LinkedIn may now use your picture to advertise other products.  Change privacy settings if you don’t like this.

Details:

LinkedIn is doing “social advertising”, which means that they can use your picture in LinkedIn ads that are shown to your connections to advertise products that you might not endorse.  Your connections may be misled and think you endorse them, depending on how savvy they are.  (Facebook did this at one point, and most people hated it).

LinkedIn was probably using my picture to “get attention from the ladies”.

Here’s how you stop it:

1. Hover your cursor over your name in the upper right hand corner of your LinkedIn page
2. Click Settings
3. In the lower left, click “Account”
4. In the top middle, click “Manage Social Advertising”
5. Uncheck and Save

Call LinkedIn and offer to sell the use of your picture for $500,000 per year, as I did.

Still waiting.

Do you care if they use your picture?

Summary:

Before you call a prospect, check their interests.  Or you can look for interests in a “reverse direction”.

Details:

If you are

• cold calling
• calling a new prospect
• meeting someone for the first time

you should have some way to start the conversation.  If you care cold calling, you need some way to get their attention in the first 5-10 seconds, since most prospects don’t have time for idle chatter.

LinkedIn tip

Look at the prospect’s LinkedIn profile and look at their “Interests”, which are at the bottom.  This is a clever technique that very few people use.

Real example of scrutinizing a LinkedIn profile:

When I went to do the keynote in the video above, I knew I would meet the CEO of AMS, Jim Bourdon.  I looked at his profile and noticed that he listed “golf” among his interests.  Therefore, the first thing I started talking to him about was golf, and the conversation went effortlessly.

Using interests in “reverse” fashion:

Let’s say that your target prospect is typically a CFO, and you are trying to get some new prospects to join you for a golf outing near Boston.  Try the following – do an advanced search in LinkedIn with the following search

• Title: “chief financial officer” OR cfo
• Keywords: golf OR golfing
• Location: near Boston

Now take a look at the results, and the CFOs that you contact will probably be much more interested in your golf offer.

There are even better, smarter, and more efficient ways to do this, and we teach them in our training sessions, which are full of awesomeness.  Call (617)-PATRICK for more.

Go forth and prospect.

This is a 90 second “rap” that I did in a social media keynote speech at the LOMA Insurance Conference in Las Vegas last October.  And it ain’t worth 50 cent.

Details:

The audience was full of insurance professionals who had just passed a test, like FMLI or FSSI, and were awarded with a trip to Las Vegas to go to this conference (and to see me).

Here are the words to the rap:

If you meet someone cool, and you like how they think
or you go to the pool, and they buy you a drink

if you meet someone smart, and they just can’t disguise
that they just passed the tests, for the FMLIs

or if somebody studied, until they got dizzy,
and passed all the tests for the designation FSSI

and there are people here who proved they’re the best
at customer service so they have the ACS

and then they came here although they are still in a tizzy
and they’re starting to look like the old band …. Thin Lizzy

and I know there are others that some of you had…
and if I had more time I’d make up a rhyme just as bad

I guess my designation, if I thought this was clever
from your cool generation, would be “Worst Rapper Ever”

but when all of you are playing in the “City of Sin”,
don’t just party and drink. Also – get LinkedIn!

Audience applauds wildly, starts throwing panties and motel keys like they used to do for Elvis…

Summary:

Whether you want to make a sale, get a job, or network for business, it’s a good idea to be connected to powerful people like CEOs, but it’s tough to get their attention.  Here’s a unique and original idea that might get you some positive attention from some CEOs and other Chief Officers.

Quick version:

Want to connect with CEOs?  How about finding the ones that spelled the word “chief” wrong in their LinkedIn profile, and telling them about it.  You can do that with a LinkedIn search, and you may someday get a sale, a job, or a business relationship.

Introduction:

This is one of my favorite original tips, and it might help some of you

• make a sale
• get a job
• develop a great new relationship

I’ve been giving this idea out in recent speeches that I’ve given in the last couple of months to

• the LOMA insurance conference in Las Vegas
• Meeting Planners International in Washington, DC
• the Inside Sales Conference 2010 in Boston
• the Boston BestEvents Expo 2010 in Boston
• the ASTD National Chapter Leaders Conference, in Washington, DC
• Northeastern University Marketing students in Boston

so if you were in one of those sessions, you’ve heard it already, and most people really liked it.  I already gave it to my newsletter readers over a month ago, so they had a head start on you.  You should sign up for my newsletter on my web page.

If you want to see the video where I explained this to 350 College and University business officers at EACUBO, click on the video at the top of this article.

How to get the attention of some CEOs through LinkedIn

If you want to connect with CEOs, the easiest way to do it is by helping them in some way.

What if they misspelled the word “chief” in their LinkedIn profile, and you tell them about it before someone else does?  Here’s the idea:

• Do an “Advanced search” in LinkedIn
• Under Title, put in “Cheif Executive Officer” with the word cheif spelled wrong
• Take a look at the 425 results, of which 200 are in the United States
• Send them a LinkedIn invitation, and in the invitation, tell them about the misspelling
• I usually send an introduction that says

FYI, I just wanted you to know that you spelled Chief wrong (i.e. cheif) in your profile. Just trying to help.

While I’m at it, I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

- Patrick O’Malley

• When LinkedIn asks how you know them, I usually say it’s through my current company

If you help them, there is a good likelihood they will accept your invitation, and in some cases where I’ve done it, I’ve also gotten some “thank you” replies or further discussions.  I’ve never asked for anything from them, but I could probably ask for an introduction to one of their connections in the future, or get 5-10 minutes of their time to talk about Social Media Training for their sales staff or other employees.

You could do the same type of thing  for your business whenever you thought the time was right.

Danger of IDKs

There is a danger in doing this.  If the recipient clicks “I Don’t Know <you>” in response to the invitation, you will get a black mark from LinkedIn.  If you get 5 of these, you get put on the IDK list.  This means that you can’t invite any more people unless you know their email address.

However, there is a solution.  First, if you email LinkedIn at cs@linkedin.com and apologize, they usually forgive, unless you’re a chronic offender.  If that doesn’t work, I do have another radical solution, and if you email me, I will send it to you.

Regardless, I don’t think many of these CEOs would IDK you, and I have sent out dozens of these myself.

Good luck out there…

LinkedIn just added a feature that allows you to “hide” status updates from people who post every time they add a new condiment to their sandwich.

Twitter users – you probably don’t want to send all of your status updates from Twitter to LinkedIn, or people are likely to hide your status updates forever.

Details:

The 60 second version:

LinkedIn made two significant changes to status updates in the last couple of weeks.  Previously, only one status update would show per person on a status page.  Now, LinkedIn will show multiple status updates for a single person.  If you post a lot of back-to-back statuses, you will dominate the pages of your connections, and will probably annoy them.

The second significant change is that people now have the capability to “hide” your status updates, and if they do, they will never see your status updates, and you will never know it.

Action item – don’t  send all of your status updates from Twitter to LinkedIn, or people are likely to hide your status updates forever.

More details, if you have more than 60 seconds:

LinkedIn has made multiple changes to status updates since the beginning of the year.

• Last year, you would only see the last status update from each person, so you never saw more than one from each person.
• You can now have Twitter automatically send status updates to LinkedIn also by using the #in tag, whose implications I talked about in http://www.the-linkedin-speaker.com/blog/2009/11/11/linkedin-and-twitter-now-cross-post-status-updates/

The new changes this month are:

• LinkedIn will now show multiple status updates for one person
• Users can now click a “hide” button to forever eliminates status updates from one of their connections (that updates them on every new type of coffee or sandwich they try)

Here is the unexpected part for most LinkedIn/Twitter users.

In the world of Twitter, its understood that some people post a lot, sometimes 10-20 times or more a day.  I personally think that is a high number, (unless you have 10-20 really useful pieces of content),  but the culture of Twitter accepts it.  In LinkedIn and Facebook, no one wants to see a screenful of updates from just one of their connections, especially if they are mundane.

If you want to hide all status updates from one of these people, here is how you do it, and its bizarre.

If you “hover” your mouse in the upper right hand corner of a status update, the word “Hide” appears.  Yes, ironically, they hid it, copying the same dumb idea that  Facebook used (which I blogged about at http://www.the-linkedin-speaker.com/blog/2009/06/16/facebook-training-tip-remove-annoying-status-updates-hidden-hide-button/).  If you click Hide, you won’t see any more status updates from those people.  If you want to change the list in the future, scroll down near the bottom where it says

Show hidden updates (1) · Manage hidden updates

in small blue letters, and make the appropriate changes.

For active Twitter users, don’t  send all of your status updates from Twitter to LinkedIn, either from

• ping.fm
• Hootsuite
• Tweetdeck
• by using the Twitter #in feature
• or by any other tool

or you may be forever hidden by your connections.

Good luck out there.

Sometimes, you search for someone in LinkedIn, but it says “out of network” because they aren’t a 1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd level connection, and LinkedIn won’t give you the person’s name.   You assume you have to pay LinkedIn $25 in order to see their name.  Not true, because you know me.

Details:

Here’s my real life example

I was talking to a potential client (for social media consulting) at Connecticut Plastics, and she mentioned to me that the owner would be calling me.  I didn’t hear his name clearly, and it would be awkward if I didn’t know him by name when he called.

I did an advanced search on LinkedIn for

Connecticut Plastics owner

and it showed that he had a LinkedIn profile, but he was “out of network”, so LinkedIn wouldn’t give his name.

Cough up 25 bucks?  Not yet.

Look in Google using a fancy trick

Realize that Google has most LinkedIn profiles, so the trick is to somehow find them on Google for free.  If you pick some unique string from the info that LinkedIn does show you, and use a special feature of Google called the “site:” feature, (which allows you to just search one site on the Internet), you may find the name and full profile through Google.

I saw the string

Engineer at Alinabal

in his profile and figured that very few other people would have that string in their profile.  Therefore, I put it into Google, along with the word owner, using the following magic search string

Engineer at Alinabal owner site:www.linkedin.com

and found the profile in the Google results.  I clicked on the link, and LinkedIn showed me the LinkedIn profile page, with name and all.

See a 2 minute sample video

If you want to see a 2 minute video that shows exactly how to do it, go to my web site at

http://www.patrickomalley.com/linkedin-find-out-of-network-profiles-free.html

This technique doesn’t work in every case, but it works in a lot of cases.  If it works for you, please send me $25 each time.

Pretty cool, huh?   Pass it on…

Shameless self-promotion

My email subscribers got this months ago – If you want these before I make them public, sign up for my email newsletter at http://www.patrickomalley.com

Speeches and seminars – I’ve been giving this tip in speeches and seminars for years.  Hire me and get WAY ahead of the curve.  And your friends will think you’re cool.

A subtle beta feature was added to LinkedIn that will save sales people time.  If you “Search Companies”, it will now tell you who you know someone “through”.

Details:

If you’re a sales person, you will want to research target companies through LinkedIn.  One way to do this is to use the “Search Companies” option, which is actually a drop down option from the “Search People” function in the upper right hand corner of your home page.

If you look in the results, LinkedIn’s new beta feature will now tell you the names of the people who connect you to employees in that company.  This can save you a tremendous amount of time, because instead of clicking through to each profile, then scrolling down to see who you know someone “through”, LinkedIn puts it all on that page.

See the picture below for an example:

I did the following:

• Went to my LinkedIn home page
• Used the drop down menu to change Search People to Search Companies
• Searched for the company BG Medicine
• Clicked through to the company

Under “Current Employees”, I now see that I have a 2^nd level connection to the Chairman and founder, Noubar Afeyan, through my friend Dave Gowel and through J Mark (a LinkedIn connection who I do not know well), and can see connections to other employees without having to click through to each one.

If I wanted an introduction to the Chairman, Dave Gowel has just become my new best friend

Cool, huh?

Put the name of your city (in text form) somewhere in your LinkedIn profile.  Otherwise, you may not be found in searches.

Details:

LinkedIn training tip – put the name of your city in text somewhere in your profile

That’s right.  As unnecessary as it sounds, make sure you put the name of your city in the Summary field or in some other part of your profile.

Why is the tip important?

If someone goes to LinkedIn and uses the Search People function (in the upper right hand corner) to look for

accountant boston

because they are looking for an accountant, it won’t find most accountants in boston.  Why?  Because LinkedIn remembers your location based on your zip code (sort of).  It does not put it in text format.  Regardless, the search won’t find your profile unless you have the word boston somewhere in your profile.

Therefore, if you want potential customers or potential hiring managers to be able to find you, this tip should give you an edge over your competition if they are looking for someone in your city to help them in their business.

The proof, if you care

To test and prove this, do a search for

patrick o’malley boston

You will probably see 4 profiles in the results, and all have the word Boston in their profile.  Oddly, the other 3 aren’t from Boston (but went to Boston schools).  However, each has the word Boston in text somewhere in their profile

If you repeat the search and remove the word boston, just searching for patrick o’malley, you will see over a hundred matches.

Now click “Greater Boston Area” on the right hand side, it will filter those who actually live in Boston (based on zip code), and there are 11 of them.   However, none of them have the word Boston in their profile, so they wouldn’t be found in the search above when the word boston is added to the search.  LinkedIn only knows that they are from the “Greater Boston area” because it internally remembers their zip code, but won’t match that when you do a search for the actual word boston.

The important thing for you to know is that you should put the name of your city in the Summary field of your profile (or somewhere else) so that you appear in search results for your name and city, or more importantly, for your occupation and city.  Try it for your name and city.

Cool, huh?

If you want to see me talking about this as one of my “hot undocumented tips” in a keynote speech, see the video below.  Its not a funny clip, but it is a 60 second version that I gave one of my audiences:

Notes:

• I used to be the #1 match for Patrick O’Malley, and now I’m not in the first 10 pages.  If you want to see a funny blog entry on it, click http://www.the-linkedin-speaker.com/blog/2009/08/27/linkedin-search-people-function-changed-sort-order/
• One of the matches in the above search is a woman, but she worked for an organization with “Pat” in the name

• http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/091111-011039
• http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/10/BU911AI6K0.DTL&type=tech
• http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/11/09/allen-blue-twitter-and-linkedin-go-together-like-peanut-butter-and-chocolate/

Essentially, LinkedIn allows you to cross-post status updates to Twitter.  This capability has been available for a long time through some free online utilities like ping.fm, so it isn’t really earth shattering.

There are a few problems in the way LinkedIn does status updates that many people don’t realize:

• It will only remember the LAST update by each person
• It will only show 3 updates from your connections, and then if you click to “Show more…”, it will only show the last 10 updates
• There is no way to see other previous updates

LinkedIn could really give you a powerful feature if you could rate other people’s updates.  That way, each day you could just see the highest rated updates from your connections, and just see the most useful comments of the day, week, or month, as voted by your connections, who really are your peers.

They could expand the feature to allow you to also see

• highly rated status updates from 2^nd and 3^rd level connections
• highest rated status updates from anyone on LinkedIn, regardless of whether they are in your network

This isn’t that complicated to implement, and I promise you that someday LinkedIn and Twitter (or someone else) will have this feature.  Then they’ll really have a time saving, powerful feature to brag about.

What other features would you like to see?

God Bless the country that allows me to freely speak my mind about this.  Freedom wasn’t free.  Thank you, Veterans.

What happened?  I used to be #1 in the search results for Patrick O’Malley in LinkedIn, and now I’m not even in the top 90!  Did you check to see what happened to you?

This is basically a pointless rant.

Details:

I’m not very good looking, I can’t sing, and I couldn’t hit the curve ball.  However, I was always the #1 match in LinkedIn in a search for my own name, Patrick O’Malley, so my life was full.

That all changed recently, when I found out (during a Boston Globe interview with Scott Kirsner) that I was no longer #1, and dropped so far that it took 5 minutes and a silicon valley microscope to find my profile.

Here are the current attributes for top 3 search results for Patrick O’Malley:

Patrick O’Malley #1

• 22 connections
• Lives in Boston
• Has no picture, which is a good thing, because if I saw him on the streets of Boston he’d be in trouble
• No recommendations, and he certainly isn’t getting one from me
• Works for a company called BigBad.  Is LinkedIn afraid of the BigBad Patrick O’Malley?

Patrick O’Malley #2

• 20 connections
• Has a picture, but he isn’t even as good looking as me

Patrick OMalley #3

• Can’t spell his own name.  He put it in without the apostrophe.  He would have lost 200 points on the SATs because he didn’t remember how he’s supposed to spell it.  Or in his words, he didnt remember how hes supposed to …
• ZERO connections.  That’s right.  Zero.  He has no friends, no business associates, he knows no one, except maybe the search engineers at LinkedIn who put him in 3^rd place.  However, even they wouldn’t connect with him.

I show up on page 10, which means I am actually the 91^st Patrick O’Malley out of 109 results.  Just to add insult to injury, page 9 actually has people named Pat Hawes and Pat Masterson that rank before me in a search for the name Patrick O’Malley.

For years, I had been the #1 match for my name out of more than 100 Patrick O’Malley’s, so students in my LinkedIn seminars occasionally asked how I got there.  More importantly, they wanted to know how they could rank higher for their own name.  I never knew for sure, but I had always assumed that the LinkedIn Search People function would order its search results based on some combination of

• the age of the account
• the number of connections
• completeness of the profile (picture, recommendations, etc)
• whether you are the first to get the Public Profile URL for your name

The values for my profile showed credibility and longevity, so I thought that was the reason I ranked #1.  I would advise them to increase their connections, add recommendations, add a picture, et cetera.  However, LinkedIn changed the order of the search results completely at some point in the last couple of months, and now there are 90 people that rank before me.  Now I have no idea what criteria they use.

Ironically, my new enemies have the same name as me.

I am now going to use the LinkedIn Search People function to find a lawyer, a senator and a mafia hitman to fight this travesty from every angle.

I am not the only victim.  My friend Mike O’Neil, with 24,000 connections, doesn’t even rank in the top 100 matches for his own name.  Misery loves company, so somehow this makes me feel better, although we both wish misery didn’t love our companies so much.

I can’t resolve why LinkedIn reshuffled the search results, just like I couldn’t resolve how to hit the curve ball.

Now I have to get better looking, or learn how to sing.

Are you the #1 match for your name?