Ask a LinkedIn Expert

Every Monday, at Noon Eastern, IA hosts the Ask a LinkedIn Expert Webinar. This is a FREE open forum to help users get their qquestions answered and to look for new ideas.  It is co-hosted by Lori Ruff (@loriruff)  and Mike O’Neil (@mikeoneildenver) of Integrated Alliances.  each week a guest expert joins the call to field quetions. Questions are now coming in over Twitter at @LinkedInTrainer.

For years, IA has been helping LinkedIn users get their questions answered through our individual and group training, coaching and now outsourced, managed services.

The sessions are produced by Mike Zabinski of The Webinbar Mentor.

The Integrated Alliances Ask a LinkedInExpert Webinar is a Q&A format that lets YOU get your questions asked by a team of highly knowledgeable social media experts from IA.  It is held Mondays at Noon Eastern and other times throughout the month.  See the schedule and register

Behind the Scenes:

This is actual video of the weekly Integrated Alliances Ask a LinkedInExpert Q/A Webinar here the audience asks questions for the panel of experts.  In this case it is Mike O’Neil, Founder of Integrated Alliances and Lori Ruff, Lead Social Media Coach for Integrated Alliances.  This were shot from our Denver, CO offices.

REAL Q&A

Q: Is it safe to put your email under your name?

A: Well, it’s not 100% safe to put your email address anywhere in your LinkedIn profile. If you’d like to add it though, near your name at the top would not be the best place to have it. If you’re going to include this information, put it down under Contact Settings at the very bottom, but certainly don’t put it in part of your name itself. The headline area is a bit risky as well, but it wouldn’t be a terrible place to add it. The best spot is really down at the bottom under Contact Settings, and perhaps along with a phone number.

 Q: What is the best way to utilize the groups?

A:I found the best way to utilize the groups is when you’d like to invite people. There are many different options as to how to invite them, such as your references, friends, colleagues, or classmates. There is also a dropdown bar where the groups you have joined are listed. Pick a group that the other party will respond well to. You are looking at the groups you are connected to.

Want more? Join more! Sending out invites or a discussion question is a great way of taking advantage of being in a group. This is most successful if you’re a member of larger groups, otherwise you’ll find there won’t be many responses.

 Q: How can I move the unanswered invitations out of my inboxand into the archive box?

A: Click on the left side of the inbox where it says received. Under this tab will be a list of all inbound communications. You can filter the inbox, for examlpe, by clicking on ‘invitations’. Only your incoming invitations will appear and you can go through and highlight the ones you’d like to move.

Once they are highlighted, click on the archive button and they will be sent there from your inbox. The ‘select all’ seems to work well here. The website for LIONs is www.TheMetaNetwork.com. Next question.

 Q: How do people search for an individual based on their skills rather than on their name or company name?

A: People can search based upon skills by using the keyword search. This is very widely used and will be helpful in your searches. Certifications and terminologies are important.

 Q: What are the advantages of being a paid subscriber?

A: Being a paid subscriber has many benefits, and it usually only takes one to justify it. First of all, you will be a featured listing in the search results. When someone else completes a search that includes you, you could naturally be anywhere in the results, page 500 for example. But with a paid membership, you’ll automatically be placed at the #1 or #2 slot, usually within the first few pages.

Secondly, you’ll receive 15 Introductionsrather than only 5.   Frankly, 5 ois not enough for people that really USE LinkedIn.

Lastly, you will be able to do In-Mails. An in-mail is an email that you can send to people that are “2’s” and “3’s” in your network directly without having to go through introductions There are several others as well. For example, if you’re going to upload a list of people into LinkedIn for a bulk invite, LinkedIn will tell you if they’re on LinkedIn or not. Just push a button to select only from your imported contacts people that are on LinkedIn, or people that are on LinkedIn and those who are not.

You only want to select people that are on LinkedIn though because it saves you time. You don’t have to click on all the individual ones and scroll down through the whole database. You can basically do them in one shot.

 

Q: How do keywords such as ‘industry specific words’ work?

A: They work just fine. Keywords for specific industries are very often best placed in the specialties area at the bottom of the summary. That’s a good natural spot to throw industry slang and terminology. Make sure you use all the variations of the words as well as all the synonyms of those words.

 Q: How do you search your connections for a specific company?

A: There are two places to do this. In the upper navigation bar across the top, there is a button that says ‘Companies’. When you click on it, it takes you to a Company Search screen. You can type in a company name there and a list will drop down with the closest matches.

Select one of them and that will take you to their Company Profile screen. This screen has company information in addition to people who work at the company.

Another option is to go to the People button. There will be a Company Name field where you could type in the company’s name. You will be able to choose whether these are people who used to work at the company, work there now, or both. But you’ll get a listing specifically of people who work there. There’s no company information in that second version of the search for a specific company.

 Q: How do you bulk accept once you have archived the invitation? Should I not archive before I bulk accept?

A: That’s correct, you should accept before you archive. The features in the archived area are much less important than they are in things that are still open. Inbox‘received’ hovers over Received text abovethe first entry. Select Invitations. You can bulk highlight, bulk accept, and bulk archive. So, it is important to accept the invitations before you archive them.

 Q: How do you generate autoreplies on LinkedIn?

A: You can’t really generate an autoreply that happens without human intervention on LinkedIn. There are a lot of features for you to send a message back at the end of something though. There are key stroke macro programs that can make that very, very easy by pushing a couple keys that you have prerecorded.

But the best thing, as well as the easiest thing for most people, is to have this done as a ‘service’ by somebody else. Integrated Alliances has Managed Services which will do those auto replies for you. So an invitation comes in, it gets accepted, we look at their profile, we send them a return note off of a pre-crafted list of notes, send it to them, and then archive the invitation.

 Q: Is it possible to filter group discussions to not repeat topics/latest news topics? It becomes overwhelming to validate if I’ve already read the articles.

A: No, it’s not possible to filter the group discussions that I’m aware of.

 Q: What does archiving do?

A: Archiving puts things away in sort of a hidden way. It’s like putting things in the basement. It doesn’t delete them. It doesn’t make them go away. It puts them out of sight but you can always go back and find them. You can never delete anything from LinkedIn.