LinkedIn - Now becoming a really useful network

I have been using the LinkedIn network for a couple of years now but to be honest it has never really been my favourite on-line network because it really didn't contain much in the way of networking tools - but that is all changing.

If you want to look for a job in IT, or promote yourself to prospective head hunters, or look for joint venture partners in a software project there is no doubt that LinkedIn really works. There are some very high profile success stories like Scott Rafer who contacted Eric Marcoullier one of the founders of MyBlogLog with an idea for the development of the product, got appointed as CEO and has just picked up a very nice fortune when the business was acquired by Yahoo last month.

But things are happening at LinkedIn to make the network more interactive in particular the new Answers feature which enables you to ask any question and get responses from the LinkedIn network - very useful if you want some opinions on a product or service or if you want to undertake some research - but most importantly it is getting members of the linked in network interacting where it had been fairly static.

The real value of LinkedIn is in helping members find out who their network knows and getting introduced. I have just 330 members in my network - but they know nearly 150,000 people. However even getting people I know who are on LinkedIn to connect never been very user friendly. If you click on my profile in the right side panel it is not easy to see how to link to me and you need to then go find my email address to send the invite all of which means you may not bother. However yesterday Marketing Hipster Cord Silverstein pointed me to a very neat widget created by Andy Beard - the LinkeIn Fast button

Just Click to Connect

Get your own LinkedIn Fast

Update: As you can see this neat widget is no more. LinkedIn objected and Andy removed it (actually I think it probably does still work - but LinkedIn want it stopped. So if you want to link to me on LinkedIn my email address is rikki at gendershift dot com (just to stop the spammers though I think most of them have my email address already)

I have also noticed that more an more of my network contacts are joining LinkedIn - I recently connected up with a number of trans community leaders from Press for Change and that has promoted some better communications and the possibility of some joint venture work. So I am suddenly taking a much bigger interest in LinkedIn and my network is growing very quickly.

If you are not a member I do recommend joining and linking up with me - you may be surprised who you meet, and if you need some tips on putting together your LinkedIn Profile here are some great ideas from top blogger Guy Kawasaki.

Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog

Some Brilliant Tools to Promote a Blog

I set this blog up nearly 2 years ago and to be honest I have not really done much to promote it - in fact I have often struggled to keep posting regularly - but as I am about to start trying to help people in Hull learn how to blog - I have been spending a little more time researching this and have discovered a huge amount help available resulting in me spending much of this week exploring and installing some new tools on my blog.

First if you are looking for ideas to promote your blog there is one site I was referred to someone in the Everywoman network. I have only just started working through Yaro Starak's Blog Traffic School Pre-Launch Blog which is packed with ideas to get traffic to your blog. After following just couple of tips and already I can already see the results.

First you may have noticed the widget in the sidebar listing the last five people who read my blog. I was so impressed when I saw that one someone's blog I just had to investigate and discovered MyBlogLog.com which I can totally recommend. If you have a blog get over there right away and sign up. MyBlogLog is a Blog community - a chance to search and find other blogs of interest and by reading other blogs make yourself known to other bloggers, many of whom will in turn come and read yours - Traffic to my blog as more than doubled this week and I get that brilliant widget on the side bar shown me who has visited. All of a sudden instead of being alone blogger - I feel part of a community - real people are reading my blog wow!!

Next you will also see another addition to the side bar called GoodBlogs. That widget displays details of other blogs and in return my blog gets displayed on other blogs - This week already that has resulted in 10 visits and in addition 15 people who visited my blog have visited blogs I have promoted - nice synergy.

Then I was visiting John Jantsch's Duct Tape Marketing Blog - which if you are reading this blog is one you should also visit - and running my cursor over a link, a preview of the page leapt out at me. Wow - "How did he do that?" I thought and off I went to Snap to pick up that tool. If you want to see it in action simply point your cursor at any link on this page.

Finally I visited the blog of a professional speaker friend David McQueen and noticed two things on his side panel - First field allowing visitors to subscribe to an email notification if the blog is updated - and second lots of tags (called labels) which were all linked to his various posts - Wow - "How did he do that?"

Well the first I discovered is a site called FeedBlitz - which I have already signed up and added to my Personal Blog - I will be adding it here but the addition of Tags I discovered is a new feature in the latest version of Blogger and that is going to take a bit of work to install - I have already started and again that is already included in my Personal Blog and will be here over Christmas.

What it means is that customising your blog is now much much easier and as it is out of Beta is not going to give you any technical problems. So if you are looking for something to do to get away from the Christmas chaos - there is enough here to keep you busy for the rest for the week.

Rikki Arundel
Motivational Speaker
Speaking and Marketing Tips
The GenderShift Blog