LinkedIn For Dummies

Joel Elad is a social networking, Internet, and eBay guru with a software development background and a yearning for entrepreneurship. He has authored or co-authored several books, including Facebook Advertising For Dummies and Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies.

Introduction 1


About This Book 2


Foolish Assumptions 2


Icons Used in This Book 2


Beyond the Book 3


Where to Go from Here 3


Part 1: Understanding LinkedIn Basics 5


Chapter 1: Looking into LinkedIn 7


Understanding Your New Contact Management and Networking Toolkit 8


Keeping track of your contacts 9


Understanding the different degrees of network connections 10


Discovering What You Can Do with LinkedIn 13


Building your brand and profile 13


Looking for a job now or later 14


Finding out all kinds of valuable information 16


Expanding your network 16


Understanding LinkedIn Costs and Benefits 17


Weighing free versus paid accounts 17


Comparing the paid accounts 18


Upgrading to a premium account 20


Navigating LinkedIn 23


Touring the top navigation bar 24


Looking at the Settings & Privacy page 25


Chapter 2: Signing Up and Creating Your Account 27


Joining LinkedIn 27


Joining with an invitation 28


Joining without an invitation 29


Completing the sign-up process 30


Starting to Build Your Network 38


Chapter 3: Completing Your Profile 41


Adding a Summary and Basic Information 41


Writing your summary first 43


Updating the Summary and basic information sections 45


Completing Contact and Personal Info 50


Adding a Position 55


Reporting Your Education 58


Setting Your Profile URL and Public View 61


Part 2: Finding Others and Getting Connected 65


Chapter 4: Discovering and Building Your Network 67


Searching Your First-Degree Connections 67


Searching the LinkedIn Network 70


Starting with basic search options 71


Advanced searching with filters 73


Performing advanced searches 76


Saving searches for future use 77


Chapter 5: Growing Your Network 79


Building a Meaningful Network 80


Importing Contacts into LinkedIn 83


Importing a contacts list from your email system 83


Checking for members 87


Finding classmates 87


Using the People You May Know feature 89


Browsing your connections’ networks 90


Sending Connection Requests 93


Sending requests to existing members 94


Understanding why you shouldn’t use canned invitations 95


Sending requests to nonmembers 96


Communicating the value of joining LinkedIn 97


Removing people from your network 99


Accepting (or Gracefully Declining) Invitations 101


Chapter 6: Managing Messages and InMail 103


Using InMail versus Using LinkedIn Messages 104


Understanding LinkedIn messages 105


Understanding your inbox 106


Getting to know InMail 109


Sending InMail 109


Managing Invitations 111


Tracking sent invitations 111


Tracking received invitations 113


Setting Up an Introduction 114


Planning your approach to each person 115


Sending an introduction request message 116


Managing Introduction Requests 118


Accepting requests and forwarding the introduction 119


Gracefully declining requests 121


Chapter 7: Interacting with and Endorsing Your Network 123


Interacting with Your Network 124


Creating a status update to stay connected 125


Interacting with status updates 128


Giving and Receiving Endorsements on LinkedIn 132


Endorsing someone on LinkedIn 133


Accepting endorsements on LinkedIn 135


Managing your skills and endorsements 136


Part 3: Growing and Managing Your Network 141


Chapter 8: Understanding Your News Feed 143


Understanding the News Feed 144


Configuring Your News Feed 147


Setting Up Digest Notifications 149


Writing an Article on LinkedIn 151


Managing Post Interactions 154


Chapter 9: Exploring the Power of Recommendations 155


Understanding Recommendations 156


Writing Recommendations 158


Choose wisely, grasshopper: Deciding whom to recommend 158


Look right here: Making your recommendation stand out 159


Creating a recommendation 160


Requesting Recommendations 162


Choosing whom to ask 162


Creating a polite recommendation request 163


Gracefully Declining a Recommendation (or a Request for One) 165


Managing Recommendations 166


Editing or removing recommendations you’ve made 166


Handling new recommendations you’ve received 167


Removing or requesting to revise a recommendation 169


Chapter 10: Accessing LinkedIn with a Mobile Device 171


Surveying the Different LinkedIn Apps 172


Installing a LinkedIn Mobile App 174


Breaking Down the Sections of the LinkedIn Mobile App 178


Connecting Your App Usage with Website Usage 181


Chapter 11: Configuring Settings Like a Pro 183


Using the Settings & Privacy Page as a Command Console 183


Starting with Basic Account Changes 185


Controlling Privacy Settings 191


Finalizing Your LinkedIn Communications Settings 197


Chapter 12: Using LinkedIn with Your Internet Activities 203


Exporting LinkedIn Contacts to Your Email Application 203


Creating your contacts export file in LinkedIn 204


Exporting contacts to Outlook 206


Exporting contacts to Outlook Express 207


Exporting contacts to Yahoo! Mail 207


Exporting connections to Mac OS X Contacts book 209


Exporting Your Profile and Badge 209


Exporting your profile to a PDF file 210


Creating a public profile badge for other websites 212


Part 4: Finding Employees, Jobs, and Companies 215


Chapter 13: Finding Employees 217


Managing Your Job Listings 218


Posting a job listing 219


Advertising your job listing to your network 222


Reviewing applicants 225


Screening Candidates with LinkedIn 228


Using Strategies to Find Active or Passive Job Seekers 230


Chapter 14: Finding a Job 231


Searching for an Open Position 232


Tuning Up Your Profile and Network to Make a Good Impression 235


Preparing Your Profile and Account Settings for Job Searches 237


Checking your profile’s visibility 237


Optimizing your profile 238


Involving LinkedIn in Job Search Strategies 240


Leveraging connections 240


Finding people with the same or similar job 241


Taking advantage of your alma mater 242


Finding target company referrals 243


Chapter 15: Following Companies 245


Searching for Companies 246


Putting Your Company on LinkedIn 249


Requirements for a Company page 250


Adding a Company page to LinkedIn 250


Part 5: Using LinkedIn for Everyday Business 255


Chapter 16: Getting Connected with Groups 257


Reaping the Benefits of Groups 257


Understanding the Two Types of Groups 259


Joining a Group 260


Starting and participating in group discussions 263


Viewing a group’s membership list 267


Creating a Group 267


Setting Up the Group and Inviting Members 270


Building and managing your member list 270


Crafting your invitation email 272


Approving members to your group 273


Chapter 17: Implementing Sales and Marketing Techniques 277


Marketing Yourself through LinkedIn 277


Optimizing your profile 278


Marketing yourself to your network 280


Marketing Your Business through LinkedIn 282


Using online marketing tactics with LinkedIn 283


Mining for Clients 284


Generating leads with the Advanced People search 285


Finding the decision-maker 287


Closing the Deal 289


Preparing for the client meeting 289


Reporting a positive sale 291


Chapter 18: Using LinkedIn Ads 293


Understanding LinkedIn Ads 293


Finding Out about Filtering Options 295


Creating an Ad Campaign 297


Managing Your Ad Campaign 303


Chapter 19: Discovering Creative Uses of LinkedIn 307


Mashing LinkedIn with Other Services 308


LinkedIn and Google Alerts 308


LinkedIn Archives and Data Syncing 309


LinkedIn and Evernote work together 311


Building Your Focus Group 313


Using Location-Based LinkedIn Ideas 315


Building your network before moving to a new city 316


Arranging face-to-face meetings when traveling 318


Networking with LinkedIn in person! 319


Part 6: The Part of Tens 321


Chapter 20: Ten LinkedIn Do’s and Don’ts 323


Do Keep Your Profile Complete and Current 323


Don’t Use Canned Invitations 324


Don’t Expect Everyone to Network as You Do 325


Do Your Homework 326


Do Give LinkedIn Messages Equal Importance 327


Don’t Spam 329


Do Make New Connections 330


Do Cross-Promote 331


Do Add Value to the Process 331


Don’t Confuse Quantity with Quality 332


Chapter 21: Ten LinkedIn Resources 333


The Official LinkedIn Blog 333


LinkedIn Instagram 334


LinkedIn Marketing Solutions 334


LinkedIn YouTube Channel 335


Linked Intelligence 335


LinkedIn Speaker Series Podcast 336


LinkedIn Plugins 336


Social Media Examiner 337


Evernote 337


Buffer 337


Index 339