LinkedIn as a Garden

This week our Guest Blogger is Dan Olson of Star Collaborative. He is a master at working with LinkedIn and his business has experienced much success as a result of it.

Linked In as a Garden
The old adage ‘You can’t fake a crop’ is the main thought here. The most successful networkers I have encountered view LinkedIn as a garden that requires frequent care and feeding. Just like a gardener that constantly waters or weeds their plants, LinkedIn has a multitude of activities that require your attention before you can harvest something from it.

To increase adoption, and to make it more palatable, I suggest the following approach to tending to your LinkedIn garden: Plan on spending three sessions a week with your LinkedIn profile, for no more than ten minutes each time. A Monday - Wednesday – Friday rhythm has proven to be most effective, and helps keep you top of mind with your connected network.

Mondays: Write a recommendation for someone you know that has done exemplary work and is deserving of praise. Be genuine in your writing, specific in your comments, and choose people who have made a significant difference. Write the recommendation in Word so that you benefit from its grammar and spell check features, then cut and paste it into LinkedIn. Shoot for a 5 to 7 sentence write up.

I recommend that you write at least ten recommendations for others before asking someone to write one for you (pay it forward). In fact, I have seen many people who make a ten week commitment to this approach get spontaneous recommendations written for them by week four or five. People take notice of such activities and feel motivated to respond in kind. Posting recommendations is a great way to help people in your network get credit for the things that they have done, and helps them build their online brand.

Wednesdays: Post a book recommendation to your profile using the Amazon Reads module. You do not need to add any commentary, simply chose one business book that you think your network will be interested in or gain some special insight from. Since this takes only a minute, also post an interesting article to your status. Pick something that relates to your career brand or area of specialty (project management, logistics, marketing, etc.). Make sure you are posting something that has value and is interesting or provocative.

Fridays: Since you are undoubtedly always working on your resume, chose one interesting factoid or sentence from your resume and add it to your LinkedIn profile. Don’t fall into the trap that you need to spend eight hours perfecting your profile in one fell swoop. Most people who attempt this get burnt out by the activity, get frustrated with LinkedIn’s poor user interface, or loose enthusiasm for the work. Again, if you are viewing this as a long-term project, give yourself ten or more weeks before you see significant improvements or changes to your profile.
Since this cut and paste will take you mere moments, use Fridays as a day to find a group or forum on LinkedIn that relates to your career interests. Once you find an interesting group, join it so it is listed on your profile, and start interacting with the people there. Within your budgeted ten minutes of activity, you should be able to read the postings of others, answer a few questions, and ask a few of your own. This is a great way for you to help others, learn new ideas, and to further substantiate your online presence.

LinkedIn is a journey
So, what’s the net effect of this LinkedIn interaction regime?

1) It’s a great way to pay it forward and help others: Writing recommendations, posting interesting articles and books, as well as helping others in groups all contributes to good karma. Have an abundance mentality first when it comes to networking. It is the right thing to do.

2) It keeps you top of mind: Each time you do something to your LinkedIn profile, it sends a notice out to everyone in your network and shows up in their newsfeed and daily summary e-mails. I have found that people who show up three times a week are more likely to get attention and responses from people in their network. Those who show up more often get ignored as spammers, those who post less frequently are easily forgotten.

3) It keeps you engaged: As you work on these activities, with this frequency, it is easily absorbed into your daily routine, and will soon become a habit. It will also help you in your face-to-face networking since you will have more knowledge of the person in question through your LinkedIn interactions. Like Facebook, LinkedIn will allow you to monitor your colleagues’ work lives and interact with them constantly.

4) It builds your online brand: Linked In is the virtual storefront of your brand. Make sure that you are creating a compelling an accurate value prop for people to see and respond to. These activities will help build out a robust picture of who you are, making you a more valuable resource to the people in your network.

To me, LinkedIn is a journey, not a destination. You will never complete editing your profile or finding something new and interesting to add to it. There will always be another connection to make, recommendation to write, or question to post. If you use a pay-it-forward mentality, you can significantly help your colleagues in their career endeavors while making deposits on a karma bank account. If you help others via this tool, you will get back as much as you give.

Are you LinkedIn?

DoesYour Organization Have an Abundance Mentality?

"You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want."
-Zig Ziglar

Zig Ziglar was one of the best known motivational speakers of the 20th Century. He truly believed in helping others become successful. He practiced what I call an abundance mentality. It was not surprising he experienced a high level of success throughout his life.

In my almost 20 years as a coach and consultant, I have worked in a myriad of organizations. Sadly, seldom few subscribe to this abundance mentality or really practice this principle in their day to day culture. However, recently I was introduced to Dan Olson and Katie Frank. Dan is a Founding Partner and Co-Owner of STAR Collaborative (http://www.starcollaborative.com/), along with Ed Lefkow. Katie Frank is the Director of Collaboration.

STAR Collaborative provides staff augmentation services to help clients flex their project resources as needed. They supply organizations with experienced consultants that possess the right skills and abilities. Their focus includes variable resource management, project management, transformational change management and leadership development.

Within minutes of meeting Dan, he talked about having an abundance mentality. At STAR Collaborative they not only want to help their clients grow and succeed, but also help their cadre of consultants become more successful. Dan believes there is enough for everyone.

Dan shared several example that illustrate the company's abundance mentality. Recently he helped place an individual in a full time position. He intuitively knew it was a great match, and was not looking for any type of compensation. Their non compete agreement when a consultant leaves the organization is one day. Furthermore, I experienced Dan's abundance mentality when he sat down with me last week and shared a process for successfully utilizing social media as a marketing tool.

As I have thought about STAR Collaborative over the last week and their abundance mentality it raised the following questions:

• Do I believe there is enough for everyone?
• Is my business about competition and profit first, or doing what is in the best interest of the stakeholders (internal and external)?
• Is my organization truly client-focused?
• Do I engage, empower, and encourage employees to greater levels of success?
• Are information and other resources freely shared among team members?

As I answer these questions for myself, I encourage you to do the same for your organization. As is the case with STAR Collaborative, those organizations that listen, heed and practice Zig Ziglar's words will continue to experience high levels of success!

What is your commitment to practicing and living an abundance mentality?

Successfully Navigating Change

"The Universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it."

-Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Organizations and individuals respond to change differently. Some individuals and organizations embrace and are even stimulated by change. Others work hard to keep the status quo in place, and resist change at every juncture. Whatever approach to change you take, how we think about change is critical to successfully navigating through it.

Case in point is my recent relocation to Minneapolis, Minnesota after many years in Kansas City. Early in the summer of 2010, I made the decision to return to Minneapolis to help care for my aging mother. Not only was I uprooting my life, and consulting practice, but also building a new professional network in Minneapolis. Additionally, I was co-chairing a September fundraiser and preparing for the physical move. I had two choices at this point. I could focus on all there was to do and become overwhelmed or I could see the change full of possibilities. I chose the latter. As a result, I navigated the many changes with a degree of peace and serenity.

How do you think about change in your life? How do you think about change in your organization? Do you resist it or embrace it? The thoughts we think will determine how successfully we navigate through it.

How do you navigate through change?