Master LinkedIn Search for Faster Access to People and Jobs

LinkedIn still holds the title of the largest professional networking site, with more than 330 million user profiles. So in order to support the demand for its platform, LinkedIn has been working to improve the functionality of its search.

In June of 2014, LinkedIn deployed Galene, its new search architecture. This helped lay the groundwork for the improvements it hopes will make searching within the platform better, faster, and more easily accessible.

What do the newest updates have in store for LinkedIn users?

With LinkedIn’s new search functionality you will be able to uncover results based on common connections, companies, or groups that you share with the individual that you’re searching for.

Find New Friends

In the past, LinkedIn required a Premium membership in order to find and connect with individuals outside of your direct network.

Now, users can connect with individuals that are in their first-, second-, or third-degree networks. As shown below in a screenshot provided by LinkedIn, you can search based on name or specific keywords.

 

Discover Jobs Just for You

This feature may be the most impressive upgrade to LinkedIn's search. It is meant to help users find jobs that are a match for them. The system will take into consideration your previous roles and bring open positions that are the most relevant for you to the surface of your search results.

 

Get the Content That Counts

It’s now even easier to catch up on the content that your LinkedIn network has been sharing with a helpful dropdown in the search menu called "posts." Posts will allow you to search for the latest posts based on the subject you type in the search bar.

 

LinkedIn is clearly upping its search engine capabilities to better meet the needs of the more than 300 million users on its platform. Have you used any of the new features? If so, which did you find to be the most helpful?

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LinkedIn Activity: Trying to Manage the Virtually Unmanageable

This article attempts to help intermediate and advanced LinkedIn users understand how their LinkedIn activity is broadcast and shared with other users, and provides recommendations for the best approaches to managing that activity within LinkedIn’s constraints. It provides a comparable assessment and recommendations for filtering and managing other people’s LinkedIn activity as well.

Want more control over how your LinkedIn activity is broadcast and shared with other users? Good luck with that. And good luck filtering and managing other people’s LinkedIn activity too. I first wrote about the quantity and quality challenges inherent in managing LinkedIn activity a little over three years ago, and when I revisited subject recently I found that not much has changed. In fact, the situation may actually be worse. Although there have been some positive changes (e.g., people’s tweets are no longer automatically posted to LinkedIn), it appears that many activities that were previously controllable, at least to some extent, are no longer. And LinkedIn has added more things to the home page activity feed that can’t be controlled, like Pulse news and sponsored updates. *sigh*

This situation is both disappointing and unfortunate. Encouraging and maximizing engagement is obviously in LinkedIn’s best interests. As a metrics-driven company, they need users to leverage its features so they can determine how to enhance and extend their offerings. But they seem to be missing the point that giving people the ability to control and customize their experience on the platform – and to do so with relative ease – is crucial to promoting engagement.

This article is my attempt to help other users wrap their minds around LinkedIn activity and the best options for managing it. To the best of my ability, it reflects my understanding of what you can and cannot manage, and offers some recommended actions. I apologize in advance if it isn’t helpful. Both the research and the writing made my brain hurt, so I’m sure reading it won’t be easy. It’s probably most useful for intermediate and advanced LinkedIn users.

Note: This piece is written from the perspective of accessing LinkedIn via the web on a desktop or laptop. The experience and recommendations will differ for mobile devices and tablets.

LinkedIn Activity We Should Be Able to Manage

We all have different objectives and different reasons for using LinkedIn, which in turn lead to different preferences in how our own LinkedIn activity is broadcast and how the activity of others is distributed to us. Here are some of the LinkedIn activities that people engage in that most users would like the ability to manage (as either a sender or receiver):

• Changing a profile
• Adding an update or publishing a post
• Connecting with another user, as well as following, endorsing, and/or recommending them
• Following a company, and liking or commenting on one of their updates
• Liking or commenting on an update or post from another user
• Joining groups, posting to groups, and commenting or liking someone else’s group post or comment

Ideally, the information and tools to control these activities would be centralized, easy to understand, easy to use, and granular. Unfortunately, they are none of these things.

Managing Your Own LinkedIn Activity

LinkedIn Activity Broadcasts. LinkedIn has a single, global setting (under Privacy and Settings/Profile) for managing your activity broadcasts. This setting enables you to “let people know when you change your profile, make recommendations, or follow companies.” It’s all or nothing, which means you can’t control broadcasting profile changes separately from the recommendations you make and/or the companies you follow.

You can also change this setting when you’re updating your profile, via a toggle switch in the right-hand column of the page. Having the switch here offers a convenient reminder of your default settings and provides more flexibility and control over when your profile changes are shared with others. Unfortunately, it’s not at all clear that flipping the switch means that you’re changing the default setting rather than making a session-specific choice. If you don’t want to change your default setting, you have to flip the switch back after publishing your updated profile.

Another problem with the activity broadcast setting is its limited scope. It doesn’t include things like updates you share via the home page, posts you publish, items you post to groups (which you can presumably control via group settings, but I couldn’t figure it out), and likes and comments. From what I can tell, any activity for which there is no specific setting is automatically broadcast with a default setting of “everyone.”

The only other activity you seem to be able to control is notifications when you join groups (under Privacy and Settings/Groups, Companies & Applications). This is another global switch that enables you to determine whether LinkedIn should “publish an update to [your] network whenever [you] join a group that has these notifications enabled by the group owner.” You cannot easily make the broadcasting choice each time you join a group.

Recent LinkedIn Activity. Until the end of 2013, your LinkedIn profile included an Activity section (between the thumbnail information card and your summary) that listed your most recent activity and provided a dropdown to see more. That section is now gone, much to many people’s chagrin. Now people have to click on the drop down arrow next to the Endorse or Send Inmail button on your profile page (depending on their connection to you) and click on View recent activity. Unfortunately, this shows all your latest activity, including group posts, comments and. So instead of featuring certain activities and items you might want to highlight in connection with your LinkedIn identity, visitors see a decontextualized set of actions that likely provides more noise than signal (particularly if you’re active on the platform).

You can control who sees that activity – sort of. Under Privacy and Settings/Profile you can determine who can see your activity feed. The options are everyone, your network, your connections or only you. You cannot, however, make selections based on the type of activity you engage in (e.g., updates, blog posts, group shares, comments, likes). As with everything else, it’s probably best to assume it’s all treated as public and broadcast on other people’s home page feeds since the setting specifically refers to “your activity feed” and not “your activity.”

Finally, when you post an update via the home page, you can indicate whether that update should be shared witheveryone or your connections only, but it’s unclear whether the choice also impacts your activity feed. I suspect the global setting overrides whatever choice you make for  a specific post, so even it doesn’t show up on the home page it may still be included in your activity feed.

Recommended Actions.

• Turn the default activity broadcast setting to “off.” When you make a change to your profile you want broadcast, flip the switch back to “on” right before you’re ready to publish your updated profile. Then immediately go into Privacy and Settings and turn it back off again.
• Change who can see your activity feed based on your objectives for using LinkedIn and your personal preferences. If you have a public-facing role and/or are on the job MARKET I would recommend choosing everyone or your network; otherwise, your connections is fine. I don’t really see the point of choosing only you (except perhaps temporarily).
• Change who can see what groups you join based on your objectives for using LinkedIn and your personal preferences. If you display groups on your LI profile you probably want to set this to on; otherwise, set it to off (which is my preference).
• Periodically check your recent activity and delete specific items you don’t want listed. For example, if you share the same item with multiple groups, you probably want to delete all but one of the shares. You may also want to delete likes and comments that aren’t particularly useful. If your LinkedIn activity is high, it’s probably a good idea to do this clean up weekly. If not, monthly may be sufficient. Note: the LinkedIn help item below suggests conducting the view via the home page, but that may not include all your activity. I think it’s better to access the activity feed on your profile page by clicking on the arrow next to the Edit button and selecting View recent activity. When you hover over each item, a Deleteoption should appear in the top right corner.

LinkedIn resources

Managing the LinkedIn Activity of Others

The activity of other LinkedIn users gets displayed in the feed on your home page (as does your own). There is a dropdown menu right under the update bar on the right that enables you to change what LinkedIn activity is displayed in the feed. You can elect to view either recent activity or top activity (not sure exactly how that’s defined), and you can also select whether you want to view shares only, profile changes only, or all updates.

You can further customize the LinkedIn activity updates you see on your home page (including your own) by either selecting customize from the dropdown menu or under Privacy and Settings/Account. You can opt in or out of any of the following:

• New connections
• Job opportunities
• Updates shared by connections
• Updates from followed companies
• Trending news
• Group discussions and changes
• Profile changes
• Application updates

Note: any customizations you make here include your activity too. So, for example, if you opt out of group discussions and changes, you won’t see anything you’ve posted to groups in the home page feed (but they will be viewable via the activity feed on your profile page).

LinkedIn also enables you to block the activity of specific individuals by “hiding” them – but again, this is an all-or-nothing option. You have no ability to pick and choose what you’d like to see from folks.

Finally, there are a number of things you don’t seem to have much if any control over, including:

• The Pulse update and recommended news items
• Other users’ likes and comments
• Notifications about people your connections are now following
• Specific post types (e.g., math quizzes)
• Sponsored updates
• Suggested connections
• Anniversaries and other profile news automatically shared by LinkedIn

As far as I can tell, you also have no control over the notifications you receive (see the flag in the top bar, on the right).

Recommended Actions.

• Customize the activity you see based on your objectives for using LinkedIn and your personal preferences. Since it’s not exactly clear what each item includes, you will probably need to experiment to see what you’re opting in/out of. I would flip them all off and then flip each one on individually to see what shows up on your home page. After you’ve checked them all, go back and opt in to the activities you want to continue to see.
• If someone’s activity is dominating your home page feed with content you don’t find particularly valuable, hide them. You may to unhide folks to see if their signal/noise ratio has improved.
• Decide what you want your default feed to include (i.e., shares, profiles, or all updates) and set it up that way. I would definitely include profiles at a minimum, as profile changes create good opportunities to reach out and connect with folks. Whether you also want to see what other people share and use that as an opportunity to engage is up to you.
• Set up the feed to display recent items rather than having LinkedIn filter the content to only show you the “top” posts.

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3 Ways Businesses Are Ruining LinkedIn [INFOGRAPHIC]

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11 Rules You Must Follow to Be a LinkedIn Marketing Master

At my company, Fusion Marketing Partners, we have a policy of not spending money on marketing or sales. We are “pull” (inbound) marketers to the core and this philosophy has served us well. Of course, we do lots of “push” (outbound) marketing for clients, but we try to move them in the direction of pull marketing in order to drive awareness and leads up and drive new customer acquisition costs down.

While we don’t incur direct marketing or sales expenses, there is definitely a cost in time and effort, and this is the tradeoff you will also have to make if you decide to adopt the pull marketing approach. As a B2B marketer, one of the best social media tools you can use is LinkedIn. It has gained us awareness, leads and revenue, and it can do the same for your company (as well as you as an individual). But to be successful with LinkedIn marketing, you need to follow some important rules, like:

1. Get started now. Lots of people talk about using LinkedIn effectively, but relatively few make it happen. Like most other worthwhile things in life, LinkedIn marketing becomes easier over time. The sooner you get started, the faster you get to the easy part of the deal.
2. Be a combination of the hare and the tortoise. Some Linked practitioners start out slow and stay that way. Others begin with a fast pace but quickly drop off. A better approach is to build up to and maintain a moderate pace. I wrote about this in a 2011 blog post titled Is Social Media a Marathon or a Sprint?
3. Offer value. Make sure your LinkedIn updates include you sharing content or ideas of value to your audience. A bit of humor and motivation are also good, but don’t overdo it.
4. Don’t always be selling. Remember Alec Baldwin in the chalkboard scene from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, where his character is haranguing his sales team and shouting “ABC, Always Be Closing!”  While that philosophy may work in high-pressure sales situations, it does not hold water when you are communicating on LinkedIn. Think of LinkedIn as a relationship medium first, then a selling medium.
5. Don’t pitch too soon. One of my pet peeves is people who connect with me and immediately try to sell me something. I bet you feel the same way about pushy salespeople. Build a relationship first, then make the offer.  It works better this way.
6. Connect with people. A technology company founder told me that he rejects most connection requests because he only wanted people he knows personally. In my opinion, this is shortsighted. It’s like only talking to people you already know at a cocktail party – you miss out on a lot of interesting opportunities. This is not to say you should connect with everyone.  I probably accept about 60 percent of connect requests.
7. Be visible. Even when you don’t have something pithy to say, you can stay visible by liking, commenting and sharing other people’s updates.  Participating in groups is another way to stay top of mind.
8. Don’t put social items on LinkedIn. Treat this medium as a way to showcase your company and personal attributes, not your personal life. Some examples of things not to talk about or share on LinkedIn:
   1. Photos of your family life (including children, pets, etc.)
   2. Photos of you drinking, partying or out with a group of friends
   3. Your religious or political opinions
   4. Your sports preferences
9. Keep it civil. Never gripe about your employer, employees, partners or customers. For that matter, if you feel the need to disagree or criticize someone else’s update, do so in as gentle a manner as possible.
10. Assume that everyone (yes, everyone!) can see everything you do on LinkedIn. If someone likes, shares or comments on one of your updates, all their followers can see it and it can certainly be copied and/or forwarded. Remember that your current and future employer, spouse, partners and friends will be able to see that irreverent, harsh or negative update that you thought was so clever at the time you posted it.
11. Post your blogs as LinkedIn articles. I leverage many of my blog posts this way and they tend to get very high readership.  Articles are a great to create or extend either your business or personal brand promise.

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The Importance of Repurposing Content

Repurposing content, meaning changing its format and the audience to which its targeted, can help you maximize your resources and increase the effect of your content marketing efforts.

In the world of SEO, we all understand and embrace the idea that content is king. For most, that means challenging teams to constantly create fresh new content that's constructive for site users and easily digestible for the search engines. A lot of time and energy can go into generating those content ideas. Sometimes, though, it shouldn't require that much energy. Sometimes, the content is right there, already published on the site and it just needs some retooling to breathe fresh life into it. Let's look at the concept of repurposing content and the relative benefits.

Repurposing vs. Revamping: Is There a Difference?

First, we need to make a distinction between repurposing and revamping content. At first glance, they look similar, but they are different concepts. Knowing the difference between the two as well as your specific goals and promotional strategy will dictate which one you might employ.

The primary distinction is this: revamping a piece of content will serve the same purpose for which it was initially intended and target the same audience. Updating a blog post would be an example of revamping content. Repurposing content means changing the format and likely the audience to which it's targeted. An example would be taking key content from an existing PDF and creating an eye-catching infographic.

Image source.

The Benefits

Revamping content can be beneficial to both the audience and consequently SEO. Using the blog update example, if your new information is significant enough, that post may impress readers and earn new life being circulated and ultimately improve the chance for it to rank well for critical keyword phrases.

Repurposing content adds value in multiple ways:

1. Reaching Across Multiple Platforms: Doing things like converting webinars to videos, or turning dense PDFs into infographics, it increases the ability to promote that content across multiple channels beyond your domain.
2. Reinforcing the Message: By broadcasting your message across multiple media in different formats, you increase the likelihood that the message will be remembered and acted upon.
3. SEO Benefit: Creating variations on a theme and distributing across multiple channels increases the potential for organic search traffic from a host of sources.

Here are a few examples of the variety of content that could be produced repurposing existing content:

• Infographics
• Newsletters
• Case Studies
• Podcast
• Whitepapers
• Lists
• Memes
• Webinars 

Cross-Promotion Is Vital

When you develop new content, be sure to leverage it across all of the tools at your disposal. If you've created a new video, certainly you want that posted to your site's YouTube channel, but don't forget to promote that across any and every social media channel at hand. Push it out on your Facebook page, tweet it on Twitter, and announce it on LinkedIn. Use every reasonable channel you can access to push that content to as broad an audience as possible to increase the potential that it's going to be shared and establish authority.

In short, when considering how to generate new content for your site, don't forget to evaluate the potential of repurposing critical existing content into new formats. Sometimes you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You just need to renew the treads to get more constructive mileage.

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8 Reasons You Should Upgrade to LinkedIn Premium

Is LinkedIn Premium actually worth the money? Many users will often find themselves wondering this at some point when they are offered a free trial to experience the features LinkedIn Premium offers.

Although I am personally a LinkedIn Premium user, I’m not prepared to say everybody should be using it because that’s simply not true. I get value from using LinkedIn Premium because I make use of the additional features it provides.

There are 4 different types of general LinkedIn Premium accounts:

1. Free
2. Business
3. Business Plus
4. Executive

There are also 3 specialized versions of LinkedIn Premium that cater to three types of users:

• Recruiters
• Job Seekers
• Sales Professionals (aka LinkedIn Sales Navigator)

If you’re actively using LinkedIn as a social selling tool, here are eight reasons why it might be advisable to go premium.

1. Additional Search Filters

 The LinkedIn Code, you know one of the most valuable tools on LinkedIn is its advanced search. The advanced search results on LinkedIn are VERY reliable, because LinkedIn pulls the results from content within people’s profiles where they tend to share more information not commonly found on sites like Facebook or even Google+.

Truthfully, you can access a lot of advanced filters already with the free version of LinkedIn but the premium filters give you (almost) everything you could ever want.

Premium Filters Included with Business & Business Plus

• Select multiple groups
• Company size
• Interested in (ie. Potential employees, entrepreneurs, hiring experts, etc.)
• Seniority level

Premium Filters Available Exclusively With Executive

• Function
• Years of experience
• Filtering Fortune 1000 companies and under
• Join date

2. More Search Results

Often times when you do a search on LinkedIn, you’ll have far more results than you are actually able to access. If you have a free account, you’ll see this once you try to access page 11…

You can see up to 7X the amount of results with a LinkedIn Premium account. If you’re a sales professional that’s trying to find leads beyond a tight, local area, this feature is a goldmine.

3. More Saved Searches

It’s not unusual to keep doing the same searches often once you’ve dialed into your target market on LinkedIn using Advanced Search. A small but useful perk of upgrading to LinkedIn Premium is the amount of saved searches you can store at one time is increased from 3, all the way up to 10 in the Executive LinkedIn Premium plan.

You will receive weekly email updates of new members that fit the criteria you’ve specified. If you’re a local B2B sales professional, imagine how powerful it is to be alerted when there are new prospects in your area that match the exact criteria you’re looking for. LinkedIn literally will deliver leads right to your email inbox.

3. You Can Do Reference Searches

Want reliable feedback about a new prospect or a job candidate that you’re looking at? Reference searches are a tool exclusively available to LinkedIn Premium members to quickly pull up a list of people that have worked at the same company as the person you’re trying to learn more about.

To do a reference search, go to the profile of the person you want a reference for and click hover your mouse above the downward arrow next to the “Send NAME an InMail” button.

Select “Find References” from the drop down menu.

4. InMails

Sometimes you don’t have time to connect with someone “the long way” and need a bit of a shortcut. InMails are a great way to get the attention of people outside your network by giving you an otherwise forbidden ability: sending private messages to 2^nd and 3^rd level connections.

Here are the official rules on using InMails from LinkedIn:

You can send an InMail by clicking the Send InMail link in the upper right of a member’s profile page or from search results.

• InMails let you directly message members you’re not connected to
• If you have a Basic (free) account, you can purchase up to 10 InMail credits
• If you have a premium account and want more credits than the number you’ve been allotted, you can always purchase up to 10 more
• Compare account types to find an account that meets your needs
• Learn more about InMail expiration and renewal

5. More Introductions

Want an introduction to someone outside your network? The introductions feature is a great way to facilitate that if you have someone in your network that’s already connected to someone you’d like to meet.

This might not be a big deal to you if you’ve never used the Introductions feature on LinkedIn but if you have, you know that you only get 15 with a free account. You get up to 35 depending on which LinkedIn Premium account you go with.

6. See Full Profiles For 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd Degree Connections

You can already see your 1^st degree connections and their profiles but becoming a LinkedIn Premium subscriber will lift the veil for everyone else.

7. Open Profile

This is a great feature for LinkedIn Premium users as it gives you the option to allow people outside your network to send you a message. This is a huge benefit for premium subscribers and one of the reasons I remain a paid member. InMails can be costly and potential prospects aren’t going to pay to reach out to you. Open Profileremoves a key barrier between you and the prospects outside your 1^st level network.

8. Gold Badge

Who can forget that fancy gold badge you get on your profile and beside your name in the search results? It’s a very small benefit that identifies LinkedIn Premium users but anything that makes you more eye catching in the search results is positive. At the end of the day it’s the features, not the status, that will compel you one way or the other.

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Social Selling: How to Create LinkedIn Invitations That Get Accepted

If you’ve ever sent an invitation to connect on LinkedIn, you’ve seen the screen below. If the person is a work colleague or a friend, then checking the appropriate circle and clicking “Send Invitation” can work just fine. But if your invitee is a potential customer or partner with whom you’ve corresponded with once or twice, this is when it pays to get strategic.

It’s no secret that large networks facilitate social selling success. To help you build your professional network by:

1. Sending better invitations that resonate with the person you’re sending them to, and
2. Helping you feel more comfortable sending connection requests to valuable prospects and partners…

Here are 5 ways to get better results with your LinkedIn invitations:

1. Customize your invitations

Notice the line “Include a personal note:” with (optional) in parentheses in the image above. The truth is, if you’re serious about connecting, and especially if it’s an important prospect or partner, a personal note should be viewed as mandatory.

To save time, you can create templates for specific networking groups however these should be used as a starting point, not as the final draft because it’s important to…

2. Tell a story

Personalize your invitation by explaining the context of your connection request. Why do you wish to connect? What is the benefit this person will gain from connecting with you?

Feel free to reference a recent conversation, LinkedIn Group discussion or other event that brings you closer to your invitee.

3. Capitalize on incoming requests

Think of each request as a new opportunity. Reply with a personal message explaining how your customers benefit from doing business with you along with a description of your ideal prospect. Use incoming requests as an opportunity to include a call to action or to reference relevant content.

Kicking off your professional relationship in this manner sets the stage for networking opportunities and referrals, increasing your sales lead generation results.

4. Know your limits

You have 300 characters to work with. Make ‘em count. If you have room to spare, try deepening the relationship at the outset by calling attention to the LinkedIn Groups or other social/industry platforms you’re active in.

5. Know your boundaries

Create your best invite and then let it be. Sending multiple invites to the same person can make you appear desperate, and can inhibit your ability to establish a relationship with the invitee (or those in the invitee’s professional network) in the future.

If your invitee doesn’t accept, there are other tactics such as blogs and LinkedIn Group discussions you can use to get on the networking radar.

Best-in-class social sellers take advantage of every opportunity to rise above the “sales noise.” Sending personalized, relevant invitations to connect immediately puts you in higher company than the large majority of sales people who fail to do so.

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20 LinkedIn Mistakes That Turn Off Potential Customers

Are you getting good results on LinkedIn?

The professional social network is a force to be reckoned with. It’s a great tool for businesses looking to increase traffic and leads, as well as for people searching for new career opportunities who want to market their expertise. It’s an easy-to-use portal that facilitates the exchange of ideas whose primary purpose is to cultivate professional relationships, and its mentality and etiquette are vastly different than on Twitter and Facebook.

Social media is unique in its ability to communicate with large audiences. This one-to-many model amplifies mistakes that have the potential to turn off potential customers before they’ve even had a chance to learn about your products and services. Nowhere is this more true than on LinkedIn. It’s important to use your brand’s professional voice at all times and keep in mind that word travels fast when you make these 20 mistakes.

Avoid these LinkedIn mistakes

1. Don’t send connection requests using LinkedIn’s default text. Personalize them so recipients know why you want to connect with them.
2. Don’t use the “friend” option when you’re trying to connect with someone. It’s important to provide context.
3. Don’t forget to use a professional profile photo. Amateurish photos — or having no photo at all — reflect badly on you.
4. Don’t ask people you don’t know for LinkedIn recommendations.
5. Don’t ask for recommendations without personalizing them, and offer to reciprocate where appropriate.
6. Don’t share information that isn’t relevant to business.
7. Don’t leave your profile incomplete.
8. Don’t neglect to send a welcome message that provides value when someone follows you.
9. Don’t treat LinkedIn as a numbers game — you should regularly nurture your relationships.
10. Don’t keep your contact list private; you should share it with your connections.
11. Don’t hoard your connections. Offer to introduce them to others in your network.
12. Don’t delay in responding to messages — you should reply within 24 to 48 hours.
13. Don’t send spammy messages to your connections. It will turn them off and they will drop you as a connection.
14. Don’t post too much — once a day is best.
15. Don’t criticize or make negative comments on posts in groups.
16. Don’t post self-serving content in groups that provides no value to members. You will either be dropped from the group or your posts will end up in the moderation queue.
17. Don’t send messages to multiple people without unchecking the option to “Allow recipients to see each other’s names and email addresses”. It’s important to respect others’ privacy.
18. Don’t ask people to like your Facebook page.
19. Don’t ask new connections or people you don’t know to endorse you.
20. Don’t begin messages with, “I noticed that you viewed my profile …” It’s really creepy.

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3 Ways to Shorten Your B2B Sales Cycle Through Personal Branding

Creating a personal brand and using social media to strengthen it can help you greatly shorten your sales cycle and ultimately achieve better results.

Accounting firm associates, agency account executives, law firm rainmakers, real estate sales representatives, pharmaceutical sales representatives, software sales professionals, and insurance producers all have one glaring thing in common - long sales cycles. In my recent discussions and interviews with professionals from all the above walks of life, it has been clear to me that the sales cycle challenge is one that needs some good resolution.

On top of the fact that these industries' sales processes are long, there is also the obstacle of saturation in digital marketing. There are literally millions of competitors locally, regionally, nationally, and globally that are all pushing to shorten their sales cycle. Some invest heavily in direct marketing, some through industry conferences, some in paid search marketing, some in meal and travel expenses and the list goes on. In that there is also one common advantage - each sales professional is a unique personality.

A properly developed and utilized online personal branding program can work to shorten your sales cycle. Learn the top three ways you can shorten your sales cycle:

1. Identify Your Winning Position and Exploit It

Your "personal brand" cannot work for you unless you first identify what it is that equals your winning formula. To do this, you need a review. Answer these questions:

• What type of clients are drawn to me and why?
• What do I know better than my colleagues, competitors?
• Where do I spend the majority of my time developing new business?
• What are my top strengths? 
• What do people love about me?
• How do I sell? Do I tell stories? Do I like to dig into facts? Am I great at uncovering the return on investment (ROI)?

From this, you will start to understand where you should focus your personal brand and develop a winning position. Exploiting this position through effective online personal branding style and communication will help to shorten the sales cycle because it will start to develop a relationship with your target, where they can see what you do without you having to push or worse, wait for them to reply.

2. Identify Your Best Online Personal Branding Machine and Make It a Daily Practice

Once you have identified such critical personal branding success metrics as your thought-leadership position, your target audience online behaviors, and your selling style, you need to identify your online selling machine. This is where social selling, social sales, or social business comes into play. You can utilize such areas as your own branded blog, your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter profile, your Google Plus profile, and your YouTube channel to deliver a daily online personal brand. This requires a social media strategy and commitment to delivery and management.

So that you can get started in building your machine, answer these questions:

• How do you currently communicate online?
• How do you prefer to communicate?
• How does your target audience make buying decisions? What information do they need and in what frequency?
• Where do you currently network online?
• Do you need the help of a writer?
• Do you need the help of a designer?
• Do you need a video person?

Social media channels and tools provide opportunities for you to amass a targeted online audience and the potential to shorten your sales cycle by creating relationships online.

3. Identify Your Sales Location and Focus, Then Commit to Relationship Development

In the world of SEO, we know that focusing locally first can help to drive results more quickly than going global or focusing on broad terms. The same holds true in the world of driving influence and sales in a local or targeted area versus a broad approach. This is why, as I am sure the sales professionals of large sales organizations such as Eli Lilly, Oracle, IBM, Aon, Northwest Mutual, etc. structure their sales teams in local areas or by specific vertical focus.

In the practice of personal brand development and delivery, the strength of the thought-leadership position is paramount to its success. This is why you will need to identify and build a strong position relative to your location and focus. You will be able to become an expert rather than the next salesperson in your industry for your target audience. If you are in a position to call the shots in terms of where you gain new clients, then a location focus can support community build.

A great way to shorten your sales cycle with a location focus is to join and participate in LinkedIn Groups in location and by target industry focus where you can demonstrate deep experience and help to nurture a community. Other ways you can support your personal brand online and drive more sales in a shorter time frame include starting and growing a G+ community based on your focus area or running a tweet chat doing the same.

When your prospects start to visibly see that you can provide education to support their needs and answer all their questions, they will hold you in a higher regard. Once you are seen as a thought-leader as opposed to a salesperson, prospects will undoubtedly stop playing the many games we as sales trainers know as "power-shifting." Once the games are eradicated, the sales process can be shortened.

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