Caution Is The Killer Of Achievement

After the panel discussion at the Competitive Intelligence Forum I connected with a few of the attendees via LinkedIn. I got talking with one lady via Linkedin and we were talking about what what you should and shouldn't say online. Here is an excerpt from my message to her:

You are wise to be prudent online. A good gauge is to ask yourself "Would I be happy with this being read in court of law?" But good to not get too hung up on it though. Caution is the killer of achievement.

It's true that one should be cautious when using social media but I don't think that it should get in the way of productivity. What do you think?

How To Create Social Media Accounts

A client is taking the long term view of social media and making a brave and sensible step in encouraging all of their marketing people to get accounts on the main social media sites where they don't have them already, and to use them to engage on behalf of the organisation.  Accompanying this is training, coaching and policies and guidelines on how to use the various sites & tools.

We will be doing the training. The people attending will have been encouraged to set up their accounts beforehand.  We wish to offer them advice on what they should consider, before setting up the accounts on say Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Foursquare, YouTube & Flickr.

My initial thoughts are below.  I'd be interested in your views - whether additions or corrections.

1. If you haven't seen the site you are signing up to before, take a look, see what people share, how they call themselves (usernames) and what images (avatars) they use to identify themselves.
2. What username do you want?  It makes sense, unless you have specific reasons to not want to do this, to have the same name on each social media domain? e.g. mine is nickodoherty on most sites.  But nowadays most common names have been taken.  Simple ways to create an identity that people will identify as you, but that are less likely to be taken are: 
   1. Replace letters by numbers in your name. So my user-id on most sites is nickodoherty, but I could replace i by 1, and o by 0 and come up with n1ck0d0herty. Replacing e by 3, s by 5 also work. 
   2. Use a phrase with your name e.g. nickthebeekeeper or kentishnick. 
   3. Embed your name in other letters e.g. xxnickodxx.  
   4. There are still many ways you can include your real name in a user-id.  Or you can choose a complete pseudonym in e.g. pinknebulae, drybeer. goforth 
   5. In all cases keeping the user name: short - less than ten characters ideally; long lasting - something that you won't quickly outgrow and want to change; and hard to spell wrong. 
   6. Practical implications are: a)  that you may want to have the account setup screens for each site open in separate windows and get to the point of finding whether a username is available on each of them before commiting on any. 
   7. Having chosen a preferred username are there acceptable variants, if for instance the preferred names is available on all but one site e.g. in my case  I might accept a variant on that one site such as odohertynick, n1ckodoherty, nickpodoherty
3. What avatar or physical representation do you want to have?  In some cases, like LinkedIn a photo is recommended but not demanded.  Something that people who know you will associate with you is sensible, say a chess piece if you are a chess player.  My business partner Cormac uses this avatar, but has started using a photo with avatar embedded on sites or in situations where a photo makes sense.
   
4. If you have a work email and a home email it might be an idea to set up a separate email account for social media domains because:
   
   1. the volume of stuff that might come through depending on your account settings might be annoying in the other email accounts.
   2. some sites e.g. Flickr demand that you sign in with a Yahoo id, Facebook or a Google account.  If you don't have any of these, it will offer to set you up with a Yahoo id (email account) which you don't have to use for email but will have to use to sign in to Flickr in the future.
      
   3. If you are going to have an additional email account because of Flickr, then it might be better to make a conscious choice between Yahoo and Google.  I wouldn't advise on using Facebook ids to sign into other social media domains until the current situation on Timelines and "forced sharing" is better understood.  I have both a Yahoo id and a Google account, and the Yahoo id is the email address for my Google account.  Strange and with forethought I might have done differently, but it works.
      
5. Order of setting up accounts: if you do not have a Google account, you will need one for Google+, and can use it to sign into Flickr, it can be based on a Google email address (Google email account is separate from Google account) any other email account.  So the initial decision is really about whether you want a separate email account for social media. Once you have decided, I'd suggest setting up a Google account 
6. Most social media accounts request a small biography have a look to see what others have provided and having something prepared that you can cut an paste in.  Keep it short.
7. On some sites you will be asked to make initial decisions about how your posts will be treated.  If in doubt, choose the most restrictive to begin with.  So on Flickr, you can make the photos you share there available for all to see, or friends to see or just you to see.  You can relatively easily change this decision later. So why not start with friends as the default.
8. In most cases on starting a new account with these sites, the site asks if it can look through your address book for friends who are already there. It is safe to say yes, the sites above do not automatically request a connection. You have the final say. It is always useful to have a few people as "friends" or "connections" or "in circles" just to see how that aspect of it works from the beginning - so we will be recommending to our client contact that he makes his accounts availabel in this way for the first week of this activity.
9. For more information on setting up accounts on these sites, look here
   1. Creating a Google account Youtube video
   2. Facebook  Youtube video
   3. Twitter  Youtube video
   4. LinkedIn Blogpost
   5. Google+  Youtube video
   6. YouTube  Youtube video
   7. Flickr  - Youtube videos

Competitive Intelligence And Social Media

Next Tuesday I'll be on a panel at the UK Competitive Intelligence Forum for the event:

The Great Panel Debate - Tapping into Social Media for Effective CI

Competitive Intelligence or CI is a funny old thing. I've heard it called "industrial espionage". In a nutshell, it is finding out what your competition is doing. In the past, getting information from the competition was such a difficult operation. I mean, why would anyone divulge sensitive information?

In the world of today's social web it's not so difficult to get a lot of information. OK, many things are still going to be difficult to find out but it is shocking how much people are now willing to share. And if they don't share it have a look at their networks, there are usually people there that are willing to share.

I see the business world is still quite split. There are the ones who don't get this social media stuff at all and wonder what is the point in telling the world what you had for breakfast. And then there are the ones who are not only willing to tell you what they had for breakfast but are willing to share where it took place, and where they will be at any given point of the day.

I am of the belief that the more you give away, the more you get back. If you give away, you are interacting. If you are interacting, you are strengthening relationships and growing your network. If your relationships are strengthening and your network growing, then you are getting payback.

I often say that the first three things you need to do when it comes to social media are:

1. Image by francisco_osorioListen
2. Listen
3. Listen

I see a correlation between those who listen and those who engage. Generally those who are engaging most in social media are those that are getting the most from it. Using tools such as Twitter, RSS and increasingly Google+ are great for gleaning information. Also it is by using these tools day in day out that you learn of the skills that it takes to get the information you need - skills in terms of technologically, search and etiquette.

In my time in PwC there were parts of the office that were restricted access, technologically and with physical access rights. I know that there are parts of the world that are very well closed off, but with using tools such as LinkedIn, Twitter and also Foursquare you can gain access to people and information that you otherwise would find impenetrable. 

For me CI is all about research and, whether they know it or not, almost everyone is a practitioner of CI. When they encounter someone new they hit the web and look that person up in anywhere that's available, from Facebook to Wikipedia.

I'm looking forward to next Tuesday's debate. You can find out more and register here.

What To Do About Their Profile, When A Connection Or Friend On LinkedIn Dies?

This is a potentially upsetting subject but the aim of this post is to make the necessary action less distressing than it might otherwise be.  It is in two parts. The first, examines my feelings when I faced the issue, mainly trying to work out why I waited so long before doing anything.  The second part is a brief factual description of what you need to do - LinkedIn have a process which is clean and fast.

Part 1: Why wait so long? Why do something eventually?

It was nearly  a year after M's death that I took action on LI.

I learnt of M's death within a few days from a mutual friend.  It was the result of a road accident.  About a month later his name came up in a LinkedIn search.  This shocked me.  I checked my connections and realised he was still listed there. I thought about what to do.  I thought of disconnecting - but this seemed callous.  I guessed there would be some guidance on what to do if I looked.  I started with LinkedIn help and there was information on what to do but it seemed complicated on first reading and I put it aside.

I had worked with M on a few projects.  Our work experience together was short but intense and I had come to respect and to like him.  He left the organisation we both worked for, to go elsewhere.  At that time he was not on LinkedIn.  A few years later he returned to the organisation, (that I had since left) and joined LinkedIn.  He  and I connected.  I guess this background is part of my excuse for inaction.  I have many connections that I have worked alongside for ten years or more but it was not like that with M.  However I knew that he had connections who had worked close by him for ten years or more and I was waiting for them, or someone else to take action.  Then I realised that a) they may not be as active as me on LinkedIn, b) they may not know what to do and may also feel that there was someone who knew M better who should  take action, c) that taking action seems disrespectful or callous, or, ....  well the list goes on.

Eventually I resolved my own doubts and came to think that seeking to remove M's profile was not disrespectful or callous but part of a process of handling one consequences of his his death sensitively. I do not think that the same approach is appropriate for Facebook, and I hope that it is a long while before I have to find out.

Part 2  - What to do

If you have a LinkedIn connection who has died and you feel that you should take action to remove their profile here are the steps:

1. Look up "death" in LinkedIn help.
2. The answer page points you to a Word form to fill in.
3. Fill in the information. Take it slowly.  The only bit that is slightly confusing is when it asks for an email address, for the person, that is registered to them on LinkedIn.  If you are a connection you can see this anyway.  That's the address they are looking for, it’s as simple as that.
4. There is another field, asking for additional comments.  I included a link to a report from a newspaper of the inquest following the road accident. I am not sure what other information might be relevant. 
5. Having filled in the form - save it to your hard drive.
6. The LinkedIn help page on "Death" provides a link to submit the form, click it, fill in another, simpler, online form attach the offline form and send.

I got a confirmation of receipt email in minutes. I got a note from LinkedIn  within three hours confirming they had deleted the profile. I am not sure what checks LinkedIn made.  I assume that they would have tested the email address, and I assume that they would have got a bland “no one of that name is known on this domain” response.

If you can add to the information provided here, I will republish the 2nd part of this post with that information and write to LinkedIn with suggestions to modify their help page on the topic.

LinkedIn For Contractors

Here is a guide for using LinkedIn to work for you if you are a contractor in search of employment.

If you are coming to the end of your contract then it's a good time to look at your LinkedIn and see how it is looking in the eyes of a would-be employer.

Here are some of the things we cover:

1. Making yourself visible on LinkedIn
2. Using Linkedin to find contract opportunities
3. Using Linkedin to research opportunities
4. Increasing your network of connections on LinkedIn

SJD Accountancy sponsored us to make a video that tackles what you should consider for your profile and how you use LinkedIn as a whole. I think there is a lot of content that is applicable for non-contractors also. Have a look and let us know what you think.

Here's the second part of the video:

Open Networking - Where Will It End?

This post is prompted by a tweet from Euan Semple to the effect that he is considering relinquishing control of his LinkedIn account and just accepting invites whether or not he knows the person.  In LinkedIn parlance he will become an "open networker" and if he wants he can have a (LinkedIn) badge to prove it.

For me this all wrong.  But if Euan is considering it, I need to investigate whether it is wrong, whether I'm wrong or whether it doesn't really matter. This is my start. Trying to articulate views.  And showing where I have sympathy with alternate views.  I'd like to chat with others to increase my understanding of the alternate views.

Before I go any further I need to make it clear that I am not "having a go" at Euan.  I have a lot of time for him.  I introduced him into the organisation that I worked for to start opening sceptical eyes to the potential of Social Media, as he hates it being called. And I follow his blog, newsletter and tweets avidly.

Euan says he went "open" on Facebook a while ago. I am still considering whether to drop some "friends" from my massive total of 93. Some are really colleagues, and not even the ones I would go out for a beer with. Some colleagues are friends - the go out for a beer/coffee/wine is not quite the acid test but it is a good first sieve for me.

Image by John-MorganI tend to be lazy about the non-friends who don't say much - they are not cluttering up my wall. (I understand why it is called a wall, but I think of it more as a stream with little paper boats, made by friends, with notes and pictures attached, floating down it). I get annoyed with those who only communicate by publishing game scores.  But I can and do filter out game communications.

My ideal wall is full of little snippets of news about what my friends and family are doing, thinking and considering.  I particularly enjoy little insights into things my family probably wouldn't bother telling me because they'd think it was not that important, or they forget before we have a chance to talk.  I also enjoy getting snippets from perhaps not so close friends who have moved away. In previous times we'd probably drift apart or have the round robin newsletter at Xmas in an attempt to keep in touch. But now we can get those little pieces of news that keep them in mind and let you at least feel that you are keeping in touch, without forcing it.

So given my idyllic view of mountain streams and paper boats, being open on Facebook would be like having 100 tons of slurry dumped upstream. "Where did the boats go?"

So much for the subjective feelings.  I can do objective.  I realise that I can filter.  On Twitter I don't so much follow lots of people (enough to keep the all friends feed moving 1-2 times a minute) but I have search term feeds some set very wide, and I am learning to dip into the stream rather than try to drink it all.  I know the techniques for coping with large volumes of stuff: tight search terms; filter; lists etc and use them for professional aspects of my life, but I don't want to have to mess with that with friends.

LinkedIn may be different.  The people are different.  They may overlap with friends but the sense of obligations are different. And LinkedIn is pushing people into this more open networking environment by limiting what you can see unless you pay for one of their premium services.  Seeing full names of 3rd level connections has recently disappeared - but there are ways around this. However I have this view, that your connections say something about you. They also a) might ask you for a small reasonable favour - i.e. that costs you little but benefits them - an introduction say.  How do you respond?  "Sorry I don't know you"? or "Let me introduce Fred, I've no idea who he is, or whether you should bother talking to him"? and b) their status updates again may swamp your LinkedIn wall/stream driving more relevant stuff downstream before you notice it.

I think for me, I want to group things and people - to organise them so that I can behave appropriately to them and show some kind of courtesy to them.  By that I mean in the old days I wouldn't come in to the office and show my holiday snaps to every colleague I bumped into.  Nor did I try and explain the intricacies of my professional life to friends.  Obviously there were overlaps, but not trying to push specific contextual conversation into other social contexts seems to me a basic courtesy.  Nowadays it is easy to breach that courtesy without thinking.

I realise that the social media environment is different. Posting a link to your holiday snaps as a LinkedIn update is not the same as button holing a colleague in the corridor and pulling out the dreaded colourful envelope ... image by Rubin 110But the volume issue is so much greater now than ever before.  Just the act of filtering out irrelevancies becomes time consuming, and it is easy to define such a tight filter that serendipitous items never occur. Anyway if someone really wants to see my holiday snaps and I don't mind them seeing them a) they can search for them b) they can get an RSS feed on my Flickr account or c)  they could ask me.

I guess my punch line is that RSS or "persistent search" for me fills the gap.  If someone I have tagged as friend set wants what I am pushing out ro professional colleagues or the world, they can get it with RSS.  Similarly I use RSS to compensate for my relatively closed networking approach.  

What do you do?

How to find the full name of 3rd level connections in LinkedIn for free!

Here is a link to view how you can view your third level contacts on LinkedIn without having to pay - LinkedIn have recently changed the functionality.

Why Do People on LinkedIn Hide Their Connections?

Why do people go onto LinkedIn then hide their connections? It seems in direct contradiction of the purpose of LinkedIn and apparently selfish. LinkedIn explains why it provides this feature and how to use it here.

Image by ~Darin~Normally on LinkedIn, if I am connected to Joe I can see the names of all of Joe's direct connections, and their profiles. If Joe hides his connections, I cannot even see their names.

It seems that people who hide their connections are looking to benefit from having an extended network, based on their connections' connections, but are not willing to reciprocate.

I've noticed that just less than 20 of the just more than 400 of my connections have done this.  My immediate reaction was to ask them to share their connections, and if they didn't  - to disconnect from them.  But after some reflection, I'm postponing that decision until I've discovered what reasons people give for hiding their connections.  There may be genuine reasons not driven by selfishness.  Looking at the less than 5% of my connections who have taken this option I see people who I do not believe are selfish. I will talk to them about why they do this, I'll talk to the others as well:-)

As a slight aside, I've also noticed that LinkedIn's new format for "My Connections" has removed the more obvious indicator that people are hiding connections - this used to be an underline against number of connections in the list of "my connections".

Before talking to my relevant connections colleagues I wanted to 1) explore the possible reasons that might be given and 2) to see if there is an alternative to their current approach. I am doing this via two blog posts.  The second  will be title  "The Alternatives To Hiding Connections"

Here's what I've come up with so far:

Ignorance: Didn't know that they were doing it. It's hard to hide your connections by mistake, once they are open, but if you are conscientious about settings you may have made this choice when first using LinkedIn, without realising the purpose of LinkedIn and the consequence of the choice.

Using LinkedIn for purely personal reasons: e.g. use LinkedIn as a glorified address book and a means to connect with long lost colleagues, don't use it for anything else, and can't really imagine anyone else using it for anything else.

Easiest option in difficult circumstances: e.g.  Accepted a connection, wish they hadn't and this seems the easiest option.

• Don't want connection Joe to know that they are also connected to Josephine: Imagine the scenario that you are connected with your boss and with people he or she has sacked.....  

• Had a connection data mining their connections. Hiding their connections seemed less hassle than disconnecting from the data miner.

By Faithful Chant [ back ]Competitive advantage/disadvantage:  Use LinkedIn to keep track of clients and do not want to share those client names with direct competition in a highly competitive market. e.g. job agencies and head hunters.

Your views on the other reasons people may give, and your views on alternatives to hiding connections in each scenario would be appreciated. 

LinkedIn: Understanding LinkedIn Search And Relevance

Recently I was asked by a friend to review their LinkedIn profile and I told them it was fine. It ticked all the boxes that I used for my profile, so it must be ok:-).  Then checking some facts for the earlier post gave me second thoughts.

by mdxiI tried a simple People Search with the word brain storming. I expected to get my friend in the search results.  He wasn't there, at least not on the first few pages. I checked his profile and tried again with brainstorming. Bingo!

LinkedIn search is very literal, so if you search for brainstorming you won't find people who have only listed brain-storming, brain storming, brainstorm, or brainstormng (and there are some with the latter). This means that if you want to be found against certain keywords, you need to think through the various alternative formulations of those words that people might use, maybe including mis-spelling. 

I looked again at the search results for brainstorming.  My friend, whose business deliverables include helping to facilitate brainstorming sessions, was in 4th place. Not bad. He had brainstorming as a Speciality.  But another friend who'd listed brainstorming, almost in passing, in one of his descriptions of a position he had held in the past, appeared ahead of him for no apparent reason.  The first two in the search results I didn't know, they were 2nd level connections. Each of them had 500+ connections, which is probably a factor in their high ranking in the search results. The person who was top of the list had a profile that made me think .

I had previously taken the view that my earlier experience - e.g. more than 15 years ago was less relevant, so no need to say much about it.  The person top of my brainstorming search results had taken a similar, but significantly different view.  More recent roles had maybe 6-7 bullets of description of his competencies and achievements.,  Earlier roles might have only 2 bullets but those were full of resonant words - quality, improvement, project, international, change etc. Using these earlier sections in this way gives the opportunity to get the alternate formulations of key words embedded in your profile without having to have a boring list to compensate for the simplistic approach of the search engine.

So previously my advice would be to ensure that your key competencies are described in Summary (in joined up sentences) and in Specialities in keyword format. I'd now add to that, and suggest taking the time to populate your past and current Positions with:

• alternate formulations of those keywords i.e. noun, verb, participle e.g. facilitator, facilitated, facilitating
• expansions of commonly accepted acronyms like NLP,
• the spellings more accepted on the other side of the Atlantic (you get different results if you search on color or colour).

In all of the discussion above I have assumed that the search results are presented by Relevance.  One of the four options that LinkedIn currently offer.  Relevance is an ill defined but semi-intuitive way of presenting search results.  In summary people from my network are regarded as more relevant than those outside of it.  This means that the number of connections that you have increases your relevance to search, because you will be in more people's networks.  For a recent discussion of this in some depth by Boolean Black Belt look here. Activity on LinkedIn such as belonging to Groups and answering Questions seems to increase your relevance as well.

So, to make LinkedIn work for you:

• Have a complete profile
• Think about your competencies, think about how someone searching for those competencies might phrase them, and incorporate these variants in your profile as naturally as possible.
• get more connections

Your comments and additional suggestions are welcomed on this esoteric subject.

LinkedIn: Getting The Most Out Of Your Profile

 

This is a post in two halves.  The first covers what I thought were the basics, the second covers aspects of LinkedIn that I only discovered today.

by markhillaryI recently spoke at an event and became aware that even seasoned users of LinkedIn are unclear about certain mechanical aspects of the service, namely:

a) What determines the order in which search (for people)    results are returned? and
b) What can you do to get your name on the first page

If your LinkedIn Profile is incomplete, your details are unlikely to get on the first page of search results, particularly if the keywords used to formulate the search are popular. People who match the search criteria, and whose profile is complete, appear before those who match the criteria but whose profile is not complete. 

A "complete profile" means that 7 key elements of your profile have been filled in:

1. A current position
2. Two past positions: This seems unfair for people who have at this stage in their career had only one role e.g. recent graduates. If this is the case consider separating your current role into several phases, and, if need be cover internships, University roles such as chair of the x society and if reall pushed include your teenage newspaper round and milk round.
3. Education: e.g. University of Warwick; School of Life; St Mary's Primary.
4. Summary: Most LinkedIn summaries are written in sentences and could be cut and paste into a job application.
5. Specialities: A list of key competencies. Be aware that the LinkedIn Search engine is very literal, and if your competency is down as brainstorming you will not be found by people searching for brain-storming more on this in the next blog post.
6. Photo: These can be useful reminders to people who remember a face but not a name. You can agonise over finding a good photo, but, any image that bears some resemblance to you is all that is needed to meet the complete profile requirement.
7. Three recommendations; Connections are not recommendations. You need to ask for recommendations I have covered that in an earlier blog which you can see here. 

Once your profile is complete, other factors come into play in determining where amongst the search results you appear.  One factor is the size of your network.  Some ideas on how to increase the size of your network appear here. 

In summary, to make LinkedIn work for you:

• Have a complete profile.
• Make sure your competencies are included somewhere in your profile:
  • In the descriptions of Positions you have held;
  • In your Summary, or;
  • In your Specialities.
• Get more connections.