Did You Send me a Personalised Invite? If Not Why Not?

I know it's not your fault, you’re browsing inside the LinkedIn app, suggestions keep popping up all over the place about who you should connect to, displaying a large ’+’ sign or a ’connect’ button and as your finger slides across it, the invite has fired off!
And the recipient receives an invite with one of the following messages; ’Join my network on LinkedIn’ or ’Michael, please add me to your LinkedIn network’.

Did you know the individual? Had you just met at a meeting? I'm sure they’ll be fine with it, if that's the case. The trouble is the majority and I really mean the majority of members send the standard invite. It's not my fault, I hear you cry, it's LinkedIn, they don't allow you to send a personalised invite via the apps. Correct now you know this, stop inviting from the apps. Go to the website and do it there and do it properly.

Send a decent message to the individual and give them a reason to click the accept button. Be honest and tell them why? Because when they receive that sterile message from you, you've already started on the back foot. If you ever stand a chance to develop a relationship with this connection, show them that you care about their choices. They have a choice to accept your invite or not.

What do you think? What chances do you have in getting that person to accept your impersonal invite. 50/50? 80/20? 90/10?

I reckon there's a 5% chance that they will accept your standard invite.

Now what do you say? It's always better to examine the individual’s profile and look for what you might have in common. Maybe a group, a connection, a location, interests, influencers you follow. There will be something. Think about how you can word a very simple and short message and help them answer the question that will inevitably come up in their head, which is, why on earth should I accept your connection?

Maybe it's just that you’re growing your network, or you wish to connect with like-minded individuals, just be honest and share it. Giving them a reason not to accept your invite also, it shows that you respect them.

Here's an example;

Michael, I see we’re connected to the same people and have similar interests. I am also looking to grow my network on LinkedIn, so I hope you're OK connecting, but of course don't feel obliged to do so

Doesn't that sound better than the standard invite? Even when I’ve met people face to face, I will always send a personalised invite. The only time I might, is when I'm standing or sitting with the person, open the app and search for them, whilst they are looking. Then I confirm that I've found them and then apologise for sending the standard invite.

So please remember, NEVER EVER, EVER NEVER, NEVER NEVER, EVER NEVER, NEVER send the standard invite and NEVER EVER, invite from a mobile device.

Got it?

Wishing you massive success always!

@stayingaliveuk

Does LinkedIn's Privacy Abuse Protection Work?

To be fair, I don't receive a huge amount of spam or abuse on LinkedIn, so I believe that their security systems are sound. Except for this one guy in Ghana, who keeps inviting me to connect. He has around 5 profiles on LinkedIn. His name is Sherif Akande. Go on look him up on search, but probably best not to click through to his profile, just in case he notices that you've looked at him and starts inviting you too!

I’ve reported this fellow now several times to LinkedIn support and their trust and safety department ensure me they are dealing with it. So why does this person still have several profiles on LinkedIn and why does he manage to find me again and again and keeps inviting me?

For me there is something not quite right if someone can do this multiple times. I've blocked every profile of this guy that has sent invites to me, but it doesn't seem to be working, because he just creates another profile and sends another invite. LinkedIn tell me I can't block member profiles unless I'm connected to them. Actually that's not true. You can block them, because I have and when use the URL to look them up I can't find them. So even their support haven't got the correct knowledge about blocking members, which is a bit concerning really.

So what's wrong Jeff Weiner? Why can't your team solve this?

Small kinks like this makes you nervous about your own privacy on these social networks. If someone in Ghana can keep getting away with this abuse, what else can they do?

Sure I could completely hide my profile, but that completely defeats the objective of being on LinkedIn. So why do their support team then suggest this to me, by sending me their help pages instructing me to follow those to secure my privacy. By blocking myself in this way, I might as well come off LinkedIn, as it won't be worth being on there.

I'm not giving up though and I will keep pushing their support teams to highlight this with their development teams and look to solve this.

You can see the thread of my communication with their support team in the slideshare below. I'm far from happy with their standard template response. It really does make you feel like, well, you're not really that important to us, so we will send you out template responses, because it will allow us to close your ticket as soon as possible.

LinkedIn support desk is probably the worst I've experienced recently for these standard template responses. Much room for improvement needed Jeff Weiner.

This is the last response I received from LinkedIn on the matter. In my view they have completely misunderstood the issue, suggesting that I should be more careful who I connect to. A very strange and bizarre situation.

Do You Listen to Your Customers?

Buffer does...

Buffer is an app that allows you to schedule your social posts via a pre-determined time-schedule. It works, it's beautiful and their customer service is astounding, no really the best I have EVER experienced of any software company that I've ever dealt with. The founders started the company with Customer Service at it’s core and certainly, for me, they have always delivered. Not only in the way they create their app but at every stage in their communication with me. I'm a MASSIVE fan, can you tell?

So, whilst being active on the buffer web app, I noticed something new, ’Feeds’, a new and very innovative feed engine built inside the app, allowing users to pull in feeds from blogs and thereby sharing articles into their buffer. A brilliant innovation and even before I heard the announcement I started testing it.

The only issue was that they announced that users (me) on the ’awesome’ plan would have the ability for 1 feed and users on the ’business plan’ would get 20 feeds. By the way both sets of users pay for their plans.

Here is the blog that announced the release of 'Feeds'; http://blog.bufferapp.com/introducing-rss-feeds-buffer-social-media-sharing

I was deeply disappointed and because I know that Buffer cares about their customers I decided to say something on their blog, which announced this new release and the limitation for 'awesome' users. And noticed that I wasn't the only ’awesome’ user who was unhappy. I also emailed buffer via their standard email, as they are ALWAYS telling us to reach out to them for any reason at all. I've never seen anyone do this as well as they do. And they ALWAYS respond quickly to any of my emails.

How pleasing then to see how Buffer responded to their disappointed customers. Their response was fantastic and to be honest, they far exceeded my expectations in this. It was also impressive how quickly they responded to me and their customer base.

Below you can read the correspondence for yourself and see how Buffer yet again sets the standard for how companies should deal with their customers and how they listen to what they have to say.

Announcement Email

My response Email

Their initial response

Follow up response

Joel's Tweet

Confirmation Email

A great example of how, when you place customers in the centre of your business, you will get their feedback fast, know that it's genuine and you can respond quickly and with integrity. I'm sure this has been a massive learning opportunity for Buffer and I'm pretty sure they will have a different strategy going forward when deciding to differentiate between plans for their paying customers. It's never an easy problem to solve.

Well done Buffer and I look forward to more of your developments in the future!

If you're reading this and haven't experienced Buffer and their awesome service, go ahead and test it out. http://bufferapp.com

Wishing you success always!

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/stayingaliveuk

@stayingaliveuk

Do You Really Know How to Sell?

If you're in business or you're an ambitious sales professional, this post is for you. I know that we all want business but...

You need to read the signs before upsetting to your buyers. Read the email below and let me know what you think?

{I have removed sensitive information in order to protect the email sender}

I was horrified, not because the email upset me, but because I couldn't believe the tone of the email.

Let me give you the background without giving away who or what it was that I was buying.

After some difficulty, I needed a quote from a third-party in order to fulfil a potential project that I was quoting for. It took me over a week to get a response and that was because my emails weren't getting through to the supplier. In the end it was an IT issue with servers, but still it took some considerable time to sort out. Probably not the supplier's fault, but it happened.

After finally agreeing a quote, which wasn't that easy either, I sent my proposal to my potential client. In the meantime, I'm assisting and sorting out email server issues with my potential supplier. They then send several emails chasing me to see if the project is on or not. That's fine I don't have an issue with chasers and I did warn my supplier that my client had a budget he needed to achieve, so he was probably searching elsewhere.

So after receiving another chaser email from my supplier, I advised them that I had already chased up my potential client and that it was entirely possible that they would be searching for a cheaper price in their local country.

At this stage I have never placed any business with my supplier, so you would have thought that they would hold back a bit. But then that email arrived and I was amazed.

The message here is a simple one. Respect your potential buyer's process and lead-time for getting things done. Do NOT chase too many times.

You have to know when it's appropriate to send a reminder and when it's appropriate to send a chaser. They are not the same! And certainly when you are waiting to get the order confirmed don't send chaser emails.

And then there is the 'UpSelling' tactic. NEVER 'UpSell' when you haven't even got onto first base yet. Why would anyone wish to buy other products when they haven't even experienced your service yet? Especially as the service so far hasn't been that great!

Wishing you massive success always!

uk.linkedin.com/in/stayingaliveuk/

@stayingaliveuk

How Do You Test Competence?

The biggest challenge facing the UK economy is 'Skills Competence' and not 'Skills Shortage'. Everyone always looks at the glass as being half empty instead of half full. So focussing on 'Skills Competence' is better than focussing on 'Skills Shortage', don't you think? Competence is the holy grail, because assessing someone’s competence allows you to directly know whether they are equipped to do the job or not. We have a competence issue in organisations not a skills issue.

Competence: the ability to do something successfully or efficiently.

Appraisals, Annual reviews, Objective setting, 360 degree reviews or whatever your name is for reviewing someone’s performance doesn't assess competence. You can only test competence by asking the employee directly if they know the answer to a very specific set of questions that relate to ’what’ they need to know as an absolute minimum to do the job competently.

In every organisation things change. New products or services, new managers, changing procedures and processes, re-organisation which causes job changes, new sales and customer service processes, etc.

Job competency is always under pressure when change happens in an organisation and that's all the time.

To truly understand your employees’ competence you need to test them, regularly. Once you know their competence levels, you can do something about it.

Deploying learning materials in large silos (Learning Management Systems) or any other method of e-learning will allow you to teach skills but not competence. When you teach just skills, you have no idea if the learner has remembered the new skill and whether they've actually become competent in that skill. Indeed it takes time to become competent in any skill and usually it takes repetition of carrying out that skill before you become competent.

We all know the following 4 phases of learning something new, like learning to drive a car:

1. Unconscious incompetence 2. Conscious incompetence 3. Conscious competence 4. Unconscious competence

The 4th phase is where we want our employees to get to as soon as possible, whether it's with Onboarding (Induction) or learning new skills/knowledge.

Every minute, hour, day, week or month that we take to get them as competent as possible, means the organisation is potentially losing money or not growing as fast.

The Psychology of Study goes as far back as 1932, when Mace wrote his book 'Psychology of Study' and the idea of ’spaced repetition’ was first muted. Earlier still we had Ebbinghaus who told us about the forgetting curve. It tells us that for centuries we've been debating how we can get humans to remember more than how to walk.

Let's take learning languages. If you've ever tried to learn a new language, then you'll know that only by repetition will you become competent in that language. Using flash cards are an even better way of learning to remember a new language. Put the English on one side and the translation on the other. Start with 50 cards on day one and when you know you have mastered a few, take those out of the pack and repeat the others. Keep going until you've mastered them all. It's fairly basic but it works.

It's the only way to become competent in that language. Of course you may decide to repeat it in 3 weeks, because unless you are using these sentences regularly, the chances are that you will forget them.

Take this concept into any skill in any organisation where you require it to become a competence in the person who is performing it and you will rapidly and successfully increase competence throughout the organisation.

Deploying this method is now easier then ever, allowing employees to become more competent through the power of mobile. Not only can you test competence and teach new skills, you can report on the overall competence of a group, a department, a division or the overall organisation. It allows you to succession plan, recruit for competence gaps, evaluate competence levels for new projects. It even tests the individuals who took the course, at the point when they are deemed to be ready to be tested over the phone by a real person. A great motivator for the learner to get up to speed and learn properly.

What if such a tool was available today? What a difference it would make to UK "Skills Competence', to the UK economy, to UK competitiveness, to the Economy of Organisations and especially to the people that work in them.

If any of the concepts above touched a nerve with you and you can see an application inside your organisation, please get in touch with me in the first instance. We’ll get a proof of concept rolling out for you within hours and start your organisation’s journey towards 'Skills Competence' quickly.

Wishing you massive success always.

uk.linkedin.com/in/stayingaliveuk/

@stayingaliveuk

Are You Embracing Social Selling Yet?

There’s so much coming out of the USA on ’Social Selling’ at the moment, that in order to keep abreast of developments, I’ve decided to follow a select group of thought leaders on the subject. I have requested at least 66 of them to connect with me on LinkedIn and I'm following around 73 of them on twitter. In the UK, apart from LinkedIn personnel in London, I've only met one other person in the UK (on Skype), Chris Heffer @theotherhef.

So the UK is way behind the USA, but that doesn't mean it's not taking hold. A lot of people and I mean a lot of them in the UK, don't get LinkedIn at all. They still see it as a depository for your CV and where companies, head-hunters, recruiters look for potential recruits. Frequently I hear this sentence at face to face networking events; Oh yes I’m on LinkedIn, but I don't really do anything with it...should I?

And yes the site may have started life as a CV or résumé site and still is very useful for that, after all LinkedIn make their biggest sales revenue in their Talent Solutions Division ($860 million, 56% of the overall).

However in my view the future growth development of LinkedIn will be by their ’Sales Solutions Division’ and my forecast is that this will overtake their Talent Solutions Division over the next 5 years.

OK, so now what's ’Social Selling’ and how does it work in the commercial world and can it work for anyone?

Firstly there's no dictionary entry for this terms as yet, no Wikipedia entry and when you search on Google there's no real clue as to what it is either. There are many different theories, from as simple as ’using social media to sell’ to the more thought-out definitions as shown below by Koka Sexton of LinkedIn.

For me though it's no different to the term Social Media or Social Media Marketing, which for me are getting rather dated now. Isn't it time that we start encompassing it with the old name ’marketing’? Aren't Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube, just channels, like the channels we invented with the printing press, like newspapers, brochures, posters and anything paper-like.

Aren't the new channels just tools of the trade and therefore isn't ’Social Selling’ just...wait for it...Selling? Of course we need to learn some new techniques, new technologies, new approaches, un-learn old habitual paradigms, stop promoting and start listening, but essentially the process of selling will still exist. After all when you've been spending hours of time, listening, sharing, retweeting, congratulating, at the end of the month you've still got to pay the bills right? Including generating a revenue for your own business or your employer’s business.

There has to be an outcome, a mission, a goal to doing all that engaging and therefore you need a well-thought out strategy, that can deliver the results you want and most importantly need.

But I have come across some interesting concepts and some of them are by Jill Rowley @Jill_Rowley, who is known as the superhero in Social Selling.

1. ABC - Always Be Connecting. You can draw your own conclusion if you wish and for me, this means that growing your network is important. I've always said that sales is a numbers game. If you don't have the numbers, you won't make the numbers. 2. OPC - Other People's Content. Share content written and curated by others and give them credit for it. Always writing your own content is time consuming and sometimes tough to generate enough volume, especially if like me, you're sharing 3 pieces of content every single day. I would never achieve that if I didn't have other people’s content to rely on. 3. OPP - Other People’s Popularity. Help your connections, wherever they are on the web by being their raving fans, make them look good to their audience and mean it. There's no point faking this, as you will be found out, it has to be genuine and authentic.

One thing’s for sure there is a bit to learn, some things to take on board, a lot of listening and a huge amount of practicing too.

I wish you massive success with your Social Selling Mission!

LinkedIn Student Resources

7 Steps to Success for Students Student LinkedIn Practical

Student Profile Checklist

BBC News - Kelly Blazek's harsh LinkedIn rejection note earns rebuke

LinkedIn Student

Is the LinkedIn 'Contacts' App Worth It?

I've written an extensive tutorial on how to activate the LinkedIn contacts app properly. You can read it here. But before you rush off, I need to share with you my findings quite recently, which may have you thinking twice about installing this app.

LinkedIn (CEO - Jeff Weiner), says that mobile is a massive priority for LinkedIn in 2014. 41% of all user engagement was on mobile during 2013. They expect that this will rise to 50% in 2014 and he says more investment will be happening in this area.

But...are the apps stable enough and have they figured out properly how they will work together?

Let me explain more. And I'm only dealing with the iPhone apps here, I have no experience of Android and others.

The 'flagship' LinkedIn app has been around for a while and works quite well except for one major flaw.

You have the ability to download all your connections onto your iPhone, when you go into settings. It promises faithfully to download it once and every time you access the app, it will download more new connections. Very cool indeed.

The major flaw is that when someone updates their profile, changes their email, job or anything else, the app downloads another version of that record. Plus it downloads duplicates for no apparent reason in a random way, don't ask me how, because I don't know.

This is made even more complicated by the fact that Apple have installed LinkedIn as part of their latest Mac operating system, Mavericks.

So now it is even harder to spot whether the duplicates are being created by those records being picked up by iCloud and going across all my devices.

It is virtually impossible to work out how all these duplications are happening. Someone somewhere needs to seriously sort this out.

It needs a LinkedIn engineer and an Apple engineer to sit shoulder to shoulder and test it and work out what is happening.

Now let's talk about the contacts app, which I think is really great until I decided to update my iPhone with the latest iOS7 security update.

iTunes for some reason forced me to do a factory reset, causing everything to be wiped and I had to start again.

This caused some issues with existing apps, as you can well imagine. And as the LinkedIn contacts app works on the basis of dragging all your iPhone contacts to their cloud app, it meant it had to go through that whole procedure again.

So I wasn't really surprised then to find that the LinkedIn cloud app, was showing me almost exactly double the amount of records. It obviously didn't take account of the fact that I had already done this previously.

I decided then to contact support, as surely they would have the answer for me. 16 exchanges later and they really didn't have a clue what they were talking about. The agent was insistent on sharing her personal experiences with me, which I wasn't really interested in and totally misunderstood what I was asking.

She was stuck into one train of thought. In the end I solved it myself.

You can view a thread of the correspondence in the slideshare below. Make sure you scroll to the bottom of the document to get to the start. The photo screenshots I took before and after confirmed that my solution worked.

LinkedIn Contacts App Failure & Poor Support Communication from Staying Alive (UK) Ltd

Which is; if you notice duplicates in the LinkedIn Cloud App, first remove the contacts app from your iPhone and then click remove against the Cloud app, which can be found in

https://www.linkedin.com/contacts/manage_sources/

Tread slowly and gently with the contacts app and also the LinkedIn app. You may find that you will get a lot more duplicates then you were hoping for. The same with LinkedIn integration on Mac.

I am a big fan of LinkedIn, after all I teach people how to use it and an even bigger fan of Apple. However they both really struggle to give users a wonderful experience when it comes to contacts on our devices.

Hopefully someone senior in both companies will do something about it.

Wishing you massive success always!

Do you Appreciate Diversity in Social Media?

I engage with dozens of individuals each and every week and discuss the merits or otherwise of Social Media. Nowadays the workplace consists of different generations all trying to work together to fulfill a company’s mission.

The trouble is most of us don't have a clue how we can ensure that all the different generations get on together, let alone catering for them in the social media stakes.

Let me share what I mean in a bit more detail.

Born between 1925-1945, you're a traditionalist, 1946-1964 and you are the famous baby boomer, the largest population group on earth. Gen X 1965-1979, Gen Y 1980-2000 and Gen Z 2001-now.

If you're a traditionalist you may already be retired or you will be in a mentoring and/or chairing capacity or very likely to be working in the 3rd sector.

As a traditionalist you value respect above all else. So being mentioned in a tweet incorrectly, accused of some wrong doing, you’ll be on the phone to your lawyer promptly. Not being shown respect is a major issue for you.

Baby boomers really value relationships. That's probably why this group is one of the largest on Facebook, which in essence is a massive relationship community.

Believe it or not Gen X value life/work balance and these will be CEO’s who tell their teams to leave on time and spend more time with their families, making them more productive at work and satisfied with life. Social Media more than likely is a way to relax for them. Something traditionalists and boomers would never even consider as relaxing!

Gen Y, want to be heard, they are likely to be the most prolific on twitter, making their opinions known to the world and feel happiest when they receive likes or retweets. It means someone’s listening to them.

Gen Z, are too young I know, but watch out, they will be there soon and despite age restrictions on social networks, they've already been active for a couple of years and by the time they get to work, they will have been active for 7 years or so.

Most of us have only been active for a few years!

With all of these different generations working side by side, you can learn a huge amount about them from just watching their social network activity or maybe even the lack thereof.

It allows you some insight into how they relate to the other generations too.

Would you put a Boomer alongside a Gen X and get them to learn from each other or do you let all the Gen X and Y’s sit together in a pool and feed of each other?

Respecting diversity is important in communities, appreciating how they behave on social media, with some of THE largest communities on the globe, is becoming even more important.

Wishing you massive success always.

Michael

http://www.linkedin.com/in/stayingaliveuk

Do You Accept All Connection Requests?

By far the most frequent question I get asked during my LinkedIn Masterclasses is; Should I accept connection requests from strangers?

The answer is a big resounding YES!

Now let me explain why?

I'm not saying every single stranger, you have to be strategic about it and instead of clicking ignore and run, ask yourself the following key questions.

1. How many connections does this person have?

It's a numbers game. Your are on LinkedIn for a reason. Either you are making yourself available to be headhunted, looking for a job or want to improve business for yourself or the company you work for.

To significantly enhance your success in all these areas you need a large network.

Remember that on average LinkedIn members have at least 150 connections. That means your network will be at least 22,500. These are your first and second level connections.

Second level are your immediate network’s connections.

With continually building your network, it means your area of influence, ability to find and connect to the right person, grows exponentially.

2. Are they in your industry or aligned to it or outside of it?

If they're in your industry or aligned to it, then this is another good reason to connect. They may well be able to introduce you to your next career move, right?

If they are outside of your industry, they may well be a prospect for you. So check if they are in your industry prospect list. You may have one or not. Maybe time to write one!

3. Have they got a decent profile photo?

If not, then don’t connect. Click ignore and click I don't know this person. If they continue being the ’invisible’ man, LinkedIn will eventually warn them or remove them. And I say ’man’ on purpose because I've noticed that it's only men who send invites without a photo. Women who don't have a photo do so because they wish to remain hidden in some way for fear of receiving too many ’male’ invites!

Women who do send invites have overcome this fear and always have a profile photo. Interesting right?

Whenever I challenge men that don't have a profile photo, you should hear the ’bull’ they come out with.

4. A greater opportunity to be found on search.

Every member on LinkedIn receives suggestions for people they may know. On almost every page you will see a few people recommended and indeed allowing you to click on the link to see even more. The list of cards can be hundreds and even thousands.

The algorithm looks at your first level connections and decides that their second level connections may be known to you. The chances of this is potentially true and that's why they do it.

Equally you are a second level connection to all those stranger’s connections and they will receive you served up as a ’people you may know’ suspect.

More eyeballs on your profile, means more opportunity for you to be found, the higher you will appear on search and the better your chances of achieving your reason for being on LinkedIn.

Because I was strategic early on when growing my network, it means I now have a network, that I can easily connect to if I wish, of over 4 million people, globally and in excess of 800,000 people in the UK.

On average each day approximately 30,000 people are added to my network and that's because everyone keeps growing their network.

Got it?

Wishing you massive success always!

Michael

http://www.linkedin.com/in/stayingaliveuk

Why?

I recently re-discovered Simon Sinek’s work on The Golden Circle. To familiarise yourself watch his TED Talk video. (audio quality does improve when he changes microphone)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zFeuSagktM

In essence he challenges us to think differently about how we present ourselves as businesses and especially how we create our marketing messaging to convince prospects to become clients.

Most of us have a tendency to articulate ’what we do’ and ’how we do it’. And rarely do we say ’why’.

Why is a really powerful word and very underused.

However kids say the word continuously as they grow up and as such this word is actually hard-wired in your brain, without you even knowing it.

Before you decide to buy anything your subconscious asks this question automatically.

You may not even realise it, but you do, especially if someone is pitching you a new product or service for your consideration. If they can't answer the ’why’ question for you, it’s unlikely you will buy from them and look elsewhere.

Of course we do buy stuff based on the what and how and usually you will fill in your own why, if the seller hasn't been able to articulate this for you clearly.

So your mission if you choose to accept it, is to review your marketing messages, especially your LinkedIn profile and start looking at ’why’ you do what you do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH8uJEPOYDQ

Wishing you massive success always.

Is your Social Media Policy liked?

I read with interest a recent newsletter with guidelines and policy on electronic communication and social media. Electronic communication has been around for a while and whilst it’s good to be reminded about what should and shouldn't be done, especially for new starters and young workers who may not be so used to email, in general it’s well established and most people know what is and isn't allowed. Social Media though is a different matter all together. The first question we have to ask ourselves is ’Why is Social Media so popular?’ Well because it releases dopamine in the brain, inside our pleasure/reward centre and that in turn makes it addictive. I wrote a paper on this last year, ’Do Social Networks Sell Drugs?’.

As it’s addictive, it means for many it's almost impossible to leave it alone. Think about it, whenever someone, likes, shares, retweets, follows, invites, accepts, pokes or any other social network activity that has become part of daily behaviour, we feel good about ourselves. We feel like someone approves of us, in a world where mostly we receive criticism, it means we feel like we are getting praise. And of course that feels good and if it feels good, it becomes addictive. Especially young people, who get criticised by parents and teachers alike day in day out. Therefore when they are on social media they (mostly) will get positive messages. I know it has its down side too.

So now we need to think this through, because if it’s addictive and people can't leave it alone, will we still be as harsh on them when we catch them accessing their personal social media networks, whilst at work? Or do we accept, actually this is part of the modern world now and very little we can do to fight it.

Research from 2012 suggests that smart phone owners check their devices 150 times per day, about once every 6 minutes. But we're now in 2014, so we can safely assume it has gone up significantly? Americans aged 18-64 who use social networks say they spend an average of 3.2 hours per day doing so, according to research conducted in November 2012 by Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange (OTX). (http://styin.me/1b1O73t). I'm sure the UK is not far behind them and that figure will have gone up too.

One way to allow your employees to engage in social media activities is to supply them with an internal social media platform, which connects everyone inside the business, across geographical boundaries, allowing everyone to learn from each other and to collaborate on projects. Also allowing colleagues to like and comment on posts. This way you are distracting them from their personal networks, by allowing them to still engage in similar activities and satisfy their addiction. Actually personal Social Media, is allowing millions of workers to train themselves in order to assist their learning inside the workplace. Think about it, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have provided free online training. Make sense?

Of course there have to be some rules, but we have to recognise that there is a bigger picture and we need to be conscious of that too.

Wishing you success always.

Do You Have Suicidal Thoughts?

Most of you who are reading this are no longer teenagers. But do you remember having suicidal thoughts when you were? It’s being reported regularly that teenagers these days are very prone to having suicidal thoughts and there may be no logical explanation for it. However it appears to be contagious.

Research showed that 32 per cent of young Britons have had suicidal thoughts, while a similar proportion (29 per cent) of young adults deliberately harmed themselves as teenagers. And more than one in 10 (12 per cent) felt a failure almost every day when they were under 16. http://styin.me/1ewlGuB

I read some teenagers twitter feeds (no I wasn't stalking) I was intrigued and yes I was spying on my stepson’s feed because he was saying stupid things and he thought it was private!

But one feed lead to another and I could see a pattern of comments for example; ’I wish I was dead’ and ’I'm so close to taking as much pills as I can right now’ and ’Guys, don't any of you ever kill yourselves. If you are ever feeling suicidal just dm me, you can trust me, and I will try to help you <3 xx’.

At home we even had to call the police, because someone said on twitter that they had actually swallowed a load of tablets. When we also reported this to the head teacher at the school of this youngster, she confirmed that the instances of these are on the rise.

So why are youngsters having these thoughts and why are they sharing these openly with not just their followers, but if they realised, with the whole world!

Is it just attention seeking or is something fundamentally wrong with society, education, parents, nutrition (sugar overdose), lack of exercise, social media, television, gaming, greed, government or something else?

I know teenage years are about self-expression and finding your place in the world around you and yet for some reason they appear to be obsessed with wanting to end it all?

How do parents and teachers deal with this heightened threat of suicidal thinking in kids? Surely this must be playing out in their minds all the time and putting them in a place of fear themselves?

Do teenagers even realise what they are doing with this behaviour? Do they realise this behaviour increases further stress on their parents, who are already under pressure having to deal with a world of expectation, financial worries and keeping their kids happy.

Does one tell them to stop behaving so stupidly or do we take them to counselling? Is it just a phase of hormone development or are there serious underlying issues?

I can't help thinking that when they finally want to find a job their social feeds will be explored by employers (it's not illegal yet), who will find all sorts of silly communication on there and thereby making up their mind about whether to give them that job or not. And unfortunately teenagers don't see that as a potential threat at all!

If we want our kids to be successful no matter what their background, then we seriously need to tackle this epidemic of suicidal thoughts in young people.

Should this become part of the curriculum at schools, should teachers openly discuss this with students and get them to open up and discuss these feelings in group sessions? Should we encourage their friends to speak up about those that are openly declaring these thoughts?

I haven't got the answers but one thing’s for sure something needs to be done.

What are your thoughts? And if you have youngsters go and talk to them and find out what's going on in their heads, that is if they'll tell you!

Success

Are You Tagging on LinkedIn?

The secret of managing your connections on LinkedIn is tagging. If you don't you will never remember anyone in your network. When you accept an invitation or your invitation gets accepted, go to your new connection’s profile.

Underneath the main profile header there are two tabs, ’relationship’ and ’contact info’.

Click relationship, which allows you to complete a few bits of information.

1. Note 2. Reminder 3. How you met 4. Tag

1. Note; allows you to write a few words about why you connected to them and what you hope to achieve with this connection.
2. Reminder; allows you to schedule a reminder for yourself. At time of writing you can't customise a date as yet, but you can schedule it for 1 day, 1 week, 1 month or recurring.
3. How you met; it doesn't matter that you haven't actually met face to face and it does help how the connection was made. They invited you, or you invited them and why?
4. Tag; the most important one. If you don't do anything else on this section, this one is a must. Decide first what tags you want to have, then after you have made the connection, visit their profile, straight away and allocate the tag from the list that shows up.

Now you are able to search your connections based on their tags and send emails to groups of connections based on tags (50 limit per email). And as you grow your network it means you can find people easier by their tags. You don't need to allocate regional tabs unless you want to group them by district. For example I do have a tag for ’west midlands’, which covers a number of counties in the middle of England.

Wishing you massive success always.

Are You Improving Your LinkedIn Profile?

I teach people every week how to improve their LinkedIn profile. However there are millions on LinkedIn who don't bother to improve their profile. Most aren't getting it yet and don't appreciate that your profile on LinkedIn is your personal brand. Ignore it and you will reduce your chances of finding that perfect job, that career progression or that perfect client. The 1st key area is the profile photo. I still see many profiles and receive invites from people who don't even bother with a professional head and shoulders profile photo. Or they have a badly taken photo which could be a holiday photo or where they stand far in the distance. I completely don't understand this. The other day someone's excuse was that they had put on weight and therefore didn't want to share their photo. And what part of you thinks that people will take you seriously without a photo?

Personally I say, what are you hiding by not wishing to post a photo of yourself? In fact if you don't post a photo of yourself the chances of people connecting with you is reduced by at least 50%.

So it is essential you make this a priority.

The 2nd key area that is ignored by many is your headline. Many make the mistake to enter a title like; manager, director, coach, programmer, student etc. Of course you can use this if you wish, however you have 120 characters of space to tell the reader what you can do for people and what you are good at. OK, granted if you are a student it makes it slightly harder however you also want to stand out of the crowd, so putting something like ’Researching the meaning of the Universe to better serve my future clients’ or something equally different will make you stand out.

The reason for putting something different is that your headline follows you around wherever you go on LinkedIn. For example when you send emails inside LinkedIn, when you send invites to connect, when you post discussions in groups. Each time your headline will be shown and if you just keep your title only, it won't tell the reader anything about you. In effect it's your elevator pitch that is presented every time they read something from you.

The 3rd area is your skills and expertise. LinkedIn have developed this section carefully over a number of years, originally it was called specialities, which was a simple text box, where you could list your specialities. Now LinkedIn suggests to your connections to endorse your skills and they have succeeded tremendously with this initiative. The main reason they have developed this is for their advertisers. Advertisers are able to target their ads very specifically to you based on the skills on your profile. Now you know why LinkedIn keeps giving you suggestions to endorse people. The profile header has even got a new button at the very top saying ’endorse’.

Now most members overdo it. They list the maximum 25 skills. Firstly only 15 will show on your profile but only 10 are in a list with the photos of those that endorsed you, which tends to be the list that most people go for. Everyone scans profiles and because the main list of 10 is more visual they tend to just go for those. Plus they tend to be the highest endorsed and that's why it makes it easy for them. So reduce your list to 10 and keep very focused.

Once you've identified your list and you are happy with it, this list of skills become your keywords. Keywords inside LinkedIn is essential if you want to be found on search. With 260 million members your job is to have your profile optimised for search.

Then take those skills (keywords) and spread them intelligently throughout your profile including a few inside your headline.

This will definitely help when people are searching for members based on skills.

Finally the 4th key area is your summary. Most of the time members use this to promote themselves, which is fair enough if you're looking for a job. However most are actually looking to promote their business or their employer if they are an employee. Of course you need to say something about yourself and I would suggest this is done under your experience section. THE most important part of your summary should be some text that describes what you can do for people. Note, ’what YOU can do’ for people ’NOT what you DO’!

Keep the text short, lots of white space and bullet points wherever possible. This allows the reader to scan your summary in super quick time. Remember people are time poor and don't have time to read a very wordy profile summary.

OK I think that's enough for now. These in my view are the 4 key areas on your LinkedIn profile that need work. It shouldn't be too overwhelming for you. Another tip is to re-visit your summary, headline and skills regularly. It is vital that you refresh these and update them based on things that are changing in your world.

Wishing you massive success always!

How Do You Share Content?

As part of your journey into ’Social Selling’ and becoming your own ’Personal Brand’, you will inevitably need to share content. You don't always need to write your own content, although it’s obviously better if you did. Not everyone likes writing, certainly it took me a few years before I started blogging.

So curating and sharing other’s content is OK, providing it adds value to your own authority on your subject matter.

So how do you do it? Or rather how do I do it?

First we have to answer a few questions. Why share content in the first place?

Well, it shows that you are interested in your subject matter and more importantly that you wish to share it with your network and maybe, just maybe they will get something from it. Don't be concerned about not receiving any comments, likes or shares, that should definitely NOT be the reason for sharing your content.

However they might and it's that possibility that should encourage you to keep sharing. You just don't know where it could lead to.

I use just 3 apps for doing all my curating and sharing.

Firstly the best sharing app that I use is ’Buffer’.

I have written a separate blog on buffer, so go ahead and read more about it there.

The second app is Flipboard, where I follow different streams that are closely connected to my subject matter, plus all the posts from people I follow.

The third app is ’Pulse’, a LinkedIn app, which allows me to find more content, by LinkedIn Influencers and many other news streams.

Buffer allows me to email all content I find on the web, either via these apps or generally on the web.

I have set my buffer to share the content 3 times per day, meaning my content is posted automatically in the morning, lunchtime and evening. Times of the day that people are most likely to browse their mobile devices.

I will add additional content now and again on a more spontaneous basis. And I also add some personal comments now and again about any subject I wish. This will hopefully show people that it's not all about business and they will see my personality come through too.

So it's time to start writing, get searching, reading and finally sharing. Have fun and ensure that you have your audience in mind when sharing content.

Wishing you success always!

Are You a Social Ninja?

Social Media is not actually that old and the networks that dominate the Internet with our insatiable appetite for everything social are growing at an alarming rate. Thousands of small social media advisors have popped up all over the place, well actually all over the planet and everyone these days is an ’EXPERT’.

But will we all be looking back in years to come and say to each other...what were we thinking?!

We spend all those hours on social media when just a few years ago it didn't even exist.

What will you do when it stops? Because knowing how fussy we are as humans, it will inevitably stop at some stage, plus when a younger generation have developed something more interesting and more engaging, 'like' video conferencing instead of typing.

With google hangout (have you tried it yet?) you can video conference with up to 9 people, share your desktop, share YouTube videos and SlideShare. And the quality is excellent!

But...there is still no substitute to meeting people face to face and discussing opportunities.

This is where my 'social selling' concept comes in. It's the perfect blend between social media interaction and face to face meetings.

There are just 3 key things involved with Social Selling.

1. The LinkedIn Connection 2. The Phone Call 3. The Meet Up

Connecting with prospects or connections who can introduce you to prospects has never been easier, providing you know how to behave. LinkedIn is the best vehicle in the world right now that allows you to do this. After all with 2 new professionals joining every second, that's 63 million 72 thousand per year, which means in 5 years time it will have an extra 315+ million on top of the current 259 million. Pretty impressive!

Connecting on LinkedIn is not the final deal though, yes you can be lucky but the chances are that nobody will buy from you unless they know you. This is where the Phone call comes in. Schedule a call with your connection to explore how you can help them, note how you can help ’them’ and not the other way around!

The Phone call is not the final deal either, once you believe that you can help them an even better way to make the connection is meet up for a coffee or maybe even lunch.

Only a combination of all three will get you closer to making that next deal.

Hope that makes sense and if not, join me on my next #LinkedInstinct Masterclass.

Success!

Did You Take Part in My Survey?

Background

I've been a serial business networker for many years, but questioned the ROI only in the past 12 months. And the main reason was because I started using LinkedIn in a more effective and productive way to do my networking with existing and new connections.

So here are the results of my survey. I had actually estimated previously the amount of time business professionals spend doing networking and estimated the cost annually. But this estimate is now backed up by this survey result.

Survey Results:

50% go to 1-4 networking events per month

50% spend on average 2.5 hours at networking events

50% spend 45 minutes travelling to networking events

50% always connect via LinkedIn afterwards

68% consider Linkedin as a networking tool

Here are my previous calculations of the cost of networking:

Cost of event, lets say £20 (non-membership events) Cost of travel to and from, lets say £10 Parking is free sometimes, I know, but City Centre events maybe £5

Time taken to travel on average lets say 20 minutes x 2 = 40 minutes Time at event on average 2 hours Lost productivity time, stopping and starting project work 30 minutes

Total monetary costs £35 Total approx 3 hours @ a modest £40 per hour lost time = £120 Total costs £155 Across the month for just 2 events £310

Total cost per year £3,720 (this is a conservative estimate)

Add to that any club membership if you have any or do the calculation for that instead.

A LinkedIn premium account will cost you just £155 per annum allowing you to achieve so much more in terms of targeting the precise contacts you wish to get in front of.

Networking events are great to meet with local people, however it will always be a ’pot luck’ approach in terms of meeting the right kind of people for your business development.

And the amount of time (potentially 6 hours per month, a full working day) means that you could have found at least 30 new connections on LinkedIn that are on target for your business and start communicating with them. How many targeted connections would you have found at networking events.

Please don't get me wrong, face to face meetings are vital, but not with people who can't deliver you business. If you are just having a social, then that's perfect. But if you are looking for serious business then my suggestion is STOP hoping for 'Pot Luck'.

Wishing you Success Always!

Will You be an E-MENTOR?

Can you spare around an hour a week to be an E-MENTOR to help guide a 16-19 year old student on their path to a successful future?

I've been chatting with Diane Vernon,(http://www.linkedin.com/pub/diane-vernon/6/1a7/990), at Career Academies UK and she was telling me about their fantastic new programme called Career Ready. To work successfully they need to find willing volunteers to be E-MENTORS from the business world.

Mentoring is a crucial factor in helping a young person succeed in finding a job or place at University.

As an E-MENTOR you would communicate with a student via a new secure digital platform, as part of a structured programme. This eliminates the need to be located near your student or arrange meetings face-to-face. All E-MENTORS are DBS checked and trained by Career Academies UK.

You know the stats on unemployed young people in the UK, I don't need to remind you of that and if you've always thought of wanting to make a difference, you can do this now by contacting Diane Vernon at diane.vernon@careeracademies.org.uk or speak to her direct on 07786 170588.

You can read/download the full E-MENTOR pack by going to

http://styin.me/e-mentoringpack

Thank you for your support, I really appreciate it. I know this will be very rewarding for some of you.

I will be joining the programme myself!

Warmest regards and wishing you success always!

Michael 07866 471596

Are you using the new LinkedIn Contacts App?

Well you should!

Let me share with you what I discovered.

First I tidied up my address book on my iPhone/iPad/Mac (iCloud). It took a while but I did a few letters of the alphabet each day, which made the job less daunting, but still delivered a great result. I removed about 2000 contacts, phew! How ever did I manage to accumulate those? I have no idea! Also make sure you remove sensitive data. You don't want this going up onto a server do you? Instead move those somewhere else.

***DATA HEALTH WARNING***

You MUST do this task first, as otherwise you end up with all the rubbish inside your LinkedIn contacts and you really want to avoid this.

If you do this task first you will thank me for it and it is about time you did this and when I share with you below what you can achieve, you will be delighted...no ecstatic!

Step 1

Download the LinkedIn contacts app

(***DO NOT OPEN IT AFTER DOWNLOADING***).

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/linkedin-contacts/id635424128?mt=8

Step 2

I am assuming you have the standard LinkedIn iPhone app, but if you haven't please make sure that this is downloaded too.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/linkedin/id288429040

You can open that one and ensure you are logged in. Providing you have set 'download connections' to ON inside this app, (if not click on the IN in top left corner to reveal the setting cog wheel top right. Click on the wheel>download connections and activate this. It will download all your LinkedIn connections on to your iPhone and keep them updated too. This is an important step to complete before going on.

Step 3

On your iPhone, go to settings>privacy>contacts and make sure the contacts app button is switched to on/green. If you forget this step, no worries the app will remind you to do this.

Step 4

Open the LinkedIn contacts app on your iPhone, it will import with lightening speed all your iPhone contacts, find them on LinkedIn, and pull in all the data, plus send all the data to LinkedIn too.

Pretty impressive actually how fast this goes.

NOTE: I don't have my Facebook connections in my address book any longer. I ended up with too many duplications and then had to link those together, which was a real pain. As I only want to have my LinkedIn connections in my address book, I don't want to disturb things. And I highly recommend excluding Facebook. Remember each contact on your iPhone will be uploaded to LinkedIn.

To switch Facebook off for your address book, go to settings>facbeook> and switch the contacts switch to off/white.

Step 5

Check that everything has worked. Search inside the app for a contact, anyone will do. Make sure the data from your address book has been pulled across.

Check on the LinkedIn website and go to network>contacts and then filter by source>iPhone and check if the number of contacts agrees with your iPhone.

NOTE: Don't expect numbers to agree 100%. Mine are out by about 10, but I know that is because previously I had some contacts that were linked with Facebook and messed things up. If it is there or thereabouts, then happy days it has worked.

That's it job done!

But now for the magic, this is where you will be very grateful for using this app.

First let me share with you how people tend to work on LinkedIn. Most people will only share their personal emails address and no phone number.

So when you have someone's business card, look them up on LinkedIn, send an invite to connect and they accept, you will see that the email address that they have on LinkedIn is their personal one. Usually no phone number.

This means you need to add their business email and phone number details. Well firstly LinkedIn has a bug on phone number formats, which means it will not accept a European format, only USA formats. Which is a real shame and yes I have had a dialogue with their support and no fix is imminent either.

But have no fear here is the solution.

Now that you have the LinkedIn Contacts app, your problem is solved.

Step 1

After someone has accepted your invite to connect or you have accepted their invite, you need to go to the standard LinkedIn iPhone app and open it up from time to time, to make sure that LinkedIn downloads these contacts to your iPhone. This makes sure that you don't have to manually enter their details in your address book. i.e. LinkedIn does it for you. However you will more than likely only have their personal email address.

So once per week, I go into my address book iPhone/IPad or Mac (iCloud), with my business cards handy, I look up those people, that I know I have sent invites to and update their record with their business email and their mobile. I don't usually bother with their land line number. If they move in the future that will change and their mobile often stays the same. (unless they have give you their business mobile only).

Step 2

Once you've updated the address record on your device, go to the LinkedIn contacts app and open up the alphabetical view (doesn't matter which view you are on) and then pull down the page, which will then start an update process and a spinning circle appears. You have to see the spinning circle, so make sure of that.

***THIS IS WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS*** The LinkedIn contacts app drags the information from your address book, with your latest updates and pushes it to LinkedIn.

Now your contact record on LinkedIn, has updated the business email address, as well as the mobile phone number.

This is pretty amazing actually, because also the phone number format bug inside LinkedIn has been overcome by adding the phone details in this way.

Now you have the correct contact details sitting inside LinkedIn as well.

What this means in fact, that as well as downloading data from LinkedIn onto your iPhone, with the standard LinkedIn app, you can also push data to LinkedIn.

I felt this was such an amazing discovery, I just had to share it.

I hope it works for you and if you have any questions, just let me know.

***DATA HEALTH WARNING***

When dealing with contact information in the cloud, it is possible to create duplicate records. This has happened to me in the past, so please take each step carefully and check your records regularly.

The steps above worked for me without any issues, but I can't take any responsibility for your records and the way that you upload/download from the cloud.

Wishing you success always!