Читать книгу Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn - Neal Schaffer - Страница 15

Now you have entered your profile information. Before you begin to actually navigate LinkedIn, let’s take a look at what your “Home” page on LinkedIn will look like. It is the page you will see after going to www.linkedin.com and signing in with your username and password. While navigating LinkedIn, it can also be accessed by selecting “Home” on the left-hand navigation bar.

As a disclaimer, I would like to point out that not everyone’s Home Page will look alike. For instance, if you have indicated in your profile that you are currently unemployed, “Company Groups” will not appear in your left-hand navigation bar. I personally cannot see “Groups You Might Like” and have only been able to see the “People You May Know” module on occasion.

That aside, the Home Page is divided into a top section, a left-hand section, the main body (which is in the middle), which contains another right-hand column, and finally the bottom of the page. You have access to all of LinkedIn’s features via this screen.

The image on the next page will simplify the LinkedIn Home Page for you, as I have tried to illustrate the most essential items you will be utilizing most.

Figure 2.2. Your LinkedIn Home Page

Before tackling the main areas of your Home Page, I want to point out that I find LinkedIn is sometimes repetitive with its user interface; many paths will often lead to the same destination. You will get used to this. For instance, choosing “Advanced People Search” by pressing the downwards arrow to the right of “People” will lead you to the same page that choosing the “Search People” arrow to the left of the Search Bar and then pressing the “Advanced” button does.

In my opinion, LinkedIn is still trying to find the perfect User Interface to show off the tremendous value their site has; in the meantime, I find the user interface somewhat confusing and inefficient at times, which is why I am writing this book—to help guide you. I will not go over everything on this page and instead will concentrate only on those things that I think you need to concentrate on.

Let’s tackle each section individually. The top section, at the time of this writing, displays “People,” “Jobs,” “Answers” and “Companies” on the left, while the right side shows “Account & Settings,” “Help” and “Sign In/Out” on the top with the Search Bar on the bottom. Let’s focus on the Search Bar for a moment. By pressing the downward arrow button to the left of the text window, you will see that you can search a variety of things from this one text box, including People, Jobs, Companies, Answers, Inbox, and Groups. Within some sections, the standard search does not yield enough useable results; the option to do an advanced search on some of these can be selected by choosing the “Advanced” text on the right side of this box. This option appears when you choose to search for People, Jobs, or Answers.

On occasion you may need to access the “Accounts & Settings” button to customize your experience. More information about what you can do there will be spread throughout this book, primarily in Part II: The Windmill Networking Approach to Understanding LinkedIn sections.

The primary area for navigation will be the menu on the left side of your Home Page which I will often refer to as the left-hand navigation bar. Starting with the “Home” button, which will always bring you back to your Home Page, you can navigate to any of the following from here: Company Groups (if they exist for your Company or you are currently employed with a Company listed in the Company Directory), Groups, Profile, Contacts, Inbox, and

Applications, should you have any. Furthermore, the “+” symbol next to all of these titles, if pressed, will collapse into submenus which let you choose specifics.

I won’t go through every option here, but I will point out the more frequently used features:

•“Home” to get you to back to your Home Page.

•“Groups” to access your Groups, or specific Groups in the submenu should you wish to list them here (this can be customized in “Account & Settings”).

•“Edit My Profile” in the “Profile” menu to modify your profile and optimize it even after it has been created. You should get into a monthly habit of looking at your profile to make sure it syncs with your LinkedIn Brand and networking objectives, which may change over time.

•“Connections” in the “Contacts” menu to browse your current connections or add/remove connections.

•The “Inbox.” Most messages appearing here can also be sent directly to your registered email address. How often you use this section really depends on which information you decide to access directly through LinkedIn and which information you choose to receive via email notification. I have devoted an entire section to this topic: “Controlling Your Email Notifications” in Chapter 10: Customizing Your LinkedIn Experience.

•“Applications” should you choose to install any and modify their settings.

•The prominent green colored and self-explanatory “Add Connections” button.

The last section on the left-hand side, on the bottom of the long menu, is your current photo, Profile Headline, Status, and display of the number of total connections you have. You have the ability to easily change your Status here, so you can update it without having to jump around.

For the main middle/right section of your Home Page, which looks like a wide middle column and a narrow right column, there is some pretty serious information overload. The middle section is divided between an “Inbox,” “Network Updates,” and “Company News” (if you are currently employed and your company is in the LinkedIn directory).

On top, the Inbox will simply display your latest five messages, combined with a summary of action items, or messages you have not responded to yet. The bottom Company News will display news from the company you have listed on your profile as being “current.” The meat of the information here lies in the Network Updates.

Network Updates begin with a “What are you working on now?” status bar that you can update. I call this the “Status Update Bar” and have devoted an entire section, “The Status Update: “What are You Working on Now?” in Chapter 10: Customizing Your LinkedIn Experience, to cover this in greater detail.

The information below your Status Update Bar in Network Updates is filled with fascinating content being broadcast to you from your connections. These updates will keep you up-to-date on whatever your Windmill Networking contacts are doing on LinkedIn. From updating their profiles with new job information to posting a new photo, if your connections have agreed to broadcast their activity to their network, it will show up in this area. A lot of LinkedIn users get into a habit of spending the first few minutes of their day screening through this information, as it often supplies insightful information you can utilize to initiate a conversation. The information also helps you keep in close contact with your Windmill Network.

If you click the “See more updates” text next to the “Network Updates” title, you will be led to a screen where you can see a plethora of broadcasted content from your network. Four tabs appear conveniently at the top to help you navigate through “All Updates,” “Category View,” “Connection View,” as well as seeing what you are broadcasting to your network in “My Updates.”

It is interesting to note that the following types of information can be found in the “Category View”:

•Connection Updates – who connected with whom

•Group Updates – who joined which Group

•Status Updates – who wrote what in their “Status Update” bar

•Events – who has RSVPed or is interested in certain events

•Application Updates – who has updated public information in their application

•Recommendations – who has sent or received Recommendations

•Questions & Answers – who has asked or answered questions

•Photo Updates – who has updated their photo

•Polls – who has created or commented on a Poll

•Job Posts – who has posted a job on LinkedIn Jobs

•Profile Updates – who has updated their profile information

As you can see, Network Updates are unique and are extremely valuable for keeping a pulse on how your network is doing. The fact that everything you do on LinkedIn is recorded and could thus be broadcasted is scary; however, there is a wealth of information you can use here on a daily basis to monitor your network in a timely and relevant fashion.

In fact, by “mimicking” what your network is doing, you can come into contact with valuable people to connect with, events you might be interested in, Groups that may be of value, and questions you might be able to answer. Remember, it is about Paying It Forward. I personally have not yet gotten into the habit of reading this information on a daily basis, but I am going to make it a future priority to do so. I hope you do as well!

Note that you have the power to completely customize what information is broadcast here on your Home Page by selecting “Manage Your Network Update Settings” at the bottom left of the Network Updates section.

Finally, we move on to the right-hand side of this middle section. Like a newspaper, the content here is designed to catch your eye. You have some degree of customization of the modules here, so you will find this section particularly useful.

At the very top, you should see a little module called “People You May Know.” This is how LinkedIn suggests you connect with people, similar to the Facebook functionality. I need to be honest in that I have only seen this module pop up for a few days. It should be a regular feature on your Home Page, but if it is not, you are not alone. I wasn’t necessarily impressed with the matching of the people that LinkedIn gives me, but depending on the logic of their matching algorithm, you might have better luck.

Once you skim the Direct Ad that appears below this, you should see the “Who’s Viewed My Profile?” module. This is an interesting module which tells you how many people have viewed your profile and how many times your name has appeared in a search result in the last day. Below this is a "See more" link, which, if you press it, will give you details about 5 people who have viewed your profile.

Note that in order to see everyone who has viewed your profile, you need to upgrade to a paid account. Furthermore, under “Account & Settings,” there is a Privacy Setting for Profile Views. The default setting for this shows your industry and title without giving your name or company. There are options to give your name or to be completely anonymous. Even if you upgrade, you will never really know 100% of the people who viewed your profile because very few people actually show their name. I have devoted a section to this in “Display Your Footprint?” in Chapter 10.

The “Groups You Might Like” module may appear below the “Who’s Viewed My Profile?” module. I say “may” because I have never seen it on my Home Page, but other LinkedIn users have told me this module exists. I am assuming this is similar to the “People You May Know” module, so this may prove useful to you.

The remaining modules you display here can all be customized and deleted by pressing the “x” button on the top right hand corner of the module. They can be edited by pressing the “edit” button to the left of the “x” button, and minimized by pressing the downward arrow key on the top left-hand corner of each module. Furthermore, the ability to add modules can be found at the bottom of this right-hand section via the “+ Add an Application” button. This fooled me for the longest time, because in addition to adding an actual Application to your profile (covered in Chapter 8: Applications), you can also add actual modules.

Your choice of non-Application modules here is essentially a category of “Answers” or “Job Search.”

Within “Answers” is the opportunity to place several modules on your Home Page, one for each of the tens of categories and sub-categories that exist for Answers. We will discuss this in Chapter 7: Answers, but you may want to play around and browse categories that interest you by selecting “Answers” and then seeing the categories that are on display.

The “Job Search” module, while rudimentary, will allow you to search for a title near a certain location. This may or may not be useful, depending on your title, location and situation.

In my experience, I have been limited to displaying no more than 12 modules, not including the Direct Ad and the “Who’s Viewed My Profile?” module.

Finally, we come to the section at the very bottom of the page which contains four rows of selections titled “Company,” “Tools,” “Premium”; the final row contains your standard User Agreement, Privacy Policy, and Copyright Policy, along with a feedback area just below that. I would call this area the “Reference” section because it contains valuable information and tools that will foster a more efficient and well-informed LinkedIn experience. The sections here that I believe you will find valuable are:

•“Customer Service” is your one-stop support shop for anything to do with LinkedIn.

•“Learning Center” gives you more basic information about the different features LinkedIn offers. User Guides for a few specific professions are available; however, I find the information to be of a basic nature. Yet another reason I am writing this book!

•“Blog” is a real blog with some interesting content about LinkedIn and how people are using it. You should pay attention to the “Categories” title on the left side which lists blog titles in “New Features,” “Tips & Tricks,” “In The News” and “Success Stories.” Recently “Engineering” and “Recent Grads” have been added to the mix. RSS feeds for all of these are available via an email notification subscription to the blog itself.

•“Overview” in the “Tools” section shows off tools that LinkedIn has developed to embed LinkedIn into your PC applications. All of these are accessible on this page. It is a shame their two toolbars are useless to a personal user (i.e. me) who uses neither Outlook (I use Gmail) nor Internet Explorer/Firefox (I use Google Chrome). They have a handy email signature tool, which once again is tied to Outlook/Outlook Express/Thunderbird, which I cannot use. A Google Toolbar Assistant requires a Google Toolbar, which doesn’t exist in Google Chrome. Finally, there is a Mac Dashboard Search Module, but I utilize Windows. Needless to say, I have found zero use for any of these tools, so they are not by any means necessary to implement what I teach you in the rest of this book; however, I have heard rave reviews from those who use the Outlook Toolbar, as it could make your time spent on LinkedIn much more efficient. The email signature tool is definitely a helpful feature to have if you are using Outlook. If you are interested, they appear easy to download and install from this section. These tools can make your Windmill Networking more efficient while helping promote your LinkedIn Brand.

•“Upgrade Your Account,” should you wish to change from a free to a paid account. We will cover this topic in Chapter 14: Putting it All in Perspective in the “To Pay or Not to Pay?” section.

Now that you understand what is available on your Home Page, it is time to actually start navigating LinkedIn, connecting with others, and building up your LinkedIn network. It is time for you to embark on your journey of Windmill Networking.