Here are some good tips from Linkedin employees on how to improve your profile. Read the tips at the blog How To Change The World.

As our personal contact database increases, it becomes a challenge to manage. Here is my 2 cents on how to create a well functioning personal contact management set-up for your private use:

- Install Plaxo + the Outlook toolbar
- Create a Linkedin account + install the Outlook toolbar
- Use Outlook to its full extend. Check the presentation “Outlook Features for Contact Management - 7 Steps to Success“
- For quick overview of contacts directly in your inbox install “Priasoft Outlook Contact View Add-in for Outlook“

With this set-up you will gain a quick overview of a contact directly in your Outlook Inbox view and automated update functions combined with easy to import/export/update/edit contacts.

Share your contact management solution by making a comment.

To get success with your LinkedIn profile you need to fully understand the possibilities and the “Do’s and Dont’s”. Below are listed some useful sources that will help you get started or improve your existing profile:

- A basic introduction to LinkedIn here…
- The “Do’s and Dont’s” on LinkedIn here…
- Find a job with LinkedIn here…
- Best practices for recruiters here…
- Distribute a new job here…
- Get the LinkedIn Outlook toolbar here…
- Search Tips here…
- Break unwanted connections here…
- How to contact a DABGO member here…

Read the newest articles and tips here…

In an article written on ABC News, Tory Johnson writes about taking control of your digital identity. Create a free digital identity to advance your career. By raising your online profile, you can make yourself more employable. If you’re an employee or entrepreneur looking for a job, a promotion, new clients or better business opportunities, there are several smart ways to create and enhance your digital identity.”

Tory gives some good tips:

Three tips for maximizing your success with LinkedIn:
1. Select “full view” of your “public profile.”
2. Claim a “vanity URL” using your name.
3. Invite friends and/or desired professional contacts to link to you.

- create a free profile at ZoomInfo.com
- Subscribe to Google alerts
- Create a blog
- Post expert opinions

Read the reasons behind the above tips and more at ABC News

“Haven’t made a dime on LinkedIn? A lot of people on LinkedIn haven’t made a dime from it. Chances are you haven’t made anyone else money either. In expanding your network, the main point is to help you phone or meet someone who may be able to help you in whatever it is you are trying to do. The flip side is you need to help others meet their needs too. Until you think of helping others get what they want, you won’t likely get what you want.”

Read the rest of this interesting article posted on lifehack.org

If you want to know more about Linkedin, the company’s history and where it’s going, then read this interesting article posted on CNN Money.

“Social networking has been great for the kids, but not of much use to business - until now. With Reid Hoffman’s MySpace-for-grown-ups at a tipping point, these days you’re either LinkedIn or left out.”

“For many, it’s become irresponsible to not invite business associates into your LinkedIn network,” says Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who specializes in sociology and strategy.

LinkedIn has launched LinkedIn Answers (www.linkedin.com/answers), a first-of-its-kind answers service that leverages the power of the user’s trusted professional network to receive business-related advice. LinkedIn Answers allows members to ask their business-related questions, and receive answers from their personal networks and the hundreds of thousands of experts in the LinkedIn network as a whole. The service gives the site’s 9 million users a quick and reliable way to get industry specific answers to business questions and to build upon their professional reputation by responding to questions relevant to their expertise.

I tried this new service about 2 weeks ago with the questions “Do you know any Danish people in the USA??” and in the context gave a little description of DABGO. This resulted in increased traffic to www.dabgo.com and new members. So it does work, and the answers were positive and informative.

It’s interesting that LinkedIn is launching the new service straight after the closing down of Google Answers due to poor performance.

* The average number of LinkedIn connections for people who work at Google is forty-seven.

* The average number for Harvard Business School grads is fifty-eight, so you could skip the MBA, work at Google, and probably get most of the connections you need. Later, you can hire Harvard MBAs to prepare your income taxes.

* People with more than twenty connections are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five.

* All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented in LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees.

Read the 10 Ways to use Linkedin on “How to change the world” a blog by Guy Kawasaki

The Internet offers many networking possibilities. Below I have listed a few of them.

LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/
LinkedIn is an online network of more than 7.5 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 130 industries.
When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional accomplishments. Your profile helps you find and be found by former colleagues, clients, and partners. You can add more connections by inviting trusted contacts to join LinkedIn and connect to you.
Your network consists of your connections, your connections’ connections, and the people they know, linking you to thousands of qualified professionals.

Through your network you can:
- Find potential clients, service providers, subject experts, and partners who come recommended
- Be found for business opportunities
- Search for great jobs
- Discover inside connections that can help you land jobs and close deals
- Post and distribute job listings
- Find high-quality passive candidates
- Get introduced to other professionals through the people you know

LinkedIn is free to join.

The Company of Friends
http://www.fastcompany.com/cof/
The Company of Friends is Fast Company magazine’s readers’ network. It is a global online and offline community of self-organizing groups of forward-thinking business leaders and innovators. Members help each other improve their careers, companies, and communities.

benefits to being a member of the CoF

- connect with like-minded business leaders
- participate in “intelligent networking” activities and events
- engage in stimulating discussion about leading-edge business ideas and practices
- search for other members network-wide based on geography, industry, and interest
- belong to CoF-related mailing lists with notification of upcoming events and activities
- create an online business card — your CoF profile

Company of Friends is free to join

Delphi Forums
http://www.delphiforums.com/

With more than 10 million registered members and over a million new messages posted per week, Dephi is one of the leading networks of member-managed online communities. Delphi’s services enable individuals to build, manage and grow their own online communities.

Those who register with Delphi Forums enjoy personalized features like their own “My Forums” page, which keeps track of the communities they participate in. Users who participate in message board discussions get email notification when somebody replies to their messages, and when there are new messages in the Forums they’re interested in.

Delphi Forums is free to join

Jigsaw
http://www.jigsaw.com/
Jigsaw provides business contact and company information for public and private companies. With over 3 million business contact records within 300,000 companies, Jigsaw allows you to target key decision makers by rank, industry, department and geography. Search Jigsaw’s company directory of business contact information and get executive’s name, title, e-mail and phone. Get business contact information at all companies, at C-level, VP, Director and Manager level in any department at any company.

Jigsaw’s mission is to map every business organization on the planet, contact by contact and keep them current through a collaborative effort. The resulting database will help business people perform their jobs more efficiently and strategically.

Jigsaw costs $25 per month or 25 contacts per month (Pay or Play).

Meetup
http://www.meetup.com/
helps people get together with a group of neighbors that share a common interest. The site helps users self-organize global, monthly “Meetup Days” — local group gatherings on the same day everywhere — for almost any interest group. Meetups take place in up to 604 cities in 45 countries at local cafés, restaurants, bookstores, and other local establishments.

Open BC
https://www.openbc.com/
Europe’s leading business network, which allows you to establish new business contacts, systematically grow your network of relationships, easily manage existing contact information no matter where you’re located, market yourself and your company in a professional business context, identify experts and receive advice on any topic, efficiently organize your meetings, events and phone conferences.

Netparty
http://www.netparty.com/
Netparty functions as the entry point for a network of parties held in 17 U.S. Cities, aimed at professionals in their 20s and 30s. The events are held at stylish clubs, are designed to combine business networking and social fun.

The young professionals who attend Netparty events work in a wide variety of fields. Member attendees include doctors, teachers, entrepreneurs, attorneys, fashion insiders, advertising executives, actors, sales professionals, writers, investment bankers and other professionals.
Most of the events are geared to all young professionals.

The cost of each event varies with the city and venue but is generally $10-$20.

Ryze
http://ryze.com/
Ryze helps people make connections and grow their networks. You can network to grow your business, build your career and life, find a job and make sales. Or just keep in touch with friends.
Members get a free networking-oriented home page and can send messages to other members. They can also join special Networks related to their industry, interests or location. More than 1,000 organizations host Networks on Ryze to help their members interact with each other and grow their organizations.

It is free to join

Please create a comment below, If you know of other good online networking tools or have a suggestion.

“Etiquette for LinkedIn and the Professional Networking World” written by Liz Ryan from WorldWIT.

After a decade (and for some of us, longer) online, we know all about Netiquette, right? Don’t use all caps in your subject line (or, God forbid, the body of an email message). Don’t send attachments to people who don’t know you well. Don’t we know pretty much everything there is to know about etiquette online? Well, maybe not. Online networking sites like LinkedIn can challenge our ideas about what constitutes white-lace-handkerchief behavior online. In fact, if we’ve learned that it’s important to be polite when using email, it’s even truer in the social networking sphere. Here are ten tips for establishing yourself as a well-mannered online networker, when using LinkedIn:

1) Create a user-friendly profile. Your LinkedIn profile is your virtual business card. Make sure that it represents you the way you want to be viewed by strangers - make that ‘people you haven’t been introduced to, yet.’ A sketchy LinkedIn profile signals that your busy day doesn’t allow you to fill in trivial details like what you’re doing now, what you’ve done in the past, or any other useful information. Such an incomplete profile won’t serve you as you network on LinkedIn, but it’s impolite as well: its message is “I’m going to use this database to find people, but I won’t bother to include enough information about myself to indicate how I might assist anyone else.” Take a few moments to fill in the gaps.

2) Invite true friends - or at least, true acquaintances - to connect. Spam is spam, and you must have a minimal level of contact with a person before inviting him or her to connect with you on LinkedIn. A contact - a less-intrusive overture than an invitation to connect - is a good way to approach people with whom you have no relationship. LinkedIn users vary in their views on how well you must know someone before connecting to him or her, but it’s inappropriate to send connection invitations to people who have never met you, heard of you, or had any inkling of your existence (unless they have indicated a desire to be approached by strangers). Think about it: if you found a person’s phone number on a scrap of paper, you wouldn’t feel that you had permission to phone him. Your possession of an email address doesn’t give you license to contact an unacquainted LinkedIn user and suggest a connection - and it’s this kind of overzealous outreach that gets users in trouble with LinkedIn, as well.

3) When you make a request, be clear about your intentions. You’ll find your LinkedIn contacts generally happy to forward your requests if you approach them politely and are clear about your goals. In the physical world, if you asked a friend to introduce you to his friend because of a mutual interest in sailing, and then actually hit the friend-of-a-friend up for a loan, you’d be viewed as a sneak. It’s no different online. If you’re job-hunting, say so. If you’re looking for investors, ditto. A wolf in sheep’s clothing soon finds his messages sitting, unforwarded, while his LinkedIn contacts wonder whether he can be trusted.

4) Reciprocity is a wonderful thing, and gratitude is key. When possible, it’s great to include in your LinkedIn outreach messages some suggestion that you’re aware of your obligations as a requester. That could mean an offer to make a useful introduction for the person who’s forwarding yours; or an offer to help in some other way; or just a heartfelt thank-you for the introduction you seek. It’s disconcerting for your first-degree forwarder to receive a slew of requests from you in one day (and this is common when one of your first-degree contacts is more-highly-connected than others) with no acknowledgement at all of the favor you’re asking. LinkedIn is no different from the ‘real’ world, in that sense: asking for an introduction is a favor, and it’s nice to show gratitude for that.

5) Pass along requests promptly, or say why you won’t. Membership in LinkedIn is a kind of agreement with the community that you intend to participate as an active node in a large and vibrant network. If people send you requests and they sit there, unforwarded and unresponded-to, for weeks, you’re not only the weak link in the system. You’re impeding someone else’s business efforts, and giving no reason for your bottleneck behavior. If you can’t forward on a request or move a communique forward, say so - and say why. LinkedIn provides a handy list of reasons for declining a request, plus an “other” option - use ‘em.

6) Avoid the boilerplate text, if you can. Of course you can. Unless you’re terribly afraid to strike out on your own with creative verbiage, please make an effort to put your own stamp on the standard invitation language that LinkedIn supplies. For instance, you could mention something impressive that you’ve heard about the person you’re contacting, or bring an old friend up quickly up to date on your doings. Using the boilerplate text shows a certain want of effort - so, even if you stick with the standard language, why not add “sorry to use the boilerplate text, but I’m not much of a wordsmith”?

7) Don’t abuse your network. Once you have cultivated a network, it’s tempting to reach out to the gang anytime you have news or a need for assistance. And LinkedIn’s functionality allows you to broadcast a note to your posse of contacts, by way of a Profile Update blast. Use these sparingly, not as a substitute for the Daily All About Me Newsletter. If you do, you may find yourself being un-connected from people who can’t manage the high volume of what’s-new-in-your-life mailings. Don’t invent history to acquire colleagues. LinkedIn allows you to find former workmates at any company that has employed you, without being connected to them otherwise. Finding a colleague match only requires that you and another person worked at the same organization during the same time period. So, as tempting as it may be to make connection with people who worked in various appealing companies over the years, if you invent a work history in order to do that, you’re going to Hell. Perhaps that is overstated, but if you falsify your employment history on LinkedIn in order to create colleague-links with people you haven’t actually worked with, it’s an abuse of the LinkedIn system and the trust of the LinkedIn community.

9) Play by the rules. There are a number of ways to misuse LinkedIn in such a way as to convey the message, “I don’t care about the long-term health of this network or the company that built it - this is All About Me.” Including your email address in your LinkedIn name, for instance, makes a fee-for-use service like InMail superfluous for someone who wants to reach you, which is (if nothing else) exceedingly rude, seein’ as how LinkedIn provides the basic functionality to users at no charge. Unless you want to broadcast the message, “I don’t care whether LinkedIn can optimize its revenue strategy or not - I’m gonna optimize my connect rate,” you might consider rethinking your Me First approach.

10) Value relationships over transactions. As in physical-world networking, valuing people for their intrinsic worth over the business transactions they enable is key. No less than in middle school, ‘users’ are never welcome company for long. “Ka-ching” networking - the kind of outreach that signals “Say, you could make me a buck today” is unseemly and unfortunate. LinkedIn is a fabulous tool that enables connectors and influencers to help other people and achieve their own goals, too - and it’s great when we keep those priorities in balance.

Article posted 14th of Nov. 2005 on intuitive.com