Learn LinkedIn

Posted on February 28, 2013 by DeeReinhardt

If you have ever wanted to learn the power of LinkedIn you have two options coming up.

March 5 & 6 is a FREE 1 hour webinar session with Illinois workNet

This Free one hour webinar will be packed with information on how to maximize your personal LinkedIn profile. It is sponsored by Illinois workNet. Register here.

March 28 is a live hands-on workshop

This hands-on workshop will teach you how to optimize your profile, use the best functions of LinkedIn and show you how to develop your company profile. Come armed with a laptop, images (you will receive dimensions after you complete the registration) and you imagination.

Location: QCI Restoration, 1155 Bowes Rd. , Elgin, IL 60123
Time: 8AM-11AM

Continental breakfast will be provided. Check-in begins at 7:30AM.
$30 per person – Register here Only $25 with the Early Bird discount until March 20.

LinkedIn Answers will Disappear

Posted on January 24, 2013 by DeeReinhardt

In an email I received from LinkedIn, it stated:

In this process we evaluated how our current products and features are being used. To ensure we focus on building the best products, we’ll be retiring LinkedIn Answers on January 31 and it’ll be removed from our site. Instead, we’re focusing our efforts on developing new and more engaging ways to share and discuss professional topics across LinkedIn. We look forward to sharing the details with you in the coming months, so please stay tuned.

In the meantime, you can continue to share insights and questions on LinkedIn in these ways:

Connect with like-minded professionals in one of our 1.5M+ Groups
Ask other LinkedIn members questions and receive immediate feedback via Polls
Follow influencers for access to insightful professional content
Facilitate conversations with your connections via status updates

I will miss the answers section. Suggestion – if you have questions that you asked and need the answers, copy and paste them to a document that you can find before the 31st.

LinkedIn Endorsements

Posted on January 2, 2013 by DeeReinhardt

I am sure by now that you have seen the “Endorsements” on your LinkedIn profile. This is a relatively new feature from LinkedIn that allows you to perform a quick click and let your connections and the other person’s connections see that you feel your connection exhibits those skills.

The YouTube how-to video below explains:

Endorsement Monday’s – similar to Twitter’s #FollowFriday or #FF, take a few moments every Monday to endorse some of your connections.
Endorse someone from your home page - Something similiar to the image above will appear on your home page in LinkedIn so it becomes quite simple perform the “endorsement” action.
Endorsing someone from their profile – you can also go directly to a connections profile, find the “Skills and Expertise”, and then choose to endorse one or a number of skills they have listed.
Managing Endorsements – not everyone wants to show the endorsements for the skills they have listed OR they prefer not to have a particular person listed as having endorsed them. I show you how to manage those endorsements.

Thanks for reading, and if you would like to endorse me for any skills, here is the link – Dee Reinhardt

Share this post with your connections to help them understand the Endorsement process.

Tag your LinkedIn Connections

Posted on December 21, 2012 by DeeReinhardt

I was ecstatic when I found the option to tag my LinkedIn connections. This feature wasn’t available until after I had over 300 connections and I didn’t take advantage of the feature until I had over 500 connections. If you start early in your connecting career, you will have a robust search pattern available to help you find your contacts quickly and easily.

Tagging helps you sort and organize your contacts with labels that you create to help you remember where or why you might know someone. Personally I remember faces forever, but names tend to elude my memory. Once I have someone tagged, I can search by industry or geographic area to try to find the face. (Another reason why photos on your profile are so important)

With the new profiles that LinkedIn has been rolling out, it is an extra step from how you could tag profiles in the old profile view. I thought I would share a quick how-to in this blog post. If you have questions, reach out to me. If you need to optimize your profile, I can help with that as well.

Happy Tagging!

Your LinkedIn Photo

Posted on December 4, 2012 by DeeReinhardt

Your LinkedIn photo is one of the first things that seasoned LinkedIn users look for when they search your profile.

To see if that is you when they invite you to connect
To recognize you when meeting face-to-face for the first time
To check out how serious you are about yourself (I am not sure if this is a valid reason, but it could be)

When I coach people or teach LinkedIn classes, I discuss the benefits of having a professional image attached to their profile. That image should be used across all of the professional platforms you are using. It is one of my top 5 tips that I have written about previously.

Your profile image does not have to be a professionally taken image, but don’t fall victim to thinking that something cute will suffice. This image is one of those things that you should definitely NOT DO. Can you tell me why? Your image represents how you want to represent your personal brand. In many cases, it will represent your business as well.

Unless you are a pediatrician or day care provider, no kids. Unless you are a veterinarian or animal shelter, no pets. Unless you are realty team, no spouses, and that is iffy.

In my opinion, people want to see your face, smiling with limited props. It gives them a good feeling about how your business relationship might proceed.