LinkedIn – Leanne Isaacson

Finding That Right Connection Through LinkedIn

Leanne Isaacson — Sat, 06 May 2023 08:42:00 +0000

LinkedIn is the largest online professional networking platform today. A lot of people think that it’s either just for job seekers or companies that need to find staff. It can be more than that. There are so many industries on LinkedIn and so it really can be for any business.

Just how do you find that right connection through LinkedIn? Here’s my story.

A Little Bit of History

I’ve always been a bit of a technology geek. Over the years, I’ve done a lot experimenting to find out which technologies and platforms work and which don’t. I tended to learn by myself but I was teaching people how to use the internet by 2000.

LinkedIn was launched in 2003 and I was already a member by 2007.

I don’t remember how I came across it, but I’m naturally a connector so LinkedIn’s premise was right up my alley. With more than a decade of growing my network and learning more about maximising ever-evolving social networking platforms, I’ve learned a thing or two about LinkedIn’s potential for finding and building connections.

LinkedIn as a Handshake

Some of you may be scared to accept connection requests from people you don’t know. Here’s a tip: treat the request like a virtual handshake.

In the real world, if you go to a network meeting or any business event and someone introduced themselves to you, you wouldn’t reject a handshake. You would shake that person’s hand even though you have no idea about his or her background.

With this platform, it’s crucial to build real-life connections and relationships with individual people so the initial step of accepting a request is important. In these times of uncertainty and lockdowns, it’s even more important to keep doing these virtual handshakes.

First-Level and Second-Level Connections

One of the things you need to remember is that the bigger your first-level connection is, the bigger your second-level connection becomes.

First-level connections are your contacts: your family, friends, colleagues and professionals you’ve accepted into your network.

Meanwhile, second-level connections are the networks of your inner circle. These are the friends of friends, colleagues of colleagues, contacts of professionals. This set of second-level connections opens up a much broader network that you can search through and connect with.

Stories of Finding the Right Connections

I have a friend who lives in Colorado, USA had an animated story that the BBC wanted to pick up as a series. One day he sent me a request to find a lawyer in London, UK that specialises in media and entertainment law.

I lived on a farm in Adelaide, Australia. What was I supposed to do?

But I took this as a challenge for my networking skills. So, I went to LinkedIn and did some really specific searches using the location and keywords. I compiled a list of 10 targeted people. Then, I looked at each of their profiles to see who they were, what they did, and to get a bit more of an idea of who might be the right person for my friend to actually use in his business.

I found a second-level connection who had a lot of information on her LinkedIn profile. I sent her a message about who I am and what I needed, and I asked if she would be interested in being connected with my friend. She accepted the connection request straight away and I managed to establish the three-way contact.

Just to prove that LinkedIn works with any industry, I found a real estate agent through this platform who managed to sell one of our farms.

There’s also a business in the US that I’m assisting. It’s developing an app that contains credentials for firefighters. These credentials need to be constantly updated. So, I’ve been searching for fire chiefs for this company.

Do you want to learn more about building your own LinkedIn network? Then connect with me and let’s have our virtual handshake.

LinkedIn Dos & Donts

Leanne Isaacson — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 11:51:00 +0000

LinkedIn has been growing exponentially ever since it was released in May 2003 and has currently over 900 million users worldwide today. It is considered to be the top social networking site for professionals and businesses.

If used correctly, LinkedIn can be a great way to boost your business brand and credibility. Here are some LinkedIn Dos and Don’ts to show you how to effectively use LinkedIn to promote your business, instead of ruining it.

LinkedIn Dos:

Do Make Sure Your Profile is Complete and Up-To-Date – Your LinkedIn profile is one of the very first things that people see when they go to your LinkedIn page whether it is your personal account or your Company Page. This means that it is vital to ensure that your profile has a good photo, a good headline as well as up-to-date contact information for you and your business. It should also list all of the relevant and current experience. Remember, your profile is a reflection of who you are and acts like a first impression for anyone who views your profile via engagement on LinkedIn, googles your name and finds your profile or searches for the specific skills or experience you hold.

Do Be Proactive When Making Connections – Once you have set up your LinkedIn account, you can’t just sit back and expect all contacts or followers to come to you. You must be proactive and reach out for yourself to look for and make connections on LinkedIn.

Do Cross Promote Your LinkedIn postings – If you want to get the most out of your LinkedIn account so that it can help you to get more traffic to your business website, then you need to do things like put the URL for your website or blog in your signature, list your LinkedIn URL on your business cards, and put a LinkedIn button on your website.

Be Active in Conversations or in Groups

Once you are member or an owner of a LinkedIn group, you need to stay active in it. Be sure to post something at least once a week, join in the conversations, start a new thread, etc. Whatever you post, be sure that it is relevant and current and something that the group topic can relate to that will bring value to the group.

LinkedIn Don’ts:

Don’t use the same invitation for every contact – When you are reaching out to someone that you wish to become a connection or that you may want an endorsement or recommendation for, be certain that each invitation you write is unique for that connection. Otherwise it will look impersonal. However, you should keep these invites short and to the point, as well as adding a personal touch to the invitation.

Don’t SPAM on LinkedIn – When using LinkedIn don’t be that annoying person who does things like sending connection requests and then immediately pitch your product or service or who keeps posting marketing messages and adds no value to other content, or subscribing people to your newsletter without their permission.

Don’t post worthless information – When making a post, be sure that everything you write is based on something that your potential customers or your business contacts need. It should always be up-to-date and relevant to your business niche. Don’t hog the conversations and interactions in your postings either or people will just learn to ignore you instead of seeing you as the person to go to for answers.

Don’t lie or exaggerate your skills – Telling a lie is never a good thing and LinkedIn is no exception. When listing your skills and job experience on LinkedIn, be sure to tell the truth about your abilities or what your company is capable of doing for others with your products or services. Lies will always be found out in the end and that could ultimately ruin your business.

The bottom line is that LinkedIn is an amazing tool that can be used to promote your business and grow your brand easily and more quickly than other venues. If you learn to use LinkedIn correctly, then it will be your best choice for getting ahead in today’s fast-paced Internet-centric world.9

How to Build Your LinkedIn Network Through Content Likes and Comments

Leanne Isaacson — Sat, 23 Apr 2022 14:17:00 +0000

There’s a lot of content being shared through LinkedIn these days. If you’re like me, though, you’re more of a consumer of content rather than a constant producer.

Can you still build your network if you’re not uploading your own unique content? Of course! Here’s how.

Like and Comment

I don’t create a huge amount of content on my feed. What I tend to do more of is consume content. Instead of just passive reading, though, I do a lot of commenting and sharing. In a lot of cases, the content that I share is my comments on other people’s posts or articles.

In many social media platforms, a like or a comment becomes a vanity metric. If you like or comment on a post on Facebook, then you’re just making that post popular but it has nothing to do with your own Facebook account.

LinkedIn is different. If you like or comment on a post, then that act brings that post into your network. So, you’re bringing the content creator into your network and you’re entering their network as well. This makes liking or commenting a powerful tool for network building.

There’s No Right or Wrong Way

Everyone has their own way of doing business. Even though some organisations manage profiles, at the end of the day, it’s still the individual that builds that human relationship.

You may want to upload a video of your achievements. You may want to upload content that you feel your network will read. It’s all up to you, but you need to constantly think which techniques will effectively connect you to the right people and to have those people look at your network.

The Power of Likes and Comments

I’m a third-generation breast cancer survivor. This cancer runs in my family. My mother had it, her grandmother and there’s a chance that one day my daughter or neice may get it. So, I volunteer for a breast cancer network in Australia by publicly speaking and sharing my family’s story with this illness. One day, a lady I did not know came up to me and thanked me for sharing my story. She said that I inspired her to get a mammogram and the doctor was able to detect the early onset of breast cancer so she could get treated right away. She said that I saved her life.

You can imagine how much of an impact her words were to me. From that moment on, I decided that if someone makes a difference to me or makes a difference in my life, I try to tell them about it whenever I can. I practice this even on LinkedIn.

I once read an interview that Daniel Roth, VP at LinkedIn News, did with Kai-Fu Lee, an artificial intelligence (AI) expert. I was listening to the interview, which was a high level of technical discussion, when Daniel started to talk to Kai-fu about his cancer journey and how his cancer impacted his business.

It was such a great example of high-level thinking that was brought back to a human level that I shared the post and tagged Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn. I just wanted to comment on how great Dan’s soft skills were and how much we all need to develop and hone such skills. Within 15 minutes, Jeff liked my shared post.

Here is a man who probably gets tagged millions of times in a day and possibly has more posts coming up on his feed, and he liked my post almost right away.

I also sent a mail to Daniel (since I’m not connected to him) just saying that it was a great interview. He replied that I would get more reach by sharing the interview as a post. Now, I didn’t share the post just to get some reach; I really, genuinely liked the interview and thought that it made a difference in my life. So, I told him so. Instead of another reply, he liked and commented on my post. Now that post has about 55,000 views.

Conclusion

It takes a lot of courage to reach out to people and talk about your views through likes and comments. But, if you take that scary first step, you might just develop a network that goes beyond what you can imagine.

What strategies do you use with your LinkedIn content? Share them with me.