Tag your LinkedIn Connections

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!

LinkedIn – Top 5 Tips – Connections

Number 3 in the series of Top 5 LinkedIn Tips dealing with your personal profile is Connections

Connections – to be effective in LinkedIn you need a minimum of 150 connections 1st degree connections.  Briefly – if you are directly connected, they are 1st degree connections, those peoples connections are your 2nd degree connections (if you aren’t connected to them), and the 2nd degree person’s connections are your 3rd degree.  Sally Smith may be your next door neighbor but if she isn’t connected to someone in your sphere of connections, she could be Out of Network.

In the classes and one-on-one sessions I offer, my mantra is “It’s not about who you know, but about who they know.”  Social networking is all about growing your network of people you know, building relationships, and IMHO paying it forward (instead of working on the philosophy of what’s in it for me). While I always advocate face-to-face networking, developing relationships is important, and in some cases, getting to know someone on-line is just as valuable as meeting someone in person.

Once you are a 1st degree connection with someone, you have access to their list of connections.  This is useful if you are trying to reach someone specifically.  Connecting with people who are well connected broadens your reach and potential network connections.

Less than 10% of my connections are considered an “on-line only” connection. I know that because I have “tagged” all of my connections through a function in LinkedIn that allows me to categorize my connections for later reference. One of my other blog posts is about tagging connections with a link to a how-to video.  Tagging your connections makes your efforts to communicate with them “categorically” much easier down the road.

One more little tool related to connections can be found in LinkedIn Labs.  It is a visualization of how my network is a network.  You can check out the full size version here.  It is called an inmap.  I think it is pretty and truly reflects how your network is just that, interconnected and cloud-like.

You can read the other articles in the series by clicking on the links – Photos, Complete.  Coming up is: Invitations & Participate.

Let me know if I can help you build your LinkedIn profile.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Tagging LinkedIn Connections

When you meet someone new at a networking event, do you immediately go back to your office and invite them to connect on LinkedIn?  Do you use the generic invitation?

If you do and that person sees your invitation a month from now because they aren’t an active user, how will they remember who you are or where they met you.  Please personalize your invitations.

Today we are going to talk about tagging the connections that you accept.

You will see the words “View Profile”.  Select that and it will take you to the person’s profile.  Find the contact information area and select “Edit tags”.  That is where you can put the information that will help you identify the person.  You can watch this video and it will take you through step by step.

Are your connections tagged?

 

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)