise to a new breed of relationship-first sellers who use social media to seek connections instead of transactions; who share valuable resources instead of pushing products; who listen instead of talk.

Yet despite the promise of social selling, just one in four salespeople know how to use social media to sell, and a mere 31 percent of reps report using social media at all in their sales process.

The meager adoption of social selling, however, isn’t because it doesn’t work. In fact, 73 percent of social salespeople strongly outperform their traditional selling peers. The problem is that the concept of social selling is woefully misunderstood.

Many salespeople tend to think of social selling as an entirely new discipline: “I know how to sell in the real world, but now I need to learn how to sell on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.” But the simple truth is that social selling isn’t new. The same traits that determine if you’re a good salesperson offline—being honest, helpful, and informative—are what make salespeople successful in the social sphere. Social media are tools. Being a good salesperson is a mindset13. (highlight to tweet)

So, although you may have at first been intimidated by the concept of social selling, understanding the similarities between selling online and traditional selling will help put you at ease. You’ve been social selling all along, and you didn’t even know it.

LinkedIn: Like Trade Shows Without the Travel

Trade shows are a massive investment in time and money. The average attendee travels more than 400 miles to each show and spends more than eight hours meandering through a maze of exhibits in search of leads. The grueling days and hefty travel expenses are worth it, though, if each trade show visit results in new relationships forged on the exhibit hall floor.

It’s that same ability to build meaningful, long-lasting relationships that makes LinkedIn so valuable to salespeople.

Contrary to popular belief, LinkedIn is more than a job-hunting destination—it’s an incredibly deep research and prospecting tool that can be used to unearth new prospects and identify key points of entry into the businesses you’re targeting.

Consider how you select which trade shows to attend before buying a badge. You visit the trade show website, do some research on who’s slated to speak and which companies are signed on to exhibit, and then make a judgement call on if you think it’ll draw the type of prospects you’re looking for.

Finding and connecting with prospects on LinkedIn is even easier. Featuring a variety of search options and detailed profiles, LinkedIn enables you to quickly find the people you want to connect wit2h and makes it easy to ask existing connections to introduce you to their connections to broaden your network.

Following through on our analogy, if you think of LinkedIn as a trade show, thenLinkedIn Groups are the swanky, invite-only after parties. And, just like at real parties, nobody likes a pushy salesman crashing a LinkedIn Group. Groups aren’t a place to hawk your products and services. Rather, they’re a place where you can answer questions, share relevant and informative resources, and engage in conversations. By joining in on these real—albeit digital—conversations, you’ll earn a reputation as an expert whose products or services are worth paying attention to.

Twitter: A Warmer Alternative to Cold Calls

Think those cold calls are working? Think again. According to sales research groupHuthwaite, 91 percent of people never respond to cold calls and, even worse, 71 percent find them annoying2. Even salespeople hate cold calling: 63 percent of reps say it’s what they hate most about their jobs.

Even if cold calling is a necessary evil to filling your funnel, wouldn’t it be nice to know just a little bit about a prospect before reaching out to them? Well, think of Twitter as a tool for making cold calls warmer.

The best thing about Twitter is that you don’t need to tweet a single thing to start seeing its value—all you need to do is start “listening.” Twitter is the perfect tool for conducting some basic pre-sales research, because you can search for specific keywords and phrases to identify prospects. Plugging in a competitor’s name might turn up a Twitter rant from an unhappy customer looking to make a switch. Or, you might find that a prospect is narrowing down their shortlist and looking for suggestions from the Twittersphere. You may even stumble upon some of your own customers requesting (or, in more severe cases, demanding) help.

Twitter enables you to find and engage with prospects at every stage of the sales cycle, and can even help you intervene should a current customer be having a hard time. And, should you be so inclined to share some tweets of your own, you’ll find that the Twitter audience is eager for advice: 73 percent of people trust the information they receive from Twitter.

Now, isn’t that better than taking a shot in the dark on a cold call?

Facebook: A Friendlier Way to Nurture Leads

Potential buyers don’t become customers overnight. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa, 79 percent of marketing leads never convert into sales due to lack of lead nurturing. Conversely, leads that are effectively nurtured make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads, according to The Annuitas Group.

Relationships are critical in today’s sales cycles, and the only way to build those relationships is by communicating with buyers throughout every stage. Phone calls and email have been the two biggest lead nurturing mainstays among sales reps, but Facebook presents a unique opportunity for salespeople to connect with prospects and maintain relationships over time.

While Facebook started as a way for college kids and, eventually, friends and family to keep in touch, it has evolved to become an important source of news and information for the majority of adults. Nearly 80 percent of people consume some news when checking Facebook, including a small percentage who consider Facebook their primary news source. In other words, it’s no longer taboo to share information (provided it’s relevant and useful) with your Facebook friends.

Nurturing leads on Facebook is no different than nurturing them on a phone call to check in or an email that includes a relevant case study. Nurturing—using any communication channel—is less about closing the sale, and more about answering and asking questions, providing valuable content, and engaging in real conversations. And because Facebook is a place where people are more inclined to share what’s happening in their personal lives, it can lead to even deeper, more meaningful connections.

You’re Already a Social Selling Pro

Social Selling isn’t a new concept; it’s simply taking the same traits that make people good at selling at trade shows, on phone calls, and throughout the nurturing process and applying them across social channels. If your goal is to provide useful information and forge a meaningful relationship, then you will see your sales spike regardless of if you’re meeting in-person on the trade show floor or on LinkedIn, making contact through a cold call or on Twitter, or nurturing through follow-up emails or Facebook. Simply put: social selling is selling.

 

 

For 25 years, Susan Marshall has been building and launching some of the best-in-class professional web and video editing applications including Flash, Dreamweaver, and Final Cut Pro, as well as leading digital marketing efforts for ExactTarget, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and more. Capitalizing on her past experience at Apple and mobile startups like ChaCha, Susan now serves as the CEO and co-founder of Torchlite Digital Marketing

Category: FaceBook, LinkedIn, Social Selling, Social Selling, Twitter | No Comments »

UK surpasses 20 million users on LinkedIn

This is a great infographic from one of my closest friends and a fountain of knowledge on all things LinkedIn.

Two thirds of the UK have a presence on LinkedIn, if you want to succeed in business, in this social era, you MUST utilise and effectively network on LinkedIn

Are you “using” it? Or are you just there?

LinkedIn UK Stats

Original Source: http://thelinkedinman.com/
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/thelinkedinman

This blog has been verified by Rise: dXGOPuDOaUsAGLSUGdnZhv7p4IFF7a4d

Category: LinkedIn, Social Media | No Comments »

10 important changes you need to know about LinkedIn for 2015 by Greg Cooper

The LinkedIn development team have been busy. The last few months have seen many changes, big and small, to the world’s #1 business networking platform and the New Year will bring more. In this post I am going to highlight some of the ones I feel are most important for you to know about. You should be aware that because of the way that LinkedIn phases in updates gradually across its customer base it is likely that you will have some but not all of the changes mentioned below.

Why you may ask is it so important to keep up to date with changes to LinkedIn? Isn’t it at the end of the day just another business application like Word or Excel? Well no actually. LinkedIn is also the place where buyer and seller meet and build relationships. Studies consistently show that that the most successful sales people spend more time on LinkedIn than their less successful colleagues. Part of this time is spent making sure they keep abreast of changes because being fluent on LinkedIn gives you a competitive edge.

And so to the changes. Here in my opinion are some of the most important recent and planned changes you need to know about.

1. Revised pricing

LinkedIn recently revamped its pricing model, dumping the lower priced “Spotlight” and “Business” accounts and making “Business Plus” the entry level paid account. This represents a significant hike in pricing. Larger businesses and those selling high value products or services will still regard the paid account as good value however many small businesses are likely to balk at paying $49.95 per month.

If you are not sure if it is worth paying for a premium account LinkedIn has made it easy to upgrade, downgrade, or cancel anytime from your settings page. Here is acomparison of the different accounts. You can also try out any premium account for free for 30 days.

Here is an excellent article by Andy Brandt that reviews the recent price changes.

2. Profile Page – “View Page As” option

With the new profile page design you can “view page as” it will be seen by (a) your connections (b) by the public i.e.anyone. The latter is a stripped down version of your page which does not show blog posts, contact information, endorsements or recommendations, media files.

This is a useful reminder of the importance of reaching out to connect with your target audience so they have access to your profile page in its full glory!

Button allows you to see your profile as your connections or the public do

3. Permaedit Mode

Although the “edit profile” command remains at the moment in the drop down menu this is now redundant as scrolling over any section on the profile page will automatically turn on edit mode for that section – see below:

Scrolling over the profile page now instantly switches edit mode on

4. New look Homepage

LinkedIn have redesigned and simplified the homepage to become a personal dashboard.This is an update I don’t have at the time of writing. This is LinkedIn’s description of the main changes.

“At the very top of the homepage, your new dashboard gives you instant feedback on how you’re doing. See how many people have viewed you and understand how your status updates are performing. Click on either one to get deeper insights into what’s resonating with the connections you care about. Learn who found you – from that CEO to a long-lost friend – and how they found you, plus how you rank across your connections, within your company, and other LinkedIn members like you. Make quick edits to your profile – which help us surface better opportunities, news, and connection ideas for you – with a single click”.

There is also a new “Keep in touch box” at the top right of the page where you can share a comment, say congrats, or like an update.

Click here to read LinkedIn’s announcement about the redesigned homepage.

5. Redesigned recommendation feature

The recommendation feature is one of the longest established and most important LinkedIn features but until very recently had received little attention from the design team. I am glad to say the feature has now been completely updated, for example the rather bizarre option to send out up to 200 recommendations requests at once has been replaced by the option to send a maximum of three requests at one time.

6. Removal of group connection request

A couple of months ago LinkedIn quietly removed the ability to send connection invitations to people in a shared group. This was a very popular and useful feature. and many people are unhappy that this has disappeared. Being in the same group implies shared interests and would therefore seem a reasonable basis for connecting. If LinkedIn were concerned this feature was being abused it would have been simpler in my opinion to add an opt out in the settings menu.

7. New connection options

A change is coming to the standard connection request process from a member’s page. Currently clicking on the connect button on someone’s profile will bring up the dialogue box shown above. In future clicking on this button will automatically send a standard non-personalised connect request. In order to send a personalised request (recommended) it will be necessary to click on the drop down menu and select the customised request option.

I do not have this update yet.

8. How people found you

When you check who has viewed your profile LinkedIn now helpfully tells you how that person came to your profile e.g. from a group, the mobile app, the who viewed your profile page. Whilst this is not necessarily the most important recent change it does give useful feedback on which aspects of your LinkedIn activity are being effective in getting you noticed.

9. New Inmail policy

From January 2015 Inmails will work differently. Instead of receiving credits for Inmails that are not read the system will be turned on its head so in future you receive a credit for every response received (Reply or Not Interested) from a recipient within 90 days. If you don’t get a response within 90 days, however, the InMail credit will be lost.

The monthly Inmail allowance will also increase depending on your membership. For example the entry level Business Plus account will now receive 15 instead of 10 per month. Unused Inmails will continue to be valid for 90 days, after which they are deleted.

It is possible to purchase up to 10 additional Inmails.

Read the LinkedIn policy in full.

10. New LinkedIn search engine

Over the last 18 months LinkedIn has been developing and rolling out a new search engine code named “Galene”. This has largely replaced the original “Lucene” search engine which was no longer able to cope with the volume and rate of change of LinkedIn’s data.

The key benefits provided by the new search engine are:

  • Instant member search of whole LinkedIn database
  • Improved relevance as a result of a more sophisticated algorithm

This is a work in progress and some of the results that a LinkedIn search currently produces can be a bit puzzling with no obvious logic. However it does seem that some of the factors that will influence your ranking on a given search are location, social proximity (how closely connected you are to an individual), and keywords.

There are many more impenetrable criteria hidden in the bowels of the algorithm which we can only guess at, but as with Google search the best advice for users is to make sure you are posting good quality content that is relevant to your audience and you have written and optimised your profile with the customer in mind.

Stop press: LinkedIn have just announced that free account users will now be able to view full names and profiles for anyone in their extended network, this was previously only available to paid subscribers. At the same time LinkedIn are introducing a new restriction on the number of searches that free account users can make each month – this is know as the rather vaguely defined “commercial limit”.A progress bar will appear in your search results when 30% of your searches are left, and will continue to remind you in 5% increments. After you’ve reached the limit, you’ll continue to be able to search, but will see a limited number of results. Your free monthly usage will reset on the 1st of each calendar month.

You can read more here.

I’d love to hear what you think of these changes and any other changes which you feel will have a significant impact on the way you use LinkedIn.

If you have enjoyed this article please share it so other people can too.

_________________________________

Greg Cooper is a Marketing Coach and LinkedIn specialist and Google+ trainer based in Bristol, UK. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Direct Marketing. For over twenty years Greg ran an award winning direct marketing agency working with leading technology companies like IBM, SAP, and Siemens. Today he works with SMEs and Business Units of larger companies. He is an accredited coach on the Government sponsored Growth Accelerator Programme.

For more information about Greg’s Coaching and Training Services or to join the mailing list please click here.

Category: LinkedIn, Sales, Social Selling | No Comments »

LinkedIn Etiquette: Do’s and Don’ts [INFOGRAPHIC]

How good is your etiquette on LinkedIn?

This greast infographic by Top Dog Social Media gives you twenty do’es and don’ts!

Takeaways:

  • Profile Picture: Make sure you’ve got a profile picture, if you can, get a professional to do it.
  • Invitations: Personalise your message, every time.
  • Connect: Introduce your connections to others in your network.

LinkedIn Best Pratice

What are your take-aways or what would you add?

Category: LinkedIn | No Comments »