You can now have your Twitter account visible on your LinkedIn profile. This is great news because you will be able to easily follow your LinkedIn connections and vice versa. This development together with the Twitter lists makes it for some very interesting possibilities.

Go ahead and add your Twitter ID to your LinkedIn profile

This tip came courtesy of Mary Gillen.

Want to search for links shared by a specific person on Twitter, and avoid the rest of the blah blah blah? In the Twitter search form, be more specific:

from:Twitterusername filter:links

Example:

from:stayingintouch filter:links

How to Write a LinkedIn Recommendation (8 steps)

To be successful in Social Networking, you must use the VCP model. VCP stands for Visibility, Credibility and Profitability. Simply stated, people must know who you are and trust you before they will consider doing business with you.

LinkedIn recommendations give you an opportunity to gain credibility and visibility. Needless to say that having good recommendations by a 3rd parties go a long way to establish your credentials with people who don’t know you.

The flip side is also something to keep in mind. When you give a recommendation to others, that recommendation can raise the other person’s visibility and credibility. Just remember, that the recommendation you give will also say something about you to others. If you lie, exaggerate, are bland, etc. this will affect how others view YOU.

The following are two good articles on this topic:
LinkedIn Tip #3: Give Useful Recommendations

Thanks to Nate Kievman I just learned how to add a Video Profile to LinkedIn. To see how it is integrated on my LinkedIn profile, go to my profile on LinkedIn.  Be sure to click on the view full profile. If you do, be sure to drop me a note.

I’ve written before about the Visibility, Credibility & Profitability (VCP) process in Social Networking. Simply put, to make Social Networking work for you, people first need to know who you are (Visibility.) Then they need to trust that you are genuine and that you will add value to them (Credibility.) Only when these two stages are met, people will be willing to give you their direct or referral business.

Earlier today I sent a message to my network contacts in Ecademy.com about my latest article published on The National Networker. Ecademy is a Social Networking site that is very big in Europe and is gaining a lot of momentum in the US.  I have met some very friendly and valuable contacts there. One of the reasons I joined was because I saw an interview with Ecademy’s Chairman, Thomas Power, where he spoke about his reasons for starting Ecademy and also his values about networking.

Thomas Power happens to be one of my contacts. In fact, he was the first person who invited me to be part of his network when I joined. My assumption is that he invites EVERY new Ecademy member to join his network. While this is a nice touch, there isn’t anything particularly noteworthy about it. It is just a sound business strategy.

However here’s the part that IS noteworthy: he actually responded to my message! With nearly 53,000 contacts, I find it very impressive that he took the time to respond to my request. That shows the man is walking his talk. With so few people nowadays doing this, it is refreshing to find out that people who run large organizations, still understand the value of a personal connection. With this simple human touch, he won my loyalty.

If you have yet to discover Ecademy, I encourage you to sign up. Membership is free and well worth it. Plus you will probably have Thomas in your network as a result!

The proper way to use  LinkedIn introductions is to put yourself in the shoes of the people who you will be asking to introduce you. Remember that what you are asking them to do is to put themselves out there for you. If the result of the introduction is a bad one, that will reflect poorly on the people who are facilitating the introduction. The flip side is also true. If the introduction is a good one then the person who facilitates the introduction gains goodwill.

Neal Schaffer wrote an excellent post on this topic.  This post should be required reading for anyone planning on using LinkedIn introductions.  You can read about it here.

I will be glad to connect anyone in my network who takes this approach. After all, this is one of the main reasons for networking.

In my previous post, I discussed the process of getting introductions via your LinkedIn connections.  LinkedIn offers three levels of connections. There is my direct contacts. Those contacts’ contacts. And then there are the contacts’ contacts’ contacts.

Let’s say I wanted to connect with Steve Griffin. I  did a search and found out that five people in my network are connected to him (see below.)  I can then send any (or all) of those folks a request to introduce me to Steve. I would then write my introduction message to Steve and send it to Scott Cunningham. Scott would then forward my message to Steve by adding something that would make Steve more likely to accept my message.

Alternatively, let’s say I wanted to connect with Steve Shapiro. As you can see, he is three degrees away from me. The process is the same though the route is a little more circuitous.

In this situation I would send a message to Douglas Castle  (or any of the other contacts who have a connection with SOMEONE who knows Steve) and ask that he look for who in his network is connected to Steve.  You see, I can’t see who in Douglas’ network is connected to Steve. So I have to ask Douglas to do this for me. Douglas can then ask his contact if he would connect me to Steve. In this situation, my message to Steve would go through Douglas, Douglas’ contact and finally Steve.

I will cover the proper etiquette on how to do these requests in another post.

All you really need to do is be interested in people. Forget about “networking”.  Please read Stephanie Booth’s short post on the subject of building a network.

LinkedIn is a wonderful engine for building relationships and networking. One of the best tools LinkedIn offers is the ability to search for particular individuals in your network and to be referred to them by your network. Say you are wating to connect with me. You could do a search for Rick Itzkowich and then you would see if any of the people in your network are connected to me. If they are, you could send me an introduction via one of them. They would then forward the introduction to me.

This path is less linnear than if you were to contact me directly, but it is much more effective.

I will be discussing some do’s and dont’s in future posts.

Ivana Taylor is a friend of mine whom I met via LinkedIn, recently published a wonderful post on a question that is on a lot of people’s minds when it comes to Social Networking: “How will this make me money?” Click here to read her post.