Fire & EMS Leader Pro The job of old firefighters is to teach young firefighters how to become old firefighters!
By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer
So, what is your purpose for getting on the LinkedIn network? Are you looking for a job? Are you starting out to develop a professional network of contacts? Are you looking to expand your “circle of influence”? Or, are you looking for workable solutions for a vexing problem on the job?
Well, I’ve got good news: LinkedIn is a multifunctional tool that can help you do all those things and more. Just like every other tool in our business, however, you’ll get better results from using the tool when you know and understand the tool’s capabilities. What do you say we get started?
Building Your Network
If you want to make connections on LinkedIn, you’ll do much better if you proactively seek connections. Start by 
inviting people you already know from your e-mail contacts by clicking on the My Network your homepage’s top menu bar).
When I receive the e-mail message from LinkedIn that I’ve got a new connection, or if I see it first on LinkedIn on the Notifications icon (on the top menu bar as well), I go to my new connection’s profile and give it a quick scan. I try to pick out something that makes a connection between us (e.g., we earned a degree from the same college, we’re both retired, people we know in common). Then I send my new connection a customized message (using a template that I have saved in a note on my computer’s desktop):
Figure 2. Welcoming message that I send to every new LinkedIn connection.
Categorize Your Connections
Figure 3. Connection information from search of all connections in LinkedIn.
When that person responds back with a message—and about 7 in 10 do so for me—I go to the Network tab on the menu bar and select Contacts and then search for that person’s profile (Figure 3):
BTW, those people who reply to my welcoming message? They get the “coveted” colleague tag!
Figure 4. List of available tags for profiles. Names of tags are set by the individual LinkedIn user.
Finally, I use one of more Tags to categorize my new connection. I find LinkedIn tags useful for locating connections, sending messages to specific groups of people, etc. (Figure 4).
Figure 5. Listing for all connections with tag of “Emergency Management”.
For example, I was working on a project a while ago and sought input from my LinkedIn connections who were in Emergency Management (Figure 5):
Click on Send Message and the Compose a Message Screen comes up (Figure 6) with all the connections for my Emergency Management tag already in the TO: Box
Figure 6. Compose Message box with addresses of all members tagged under “Emergency Management” already entered into the TO: box on the panel.
Promoting Your Public Profile
Your LinkedIn public profile is a streamlined version of your profile that shows up in search engine results, and is visible to people who aren’t signed in to LinkedIn. Some options for promoting your public profile include:
- Creating a personal URL
- Adding a LinkedIn View My Profile button to your online resume, blog, or website
- Creating an email signature that contains your public profile URL
Staying in Touch
As whales and dolphins are swimming about in the vast oceans they are constantly sending out signals to “ping” their fellow whales or dolphins. The sending sea mammal can determine who’s out there, how far away they are—and what kind of mood they’re in!—based on the length of time it takes for signals to come back to them. (Research into this phenomenon was the basis for the development of SONAR).
These are some of the ways that I’ve found to work well using LinkedIn to stay in touch with my connections:
- Every morning—OK, most mornings!—when I first look at LinkedIn I scroll down my Update Feed to spot my first connection whom I’ve not “pinged” lately. Then I send them a short message just to touch base using the Comment Box (if they’ve Shared something on LinkedIn) or by “popping up” their profile and using the Send Message button on their Profile Page.
- When I see one of my connections has viewed my LinkedIn profile, I take the opportunity to send a short message that says “Hi!” and mentions something I’m working on or have seen recently.
Obviously, all the things above only begin to “scratch the surface” when it comes to LinkedIn’s capacity for professional networking. I find myself learning about new features and how they work every day and think that you will too once you begin employing some of my tips.
