LinkedIn works differently and I think it’s very effective. People will connect with you based on what you say in the various groups, discussion areas and so on, but they will almost always check out your profile first (at least I do!).

So you should have a look at your profile to be sure that you look as professional as you think you do! LinkedIn has some applications and tools that you should be taking advantage of to help maximize your profile.

Here are my favourite five:

1. Recommendations: Reach out to people you have worked with before and ask them for recommendations. Also offer to give recommendations in return! Having recommendations on your profile establishes you as a real person, and can instill confidence in people who are wondering if they should connect with you.

2. Groups: Get involved after you set up your profile. Your profile will never serve you if you do not get involved in discussions with people who have similar interests. I have made some wonderful connections with people that I would never have met except that we joined the same group. It’s about networking!

3. WordPress: Install this application to pull your blogfeed into your LinkedIn profile. When you publish a post, it will automatically display in your profile, so people don’t have to leave LinkedIn to see what you have written.

4. Twitter: Your twitter feed will display on your profile, and you can even update your Twitter status while surfing on LinkedIn. There is so much great information shared in groups on LinkedIn that you will find this to be a quick sharing tool!

5. Events: I love this application because you can see at a glance the events for all of your connections.  It’s easy to add your own events and invite your connections.

There are plenty of others (and they are adding new ones all the time), but these are my favourite five, and ones that I use all the time with my profile.  Check out the application directory to see what apps you can add to your LinkedIn profile!

It’s such a simple fix and I never really knew it existed until this fellow pointed it out. In your profile section, you can list up to three websites that you can connect your profile to. You probably have this already set up.

When I first joined LinkedIn, you had the option of putting in links for My Website, My Blog and My Company. Well I did not know they had updated this so that you can actually edit the top text for these links so they can say whatever you want them to say.

So now my labels say, ‘Tracey D’Aviero, VA, Your VA Mentor and Your VA Mentor Blog – which is much clearer than the generic labels that were there before.

It only takes a moment to change, but I really think it makes a big difference in how you profile looks. Here’s how to update them: http://linkedintelligence.com/making-the-most-of-website-links-on-your-linkedin-profile/.

I’ll be on the lookout for other cool tools to share with you! (If you haven’t updated your profile in a while, there are some neat new applications you could be taking advantage of!)

At first he was concerned that I would log in to my client’s LI profiles to post their information, which he pointed out is a violation of the Terms of Use Agreement that everyone agrees to when they sign up. No problem, I only post things to their profiles by connecting them to a feed system using an application that LI allows. I don’t even write the material that I post, my clients do. I simply do the data entry portion for the application, and the system does the rest. Check.

Then he pointed out that my own profile was not in compliance with the TOU from LinkedIn. WHAT? How could that be? I did everything right … at least I thought I did. He pointed out that I had my email address listed in an area that was not a designated field. That was true. I did. He mentioned that this violated section 10B4 of the TOU agreement … “Include information in your profile or elsewhere, except in designated fields, that reveals your identity or sensitive personal information such as an email address, phone number or address or is confidential in nature”
I had read that to mean that my privacy would not be protected if I posted my email address outside of a designated area. I was fine with this so I left it where it was. It seems that this error could breach my TOU with LinkedIn. Interesting! I removed it and I feel better already! (I am sooo not a rule-breaker!)

This made my connection discussion start to ease up a bit. He was impressed that I cared enough to make the change. It wasn’t that I was trying to break the rules, I had only misunderstood the jargon. Anyway from there we became friends again *haha* and he actually gave me another great tip to make my profile look more professional.

Stay tuned – I’ll let you know what that tip is next time … so you can do it to your profile too!

As you may know, I do automate several of my social media posts … you know, the product and service ones. I only have so much time to post on my networks, and really what I want to be doing when I am ‘live’ is to be connecting with people, not tweeting or posting about the services I offer. So I automate those so that people can get a sense of what I do and how I do it.

So I thought by asking that question on LinkedIn I would get some input as to whether people liked or disliked the automation aspect as I see it. Instead, I got all kinds of answers that really surprised me. Many people thought that automation was a bad idea, no doubt because of those bots that post dozens of posts every hour (you know the ones) in an effort to monopolize the twitter feed. I auto-post about once every two hours on Twitter … in order to reach my audience at various stages of their day.

Anyway, most people said they didn’t like automation, and I agree to a certain extent. I know when you ask a question you have a 50/50 chance of people agreeing with you, but it doesn’t help if they don’t really understand your question.

This was an interesting exercise for me because I realized that what is so clear to me in my head really doesn’t always translate to others without more explanation. I actually had a semi-heated discussion with someone about this very topic as a result of me posting that question (but that’s another blog post!).

So my lesson was this … when posting on social forums or networks, be sure to make your point clear. My intention was to post a question that would generate discussion, but what I received in return was opinions that either agreed with my viewpoint, disagreed vehemently, or were way off track on what I was actually asking.

Clarity … essential when trying to foster discussion. I chalk it up to ‘ask a stupid question’ and I will be sure to be more careful in the future. By the way, I am grateful to each person who took the time to answer my query … whether we agreed, disagreed, or completely misunderstood each other! 

Communicating online is not always as simple as communicating in person, but it certainly expands our networks farther than we ever could have in person. Good to meet all of you!

Although I network online all the time using Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, I have not done too much business networking in person in recent years.

Oh, I have my elevator speech, and I talk to everyone about what I do for a living, but I don’t actively seek clients in my own area. In fact, as a virtual assistant, I have purposely built a clientele that is located away from my hometown.

There are reasons that I have done that, of course. Prior to being an internet marketing virtual assistant, I was focused on the hospitality industry, working mainly with variable costs in restaurants and bars.

I worked from my own home office, and could compile, analyze and report on the data from my own office, I found that the clients I was working with preferred that I was on their site more than I thought I needed to be.

So, for many years I still travelled back and forth from my office to restaurants … and also needed to be available at some crazy times of day, being that the restaurant industry is not open ‘regular office hours’. I worked many holidays and weekends, and although I was very good at what I did, sometimes it just didn’t seem like it was worth it.

When I decided to swap my hospitality clients for online clients, I made a conscious decision to work with people whose offices or businesses I could not possibly drive to. Harsh? Probably. But it wouldn’t have worked for me otherwise.

Now I have established myself over the last three or so years, and am comfortable with setting my own work boundaries … and so I am finally getting out there in my own city!

Needless to say, the breakfast was great, and I enjoyed meeting many women who are running their own businesses like I am.

I learned from going to FoVA last year that getting together with people who understand my line of work is an invaluable source of support for me. That’s what this breakfast did as well, and I am sorry that it took me so long to realize the benefits I could gain by networking locally.

I will definitely look forward to the next networking meeting, wherever it is!