For those of you that happen to be female and live in the Greater Philadelphia Area, Howard will be speaking at the event for the Women of Wit and Wisdom on June 26th, 2008 at 5:30pm at the Pyramid Club in Philadelphia.

Using LinkedIn to Promote Your Business

Is it 12 or 73 invitations that you have received from LinkedIn so far? You have either ignored them or perhaps created an account. So now what do you and you 4 connections do next?

Learn to use LinkedIn to improve your reputation online:

• Create powerful connections for business networking
• Give and receive recommendations
• Promote yourself by answering questions
• Create opportunities for new business

What: Guest Speaker, Dinner & Networking
Date: Thursday, June 26, 2008
Time: 5:30-8pm
Location: Pyramid Club, 1735 Market Street, 52nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19103-2921
Cost: $35 advance registration/Pyramid Club Members; $40 at the door. Cash bar.

It isn’t just one thing. The website needs to be coherent and credible, obviously. Credibility also happens outside of the site: other blogs, customer reviews, sites like LinkedIn, etc. Online reputation is part of a “conversation” between the company and its customers. When the company participates in an open way, it is possible to make the conversations work for the company in a positive way, rather than trying to do damage control when a problem arises or there is a single disgruntled customer.

Click here for the complete conversation on LinkedIn…

LinkedIn has gained broad acceptance as a social network for business professionals. Here are my LinkedIn rules to live by: (Your mileage may vary.)

1. Keep it professional.
The goal is to make you look good in a professional networking environment. So don’t be a troll. No one likes trolls. (Except, perhaps other trolls.)

2. Do not add your entire contact list.
LinkedIn has tools for importing your address books from a variety of software and services. Don’t do it. This generates a huge amount of junk mail with your name on it. Unless you are a recruiter and depend on a HUGE database of names or loose connections, you don’t need to connect with everyone you have ever gotten a business card from.

3. Only invite people that you know and trust.
If you would feel strange about calling someone on the phone and having a conversation, perhaps you shouldn’t invite that person to connect.

4. Just because someone invites you doesn’t mean you have to accept.
If you don’t know the person well or at all, perhaps you shouldn’t connect. Call the person wanting to connect and schedule a time to have coffee or something to strengthen your relationship.

5. Don’t be a stalker, or even a little bit creepy.
Use Facebook or MySpace to look up old friends. Once you have rekindled a trusted relationship, invite the person to LinkedIn if it makes business sense.

6. Recommend people and get recommended.
If you have done business with someone and would recommend that person to a friend or client, write a nice recommendation on LinkedIn. We know how lukewarm testimonials sound, so don’t write one unless it is meaningful.

7. Answer questions.
LinkedIn’s Answers section provides an opportunity to show your expertise. Answer with the intent to provide useful information. The person asking acknowledges good answers and you can receive added credibility to your profile.

8. Remove stale connections.
Once a month, browse through all of your connections. Consider removing people that you simply cannot remember. LinkedIn doesn’t alert the other user, so the other person probably won’t notice at all since they probably cannot remember who you are either.

9. Make connections part of your referral process.
If someone gives you a good referral, part of your thank you process should be connecting on LinkedIn. And if you give a referral, ask to connect on LinkedIn.

10. Share your connections.
Those that are connected to me know that my connections are trusted, not flimsy. So if they need an introduction, they know that I can facilitate not just online, but in the real world.

LinkedIn has been around for a while now and recently they passed 20 million users. Unless you live under a rock, you probably have received at least one invitation to connect with someone on LinkedIn.

That said, I frequently hear, “Okay, so I have an account and a couple of people have connected to me. What can I do with LinkedIn?”

Recommendations - start by recommending people in your network and then ask to be recommended. You control what appears on your profile, so only good things will appear on your profile. It’s about making others look good and asking for the same in return.

Prospecting - if you are trying to make contact with a particular company, you can search for people who might have connection with a person the company. Once you have created enough connections, you will often find that you are one or two connections away from a potential client. You can then request an introduction or go all old school and pickup the phone to your contact and ask for a referral.

Questions and Answers - LinkedIn has an active Q&A section where members post questions and others reply with answers. Answering questions is a way to show your expertise, as members can mark the answers as “good” or “best” which earns you some LinkedIn “street cred.” We’ve actually gotten some business opportunities as a direct result of answering questions.

Groups - there are a whole bunch of professional organizations, alumni groups, etc. that provide another way to link to members. And you can even start your own interest group if it make sense for your organization. The groups feature in LinkedIn is still maturing, so keep watch for what happens there.