The Social Media Lifestyle

Integrated Alliances (IA) is here to help you use Social Media to make your personal and business lives better. We are knowledgeable, entertaining, sharing and looking to help you be more successful with Social Media.

Miles Austin, Mike O’Neil, Lori Ruff and Lyndle Savage lead a team of 10 others across 10 North American locations.

Pictures disappearing from LinkedIn?

There have been reports of LinkedIn pictures being mysteriously deleted.  One must think it is happening due to something at LinkedIn.  If your picture is not a pure and ordinary headshot, you may want to consider making it such.  A “quick pic” from a cell phone camera may even be enough. 

 

Mike O’Neil as an Obamicon

Mike O’Neil headshot

 

Case in point: my Obamicon headshot picture disappeared over the weekend.  If this has happened to you (Obamicon or other), please comment back so others can learn from our experiences.

Follow Lori on the Road…

Follow Lori as she’s on the road speaking and training or filming DVDs… her latest pictures and Flip videos can be viewed at www.LoriOnFacebook.com

Lori in Brentwood TN, Amy Grant's Estate

LinkedIn Groups – new rules, new issues

LinkedIn modified its Groups function recently and it has created quite a stir from those that are paying attention.  Did you notice?

So, what’s the big deal one might ask?  I will cover the changes and what they mean for you in a series of posts so that you can absorb them one at a time.

This round we will deal with member data.

LinkedIn Group Managers have for a long time had the ability to expert their group member data into a CVS (Excel) file for use outside of LinkedIn.  Group Managers can no longer do this in the latest LinkedIn release.

LinkedIn added a group send capability for Group Managers and it looks like a great thing at first glance.  We have been asking for this for a long, loing time.

Initially, it had everyone jumping up and down for joy when LinkedIn added the Group Send capability (for Group Managers).  Look a little deeper and it isn’t so rosy.  A Group Manager can only send ONE communication per week and it is only through LinkedIn.   Furthermore, Group Managers can no longer see the E-Mail addresses of their members (unless they are direct tier 1 connections of course).

I am teaching a class (Webinar) on April 2 covering LinkedIn Groups and will be sharing parts of what I know here on the blog.  It is for people that want to create and/or manage a LinkedIn Group.

INFO and Registration for the 4/2 LinkedIn Groups Webinar

Join the Integrated Alliances LinkedIn Groups:

www.JoinIA.com

www.JoinLinkedToDenver.com

www.JoinFriendsofColorado.com

Social Media Connection launches with Key Social Media Leaders

Last week, there is a big stir from the Social Media Connection Broadcast Network, a group of the most influential social media experts in the studio so you can see, hear, experience their expertise and energy. 

The Integrated Alliances Show, has an offshoot – be sure to check out the special Rock and Roll edition.

The team consists of Jay Deragon, David Bullock, David Cooper, Sherman Mohr, Dan Ryan, Irene Williams and myself. This is the modern day, social media equivalent of MTV in many ways.  It all launched this week - visit www.SocialMediaConnection.com

LinkedIn Data Field Lengths revealed

So, just how much “Real Estate” do I have to work with on my LinkedIn Profile?

I had a project recently to find out just how much space we have to work with in each field on LinkedIn. It lets you know where the lines are drawn and that can help a lot in making you most visible.  We always suggest that you create and maintain your master LinkedIn profile text in MS Word and then cut and past the text into LinkedIn.

So, just how much space does LinkedIn give you in a profile anyway?  I did a little testing and here is what I found:

Picture - 85 pixels by 85 pixels (after cropping) using a professional photo
Headline/Header - 120 Characters
Summary – 2,000 Characters (about 2/3 of a printed page)
Specialties – 500 Character
Company Name - 90 Characters
Job Title – 100 Characters
Job Description – 1,000 Characters
Education Activities and Societies – 500 Characters
Education Additional Notes – 1,000 Characters
Custom Web site URL Tag (Other) – 30 Characters
Interests – 1,000 Characters
Groups and Associations – 1,000 Characters
Honors and Awards – 1,000 Characters
Contact Settings – Lots, but no way to effectively tell how many – really

A fully optimized Profile is one of the keys to being found and helps you find new opportunities using LinkedIn.  So, we’ve developed the IA LinkedIn® Workshops and Webinars to teach you how to craft an extremely effective LinkedIn profile, how to begin building your network, how to avoid the numerous LinkedIn pitfalls, how to search for people and resources and how to BEHAVE on LinkedIn so you don’t get in trouble.

Check out my fully built-out LinkedIn profile for ideas on improving yours

Recommendations for Getting and Making LinkedIn Recommendations

There are recommendations and then there are RECOMMENDATIONS and then, for the majority, there are no recommendations.  It isn’t easy to enter in to the world of LinkedIn recommendations without knowing the way.

 

There is an art of recommendations and then there is a culture around it.  At IA, we are artists and there are many others, many are career coaches.

Here is our unique wizardry on recommendations.  I would like to hear what you think about it.  We teach this methodology in our LinkedIn training.

Pick the right person – only request recommendations from people that you actually had business dealings with.  Good idea is to look at successful projects and who else was involved.  Job titles are important, so are company names.  Pick people that you could recommend as well.

Tell them what they might cover – Suggest a specific project.  “You might say something about the Marketing  database conversion we did last year.  A couple of statistics and something about how I helped make it successful is all it takes.  I will return the favor if you like.  Thanks a lot!”

Return the favor – you will be automatically asked/encouraged to reciprocate.  In most cases, you will want to do this, especially if you picked the right person in the first place.

Some examples:

“Bob and I worked on a data conversion project in 2003.  We has 12 cities to convert from .Net to MySQL in a month.  Bob made sure the project got done right.  We have worked on other projects together as a result.”

“Tony worked for me as a Sr. Account Manager at Sprint for 2 years.  He worked with 10 of the top 40 accounts in Colorado.  He always exceeded goals and made those around him more successful in the process.”

“We hired Mike to train our team of 30 outside sales reps. On LinkedIn.  Mike delivered a vibrant program with play by play instruction that has already helped our team open new doors and close new deals.”

Look at this as a place for testimonials that you might use elsewhere in your marketing. Note that the testimonial text from others is not searchable using LinkedIn keyword searches.

As a result of being recommended and recommending others you now have links to and from other the LinkedIn profile of others that you personally selected.  This is a sort of super-connection between you.  You have increased your visibility in the LinkedIn world and in the Google world.

Look at the 100+ recommendations on my profile at:

www.linkedin.com/in/mikeoneil