One of my Twitter friends recently sent me an article on touch and its powerful role in creating trust and relationship. I think about this frequently, but in the context of “touch” while interacting in social networks. In fact, during client work, I explicitly address “LinkedIn body language,” which raises awareness of online “gestures” and how they reinforce–or detract from–what someone is trying to say, so this presents an opportunity to delve into literal and figurative touch and its role in strengthening relationship and LinkedIn interactions.

The New York Times’ “Evidence That Little Touches Do Mean So Much” briefly reviews recent research on touch, and I’ll comment on its relevance to physical relationships and how you can use the concepts to take your touches in your LinkedIn interactions up a level.

Touch and Its Role in Relationship

Although I have written repeatedly that the transition from the Industrial Economy to the Knowledge Economy will rehumanize organization, I am still amazed at how profound and powerful this transition is. This means that we need to think of the person much more directly, and we will all be better off for it. For example, most people like to think that business relationships are based on terms and numbers first, and the emotional part of the relationship is secondary. Although that can be true in some business situations, the reverse is also true, especially in B2B or professional services situations in which relationship is paramount.

What does touch have to do with this? Before turning to LinkedIn body language, let’s examine how this works viscerally. The “Evidence” article comments:

Momentary touches, they say–whether an exuberant high five, a warm hand on the shoulder, or a creepy touch to the arm–can communicate an even wider range of emotion than gestures or expressions, and sometimes do so more quickly and accurately than words.

In other words, if you know how to touch someone appropriately, you can communicate more powerfully, which can increase trust. Obviously this works both ways because the touch could repel the person as well: and what is appropriate for one person or situation will not be appropriate elsewhere. Touch is inherently primal, and it can convey your emotion or attitude quickly, and it is more difficult to fake. To be successful, you need to be aware of your feeling for the person and situation, and be willing to be authentic about your feelings and intentions. This will give you confidence and will increase your ability to touch people appropriately. Some examples of business touches, from least to more intimate:

• Eye contact is a visual touch. There are many “techniques” you can follow to know how much and what kind of eye contact to have, but I have found two things that will lead you mostly right: 1) have a sincere interest in the other person, which can mean changing the subject by asking a question if s/he is talking about something in which you have no interest. You are looking for a connection, so strive for it; don’t just avoid the person. 2) mirror the other person, be aware of his/her comfort level. I am often in cross-cultural situations, so I also pay close attention to how people are with each other.
• The handshake. So much has been said and written about this, but it’s the most prevalent touch in business. Be aware that your handshake represents you, so pay attention to which handshakes you enjoy most. It may sound silly, but you can enjoy shaking hands. I realized this for the first time last year, when I spoke at PanIIT. Most of the people I met had a different attitude, often the handshake was prolonged during the initial conversation.
• Getting someone’s attention in a loud room. Touch the person softly on the shoulder or the arm. Here again, be aware of yourself. In business situations, I never tap someone like knocking on a door ,^). Most people are not aware of how they touch, so it is a more unadulterated gauge of their feelings.
• Making introductions. Depending on the situation, you can add importance and intimacy by touching one or both of the people as you introduce them to each other. Just lightly on the arm.
• Grooming. If someone’s dress is out of place and s/he is not aware of it, you can discretely mention it. Men have jacket lapels turned up, perhaps a spill at a cocktail party, etc. A particularly memorable instance for me: during Web 1.0 (circa 2000), I was attending one of the first “speed networking” sessions in which each person had two minutes to introduce himself to the other, and everyone met everyone in the room within 90 minutes. Much to my chagrin, I noticed a woman across the room with a “toilet paper tail” following her everywhere. Here she was, meeting all these people, making an indelible impression. No one told her, and I had to wait for a couple of rounds before I passed closely enough to point it out to her. A few minutes later, we actually met for our brief session! Spinach in the teeth also comes under this category.
• Of course, all these things vary considerably with culture. If you are observant and considerate, you will get it right most of the time. With touch, the most important thing is to be considerate, comfortable and confident. People literally feel your attitude, and if it is forthcoming and authentic, you can increase your presence by touching more.
• I encourage you to check out my review of Robin Dunbar’s masterpiece, “Gossip, Grooming, and the Evolution of Language,” which provides much more fascinating insight that underlies touch.

Another thought from the New York Times article:

“We think that humans build relationships precisely for this reason, to distribute problem solving across brains,” said James A. Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. “We are wired to literally share the processing load, and this is the signal we’re getting when we receive support through touch.”

LinkedIn Body Language

To fully appreciate how “touch” applies to LinkedIn interaction, imagine yourself as a human brain. Through the centuries, you have evolved, and one of your key survival mechanisms is discerning how much of the truth someone is sharing with you. Hence, you rely on nonverbal communication, which is much more difficult to fake because people are less aware of it than they are of their words.

Now imagine a brain on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Here, you don’t have the nonverbals on which you’ve relied for centuries. Yet you still have the need to understand people. So what do you do? You hack “social network nonverbal communication.” By default, you overlay what has worked in the past onto the immediate situation. Our brains create LinkedIn body language by assigning meaning to very small things that most people don’t think about.

What does this look like? The answer lies in thinking figuratively. How do you touch people?

• Do you send personal invitations? How personal are your “personalized” invitiations? Still, after all these years, most of the LinkedIn invitations I receive are the default. I almost categorically reject them. These invitations don’t have to be long, but they should be specific. Most important, when possible, explicitly tie an emotion to the invitation. “I really enjoyed our conversation about Argentina’s economy, I felt that it was a frightening thing to live through.” To work, this has to be genuine.
• Making or responding to introductions. Make this as personal as possible, but appropriate. “I’d trust Steve with my job anytime; I saw him describe a client’s logistics and supply chain issues after visiting two warehouses, he’s amazing.” Don’t feel that you have to get really emotional all the time; chances are, you know one person better than the other, so act as appropriate.
• Recommendations enable you to apply touch very powerfully. If you think about it, and if you know the person fairly well (i.e. don’t write canned two-sentence Recommendations), you can almost always include emotional content. “Barbara’s determination during a risky part of the project anchored the team and gave us the confidence to turn it around.”
• Answers and Groups Discussions are relatively impersonal environments, but where appropriate, you can incorporate touch into your responses to Answers and discussions in Groups by sharing personal aspects of what the topic means to you and people who are important to you. Remember, everyone is looking for meaning in life. Why is this important to you? Giving an emotional channel to what you are discussing will make you more memorable. It is a kind of touch.
• Take risks. Although I am committed to responding to LinkedIn requests from my network within a day or so, sometimes I slip up, and I apologize to both parties. Acknowledging my slip-ups in a heartfelt way (without being overly dramatic) is a kind of touch.

Parting Shots

• I hope this gives you some ideas for amping up your LinkedIn interactions. Touch is a more intimate interaction than words, so it’s higher risk and reward. Therefore, it gives you the opportunity to break through. It’s really another way you can show people that you care about them. This only works if it’s true. If you have a loose tie network in which you don’t know many of the people, practice touch with people you know the best.
• We’ve all experienced “creepy” touches. Most of them come from people who are insincere or who have some kind of hidden agenda. Don’t force it; don’t be personal when you can’t do it authentically.
• I’ll hazard that you will realize that “touching” someone doesn’t take longer, but it does take a moment or two of consideration and perhaps reflection. In most cases, this amounts to a minute or so.
• Remember, many interactions on LinkedIn are seen by other people in your network, or by the LinkedIn community. This can give you leverage. When people see you “touching” someone appropriately, they will usually admire you more. Because you are taking a higher risk in your communications. If you make a mistake, apologize in public, which will increase your stature even more.
• Don’t worry about impressing all the people; you know how achievable that is. Conduct yourself appropriately, and the right people will admire you more, which will strengthen the community you are building around you.
• Keep in mind that most of touch communication is unconscious. People are not aware of its impact on their willingness to trust someone else.

Your Turn

What LinkedIn body language have you noticed? What’s the most positive/negative reaction you’ve had to someone’s “touch” on LinkedIn?

Having spent all of my career in professional services, I appreciate the conservatism and professionalism that characterizes regulated businesses. Professional services deal in complexity and trust, so they have internal and external constraints on their communications. Consequently, all are laggards in adopting social networking in their practices. However, as social networking adoption grows among their client bases, they will be at an increasing disadvantage by staying on the sidelines. Here I’ll offer a cursory treatment of a complex subject. After explaining how social networking is affecting professional services, I will show how firms can participate today while remaining within compliance.

No Threat from Competitors, but from Substitutes

To begin to understand the threat faced by professional services, reflect on your firm in 1996. “The Internet” was the domain of mere techies, hacks and students, and no firm was going to have a website. However, clients began to appreciate Web 1.0′s real-time information and transactions, expectations changed, and all firms were eventually forced to have presences. Some even used it to increase their profitability.

Web 2.0 and social networks represent a much larger threat because they allow people to locate, contact and engage others that have specific expertise. People increasingly organize discussions about highly specific subjects that are the domain of professional services. Consider these:

• You want to learn the intricacies of importing GMOs to Peru, but you no longer have to call your lawyer right away: locate people on the ground through LinkedIn and have several discussions to come up to speed within a day or two.
• You’ve been diagnosed with cancer, and your doctor has recommended amputation. Log onto a community like Daily Strength, Patientslikeme or CureTogether, which feature experiences of people with the same condition one, two, three years after, and learn some of the trade-offs before you agree to the operation.
• You are interested in serious investing in southeast Asian companies, so you start conversations with management of southeast Asian companies through LinkedIn.

Please do not assume that I mean to say that “the crowd” will replace professional services. Not exactly. To appreciate how social networks will affect you, realize that most professionals’ overall value is comprised of several layers:

1. Evolved expertise and tacit knowledge (tempered by experience)
2. Core services (prosecution in court, operations/drug treatments, investment strategy and trading)
3. Information gathering, contextual advising

Social networks will have little impact on the first, and selective impact on the second. However, they will have significant impact on the third layer, which will color clients’ expectations of the firm and how it delivers on the other layers. Clients will decreasingly come to us for all three layers of our offerings. Smart firms will appreciate these distinctions and move to make themselves available to clients and prospects in social networks, where they increasingly visit during their due diligence phases.

For a longer treatment, I highly recommend Mark Chandler’s superb post (Cisco General Counsel) on the evolution of knowledge businesses.

Finally, within each competitor group, pioneers will move first and seize the advantage, putting themselves in the (digital) room, where you are absent. Therefore, delaying adoption to remain in the realm of the known may be comfortable, but risk increases each quarter because clients are adopting social networks and changing their expectations of their professional services providers.

As Mark writes, this trend need not detract from firm profitability, but it will affect how you structure services and how you charge in the long term. You can choose to let pioneers set the table for you or to move earlier and influence the outcome.

How to Mitigate the Risk of Participating in Social Networks

The key to success with social networks is to understand each social network (venue) and what kinds of communications within it could lead to trouble. These will fall into three classes: interactions that are safe, those that are okay within established guidelines and those that are off-limits.

Firm principals do not perceive the threat and opportunity, so there is little impetus to investigate. Moreover, leaders are not knowledgeable enough about venues to know how interactions could be safe or troublesome. Meanwhile, clients’ LinkedIn invitations go unanswered. Younger partners and associates are frustrated because they understand the venues better, and they are pressured to bring in business, but they are forbidden from participating.

Here is a general approach to investigating how to use social networks and Web 2.0 to improve your competitiveness.

Phase One: Explore

• Organize an initiative to explore the potential relevance of various social networking venues to the firm.
• Designate a well regarded partner to lead this initiative. S/he should have experience with technology and/or disruptive innovations. S/He will have little trouble organizing younger associates for help.
• Focus on clients and influencers. Which are using social networks, and how are they using them? Do not look for extensive adoption, but at trends. Clients in some practice areas will adopt faster than others. Adoption in many industries is accelerating. Don’t overlook competitors of clients.
• Target relevant subject matter. If your firm uses an SEO expert, ask him/her to forward your SEO keywords to help. Keywords lead to conversations. For example, most members of LinkedIn have no idea that LinkedIn Answers has forums in which members discuss Commodity Markets, Currency Markets, Futures Markets, Hedge Funds, Corporate Law, Tax Law, Antitrust Law, Health Care, Health Administration, …
• Use tools like Social Mention, Technorati, Google Blog Search and Twitter to locate relevant conversations. Note, they do not usually have access to social networks to which members log in.
• Don’t overlook blogs, Twitter, Yammer, YouTube and others. They can be very relevant to providing information to clients and interacting with prospects.
• Realize that many of these venues are nascent, but they are growing quickly. The conversations range from frivolous to very serious, so do not be distracted by the former.

Phase Two: Analyze

• Based on your findings from Phase One, designate several associates and partners to study and experiment with the functionality of various parts of relevant social network(s). In LinkedIn, examples are Answers, Groups, Status Visibility and Apps. Before initiating Phase Two, consult compliance to identify potential problem points.
• Have your team define workstreams and clickthroughs. For example, in LinkedIn Groups, one workstream would be sharing a news item and asking for and responding to other group members’ discussions.
• Once you have workstreams defined, you accomplish two things: 1) the platform/venue loses its mystery and 2) you can apply compliance within the context of the workstream, giving explicit guidance to professionals. This is the key to gaining the benefits. Remember, few compliance professionals understand social networks, either, so when in doubt, they will err on the side of mitigating risk rather than tapping opportunity.

Conclusions

• Depending on your business, many of your employees already have presences on social networks, but they lack guidance, and their presences are poor. Your firm is missing an opportunity to project its brand through employees’ profiles. Do not make the mistake of dictating what employees must put on their profiles, but do give them recommended guidelines.
• Develop a well-informed social business/social media policy, which aims to protect the firm while encouraging employees to participate and add value.
• When you define workstreams, you can organize compliance around the workstream and give relevant guidance. Likewise, compliance will understand how to make optimal approval processes.
• When your partners, associates and employees participate and contribute to others publicly, those gestures of help are observed by others who have similar issues and interests, forever. This represents tremendous leverage for the firm, not to mention goodwill. When people ask questions, they set the context in which you can offer general help (within constraints), in full view of others who are also interested.
• Compliance affects firms similarly, but push the envelope within the guidelines. Doing it effectively requires employee experience and education. Social networks represent 21st century dialtone, and they enable people to create and manage far larger networks than ever before. This is another challenge to professional services, to whom clients often turn for connections to other trusted people. Clients are less dependent than ever and becoming less so each quarter.
• Clients will increasingly expect you to be present in these venues. You will have to go anyway, so why not give your firm the added benefit of being a leader?
• For additional information about how my firm approaches this process, see the Social Network Roadmap Pilot.

In 2010 Predictions and Recommendations for Web 2.0 and Social Networking, I recommended to executives to increase their Web 2.0 competitiveness because everyone’s skills are improving and you need to outperform to maintain your advantage + the market will not get measurably easier for most people in 2010. Competitiveness will increase. Here I’ll summarize how individual executives can outperform competitors in 2010.

Having an effective LinkedIn Profile now involves two best practices, one of which is new: 1) create a strong profile that emphasizes your goals, expertise and past experience (most execs know this) and 2) manage your Profile’s new moving parts (most people don’t know about this). Outmaneuver rivals this year by:

• Taking your LinkedIn Profile up a level. People go to LinkedIn when they are looking for expertise. Remember, Web 2.0 is about interaction, not content. You can pay for content, but your attention is priceless. On LinkedIn, interaction means:
  • Participating in LinkedIn Answers: answer others’ questions and ask questions; this attracts attention; when you have a LinkedIn plan, this is very manageable timewise. Here’s a way to increase your payback.
  • Putting your slides on your profile via LinkedIn’s Slideshare App (top navigation bar, “More” dropdown, “Application Directory”)
  • Invoking your blog posts on your profile with the WordPress or BlogLink Apps (top navbar, “More” dropdown, “Application Directory”)
  • Look at my profile if you want to see how these things look.
• Start blogging. Here is my free Blogging: Quick Launch Guide to get on in about an hour. I predict that, within three years, an increasing portion of executives will make/lose deals and jobs based on their blogs. Get on in about an hour and learn how to blog effectively while using minimal time.
• Commit to tweeting. Twitter is a new mode of communication that you need to understand because it is transforming communication and creating new kinds of relationships. See Twitter: Key Disruptive Innovation of the Decade and Twitter: Quick Launch Guide. It shows you how to get in the game for an hour or two per month. Your clients and employment possibilities will increasingly expect you to tweet. Move first.
• Cut back on unproductive networking. Don’t fall into networking as an activity trap. If you drive half an hour to and from an event and spend 3 hours there, that’s half a day. You could have written 6 blog posts and answered 4 LinkedIn questions. When you have a content strategy for your blog, it creates digital breadcrumbs that are always working for you. If you choose the LinkedIn questions you answer judiciously, people will discover them at any time. At face-to-face networking events, the value dissipates much more quickly. I’m not saying to reduce face-to-face significantly, but cutting back on two events per month will give you more than enough time to ramp up online, where the leverage is far greater. Optimize.
• Relentlessly conduct yourself so that you increase trust with people who count. Make introductions, answer questions, give help, ask for help, follow through on what you promise. In Web 2.0 environments, other people are observing our interactions. We can choose to be creeped out by that, or use it to our advantage. When you are authentic and help people, other people see. Huge leverage.
• Commit to understanding the wacky business environment. You’ll save yourself time and grief. Read the 2010 Predictions and Recommendations; it also contains numerous links to drill down into Twitter, Facebook, executive employment and enterprise social networking case studies.

What are your plans to increase your competitiveness this year?

Significant Benefits for the Enterprise and the Executive

It finally arrived, late in Q4 2009: LinkedIn is enabling external websites and applications to syndicate in LinkedIn content. If you bear knowledge management scars as I do from the frustration of asking employees to recreate profiles for KM systems, you know that this is a gold mine. Now, you can populate your applications by pulling in LinkedIn profile information. Even better, LinkedIn has not stopped at the Profile: you can also invoke members’ Status Visibility, Connections, Search and Invitations. Read on to learn how your company can become more productive, and how this affects individuals.

Enterprise Frustration and Lost Value

If you’ve been involved with enterprise applications as I have, one of your biggest frustrations is lack of connectivity and information management. while at PwC MCS, I was involved with several firm KM initiatives. In the Knowledge Economy, it’s critical to enable employees to find each other at the lowest possible cost, so they can collaborate and create value. You want to invoke the right expertise at the right time, from within your workstream (i.e. you don’t have to interrupt what you’re doing to find and communicate with the person). The problem is, they don’t have current information on employees, information that would help employees find each other.

Content Syndication: How It’s Revolutionizing Collaboration

Web 2.0 is changing all this because distributed application components can pull information from sources elsewhere via RSS, xML and others. So, if you’re building a KM application for a professional services firm like PwC, you no longer have to ask employees to create profile information: you can pull it from LinkedIn.

Look at this from the employee perspective. You want to have an awesome profile, why not leverage it by publishing it elsewhere? That’s exactly what this is about. Obviously, the enterprise system will have employees add and manage internal proprietary information, but now they have more time to do this!

As I wrote in July 2008, I think that LinkedIn can become “the Swiss bank” of professional profiles, and it looks like they’re moving in that direction. Facebook was the first major platform to do this when Clara Shih built Faceforce (see Faceforce.com Pioneers Enterprise “Social” Network Vision, Exposes Massive LinkedIn Opportunity).

What This Means for Enterprise Apps

In fact, 2009 is proving to be the year of major opening up, for the major social networking platforms. Twitter’s success this year showed the value of hyper-open communication, and everyone’s scrambling to provide it. Also see Web 2.0 Single Sign-on Update: Federating Friends with Facebook Connect and Google Friendconnect.

Adopt what I call ecosystem thinking, which holds that you get the information at the best source, where it’s most easily managed and accessed. That means LinkedIn, for profile information. Let’s be honest. If an employee is going to spent his/her time on a profile, s/he is going to update LinkedIn because it could lead to myriad opportunities. Your internal system will always be short shrift. Use that to your advantage. Likewise, give employees a choice of what kind of status they want to display on their internal profiles, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster, MySpace, whatever. Syndicate in!

Obviously this raises issues such as, “Whose information is it?” Although this can change based on the situation, the information belongs to the source, so the profile, tweets, etc. are the employees, you are just publishing it. Conversely, any information s/he creates on your system are the enterprise’s and are subject to your privacy policies and NDAs.

Warning: don’t tell employees, “You work for us, so you owe us the information.” In the U.S., most states are (barely)work-for-hire, so you must respect employees’ rights to their information. There are many conversations in which firms are insisting that they own employees’ social information, but these will fail. For more on how this will make your firm stronger, see Alumni 2.0: Employer-Employee Realignment.

What This Means for Individuals

Fantastic news: increasingly, you can leverage your soon-to-be-awesome LinkedIn profile everywhere. Smart organizations will enable you to decide what part(s) of your LinkedIn profile you share, and with whom. Otherwise it won’t work. Get ready to share your social network information. This requires some planning:

• Ecosystem planning—think about business and social contexts in which you’d like to share social network information. For most, LinkedIn is very business-focused, so invest in having a fantastic profile.
• Profiles are dynamic now, so don’t only have someone create one for you, it’s more about managing and interacting. Profiles are not online resumes. Free info here. More in-depth.
• If you have several personal and professional interests, start specific twitter feed(s), which can very easy to import. See Executive’s Guide to Twitter Guides.
• For examples, look at LinkedIn’s recent Twitter integration.
• Facebook has imported Twitter feeds for a long time (install the “Twitter app” in Facebook).
• These options are going to icnrease geometrically in 2010.
• You become a publisher, so start thinking about making yourself available as appropriate. From 2010 to 2012, your stakeholders will increasingly expect you to be available online, and you will start losing to those who are.
• For example, I know many executives who give preference to suppliers who have solid LinkedIn presences because they can get comfortable with the person before taking the meeting. In the next couple of years, tweeting or statuses will become requirements, especially as Gen Y enters management.

The challenge

How do you represent yourself when you are a contractor or interim executive for more than one company at a time? Of course, how you handle this situation varies by case, but there are a few interesting options and opportunities. There are two main ways to think about contract sales/interim positions and LinkedIn. Let’s call them “the legacy way” and “the current way”; there are several combinations.

For sales contractors, clients bring them in as hired guns because they want to get from 0 to 60 quickly; they want lower training costs. The sales contractor’s value proposition is s/he is a sales professional who introduces a new level of professionalism and results. With interim executives, it’s similar but their services can be in any function in the company, which can’t afford a full-time executive but needs strategic and refined expertise now.

Interim CxOs can also have several clients simultaneously for whom they serve as “the CFO,” “the CMO,” etc. For both, it is a question of exclusivity. The client often wants to have the appearance of having a professional employee without committing to one.

The legacy approach

The sales contractor may want to hide the contact nature of his/her role with the client (Let’s call her “Elizabeth”). In this approach, Elizabeth writes her LinkedIn profile as if she were an employee. However, a big part of her value proposition is connections, too, and having multiple profiles is a hassle for her and her connections, especially because clients change frequently. She writes one as Liz Lastname, another as Elizabeth Lastname, etc. Of course, she has to invite connections to connect to one or multiple profiles. If she uses the Elizabeth Lastname profile as her main one, she would have few connections with other (client-specific) profiles. The legacy approach tries to mirror how Elizabeth works with clients. I think you can see that the legacy approach breaks down quickly in the case of multiple concurrent clients.

The current approach

On the other extreme, Fred has one profile, and he creates a “job” in his profile that says “Interim CFO” or “Contract Business Development.” He describes the scope of his capabilities, experience and results from all his clients combined. In addition, he creates a “position” for each client (named or not), and he closes it when he stops working with them. That discloses that he isn’t a full-time employee.

Which to choose?

Among executives and professionals, it is increasingly common to have numerous concurrent jobs, board positions, etc., and that often adds to their desirability because they are more connected and have diverse points of view. For this to work, you have to get comfortable with it and negotiate it.

Another wrinkle

Another possibility is to use a hybrid. You have one profile, but you only list one client at a time as a “position,” even though you may work with several clients simultaneously. You negotiate a higher rate with the client that “wants to be on your deck.” You could turn this into a service offering. For this to work, the client and you would have to commit at a higher level.

Parting shots

• In this age of increasing transparency, I would advocate the “current” option for most situations. The only disadvantage for the client is the perceived lack of exclusivity. It’s much less work, and you don’t have the risk that one or more client prospects or clients will find out you have two “jobs.” Word travels much faster every week.
• However, there are numerous upsides to the current approach, too. If your practice (client book) has a focus corresponding to your USP, you can create synergy between firms you work with currently or in the recent past, much like incubators create synergies among their portfolio companies. It could be to their advantage to be seen working with you, along with your other clients.
• Since market volatility is increasing in every industry, pitch peripheral vision as a key value proposition, and run with it. Convince clients that it’s to their advantage to be working with a professional who has a very diverse group of connections, ideas and leverage.
• In this case, make sure you ask former clients to comment (LinkedIn Recommendations) on your abilities in account/project management, commitment and integrity. This will help to counter the assumption that you are less committed and responsive since you have multiple clients.

In an online discussion the other day, several people were debating whether LinkedIn should “force” questioners in LinkedIn Answers to “close” questions properly and designate “good” and “best” answers. This is a good opportunity to examine motivations behind responding to questions on LinkedIn Answers, and why “expertise” is far less important than focusing on your contribution. Read on to learn how you can increase your satisfaction with answering questions and get a higher return on your investment.

LinkedIn Answers: Revealing the Gold Mine of LinkedIn

I encourage you to think about LinkedIn Answers (main navbar, fourth from left, “Answers”) as a market in which buyers ask questions and sellers offer solutions. If you have spent any time on a trading floor or in any other market, you can see that buyers create markets by telling the market what they’re looking for. People who ask questions in LI Answers are looking for a solution to a problem. Do not be distracted if you see questions that seem trivial because there are myriad questions that are very serious, as are responses. When I recommend Answers, most people roll their eyes because they have invalidated the platform due to “self-serving” questions they have seen. I understand this because people often hold emerging technologies to higher standards than things they know. For example, do you invalidate all business conversations because there are many self-serving business conversations out there? I doubt it.

Second, whether you are looking for a job, funding for your startup or philanthropic organization or a new client for your business, you have a USP (unique selling proposition). To create opportunity, you need to find buyers whose UBN (unique buying need) most closely matches your USP. To use LinkedIn to drive down the cost of finding prospects whose UBN corresponds to your USP, you need to:

• Understand your unique selling prop and how potential clients think about and talk about that flavor of uniqueness
• Learn the keywords that your prospects associate with situations in which your USP is most valuable
• LinkedIn Answers is an ideal forum in which to test and refine the keywords associated with your USP

Approaching LinkedIn Answers with a Higher Sense of Purpose

Most LinkedIn members are more executive and business-focused than members of any other social network of comparable size. When someone takes the time to ask a question, they are often pretty serious about it. Disregard questions which you consider frivolous and focus on the serious ones. LI makes it easy because you can search Answers for questions/answers using keywords that correspond to your USP or your prospects’ UBNs.

To get the most value out of answering questions, concentrate on the part of the situation you can control: the quality of your answers. Unless you specifically turn it off, your responses to questions become a part of your LI profile.

When you choose the questions you answer with purpose, you are letting the asker of the question to set a business context in which you can offer your expertise. S/He sets the scene for you to be observed helping someone with a challenge. This is the primary benefit, your responses themselves.

Expertise Points

If you have ever asked a question in LI Answers, you know that LI closes the question automatically after a week and prompts you to rate the answers you received as “helpful” or not (you can extend or “reopen” it). When you have selected all the helpful answers, LI will ask you to select one that is “most helpful” or “best.” The person who contributed that question gets an expertise point and logo on his/her profile. Notably, the expertise also shows the forum. If your “Best Answers” are in the Law Forum and the International Forum, that can be a reliable indicator of your ability to do cross-border deals.

The problem starts when people are focused on answering questions to receive expertise points. this approach is a mistake because:

• You are focused on receiving, not giving
• You get angry when people don’t award expertise points
• You lose control over the situation and demotivate yourself
• You lose authenticity because Answers is focused on helping people

Very few LI members use Answers because 1) they don’t understand how powerful it is and 2) they don’t have the skills to host online discussions. LinkedIn the company understands that most members don’t understand the importance or ramifications of their online actions, and they are trying a soft approach to encouraging adoption. They want people to use the features enough to see the value, so they use the features more often. If they adopted a punitive approach (forced people to award points), members would not ask questions as often. I do not expect LI to add conditions to the “Ask a question” process.

Parting Shots

• I hope you can see that there is significant value in answering questions. People who ask questions that I would like to answer are potential clients or influencers of potential clients. They often think about issues from a prospect’s perspective.
• Moreover, askers’ questions attract attention of other people with similar interests. They are aggregating demand and setting the stage for me to offer my help/expertise in full view of others who are also interested.
• Think of the “best” or “good” answers as icing on the cake. If you are answering questions to get those ratings, you’re short-changing yourself and others because you are focused on what you receive rather than on what you’re giving.
• Focus on your actions, not others’. By focusing on the questioner’s actions (giving good/best answers), you demotivate yourself.
• Here’s another thought. When I answer questions, I am usually pretty detailed. This is consistent with my brand, deeper multifaceted thinking. But, I also scrape my response, tweak it and publish as a blog post. My rationale here is: the questioner is approaching a business issue from a prospect’s perspective, which helps me to show my relevance from his/her perspective. That’s very valuable to me, so I publish here or on another of my blogs.
• To whit, the idea of this post came from a discussion within a LI Group!
• Also see How Social Networks Change the Rules of Business Development and Profit.

How Not to Conduct a Job Search

Three-part thread starts like this…

On 10/21/09 7:05 AM, R.H. wrote:
——————–
Hi Christopher,

I am an education technology sales professional with a track record of success.

My clients are executives in education: superintendents, technology and curriculum directors. I have a current book of active sales contacts in the Midwestern United States.

Would you take a phone call from me to discuss job opportunities in e-learning?

xxx-xxx-xxxx

R.H.

Kind of ambiguous, sounds like a partnership or recruiting gambit. Wasn’t sure, so here’s how I responded:

Hi R.H.,

Thanks for reaching out, and I’m curious to learn more about your goals and how I might help. Part of my consulting practice involves mentoring and educating, and my social networking experience has many ramifications for learning, but I’d like to learn more about your business and what the connection is. Can you tell me more? I’d be glad to accept a call if there’s a fit.

Thanks and all the best- Chris

Asking for clarification and offering to help if appropriate. Here’s what I received the next morning, via email. Gotcha!

From: R.H. <email>

Subject: Can You Place Me?

Date: November 1, 2009 12:23:29 PM CST

To: Christopher S. Rollyson

Hi Chris,

Nice to hear from you!

I found you via linked in (it has become a primary resource in my
career search).

With my experience in e-learning and the education market, I thought
you might know someone who might hire me before the end of November
2009.

Would you like to have a telephone conversation Monday or Tuesday?

–
R.H.

You Choose: Lack of Clarity or Deception?

My gut tells me the latter, but I’ll give anyone the benefit of the doubt the first time. My point is, digital communications need to strive for transparency, clarity, integrity and relevance. It is neither relevant, nor clear nor transparent.

I hope that this example serves as an example of how it can have a counterproductive affect.

What do you think?

LinkedIn is doing this because they want to increase the commitment that members make to Groups: whenever the supply is limited, demand increases. So, since Groups are very valuable, and you can only join 50, that means that you need a good process to evaluate Groups. I will share a few things you can do to evaluate a Group’s appropriateness for your goals—under three scenarios.

#1—Quick Evaluation and You’re not a Member

Whether you find the group by searching the Groups directory for something specific like “transfer pricing” or “pink patent leather pumps” or you click on the group’s logo on someone’s Profile, you will see a short description of the group as well as a representative sample of its members who are in your network. You cannot see other members unless you join the group. What you can do for a quick eval:

• Realize that you are probably not interested in all the members of any group; rather, you’re interested in a specific demographic within the group; therefore use LI Advanced Search to search for several specific terms that will return the profiles of the people you really want; click through to their profiles, are they members of the group?
• Depending on how responsive your network is, it might be quick to message all the 1st levels and ask them how they find the group; also ask them about the specific members you want, how many are members and how interactive they are
• Ask one of your 1st levels who’s a member to search the group for people with the characteristics in which you’re interested. Have him/her tell you a representative sample; depending on the exclusivity/secrecy/culture of the group, don’t ask anyone to disclose individuals if it’s highly exclusive (most groups aren’t), but only job titles
• Ask a LI answer like, “ABC members: what’s the best thing about the ABC group”? as the title, and add more information to explain what you’d hope to accomplish if you joined the group; that would have the additional benefit of letting LI members recommend groups to you that they like

#2—Slow Evaluation and You’re not a Member

• This might be slow or quick, depending on the responsiveness of the group’s administrator. Some will act within the day while others take weeks
• Apply to join the group; once a member, check out the members and un-join the group if it’s not what you want
• On the group’s home page, click the “More” tab and “Members”; you can also search the group’s members

#3—Evaluation and You Are a Member

• Since all members are limited to 50 groups, it behooves you to reevaluate groups periodically and unjoin them if they aren’t adding value
• You need to be very focused on what kinds of LI members you want to meet, and what they look and act like; the ultimate value of groups is often, “Am I meeting the kind of people I want in this group?”
• Search the group (a search of the group will query discussions, members, jobs and news) for keywords related to the subjects in which you’re interested
• Don’t be distracted by junky discussions on Groups; they are the hay, and you’re looking for needles; you can begin and host high quality discussions that will serve as the magnet for people you want to attract
• New groups appear constantly; put on your calendar to search the Groups periodically for specific keywords
• Use Answers to get other LI members’ wisdom about what you’re trying to accomplish with Groups

Final Shots

What is your favorite way to evaluate Groups?

Business meetings often include sports, culture, family and light politics/news… things that people share on Facebook.

LinkedIn is the venue whose social context is business, but Facebook is a great way to amplify your relationship building effectiveness:

• Don’t be blindsided because people do a lot of wacky things on Facebook. Search the Groups directory, you’ll find supply chain groups, transfer pricing and many other serious business topics.
• When you are prospecting on LinkedIn, bounce over to Facebook to search for your prospects; depending on their privacy settings, you could learn something about their personal sides. The default is, you will be able to see their Friends, which could be very useful.
• Select some of your LinkedIn Connections whom you’d like to know better. Invite them on Facebook, saying that you’ve found it useful for business. If you have some friends who put crazy stuff on your Wall, assign your business connections to a “professional” Friend List that does not have access to your Wall or certain photo albums or videos (Facebook has some decent documentation on this; make sure you know how it works before putting in motion).

You can accelerate your ability to develop trust with prospects by prospecting and interacting on Facebook. When doing this, be discreet yet open about it.  In other words, tell your prospect that you saw on Facebook that you have friends in common: don’t  be mysterious about how you got the information, or it could backfire and come across as being creepy.

About Briefs

LinkedIn Briefs is a new series of quick advice by Executive’s Guide to LinkedIn Blog to help people become more aware of LinkedIn’s potential to change businesses and careers. I invite you to share your thoughts and ideas for future briefs in comments below.

If you like this brief, I won’t mind if you share with friends.

Learning More

I lead periodic seminars globally, where participants master these issues and many others. The next one is Chicago’s Social Networking Bootcamp, featuring LinkedIn, Twitter and blogging on August 19-21. And Facebook of course! ,^)

To do this effectively, keep three things in mind:

• Authenticity trumps all. If you have written your LinkedIn Profile well, you have striven to bring out key points that support your overall message. Recommendations ideally serve to, in the “customer’s” own words, corroborate what you have written.
• Think of your reader (the people you’re trying to attract). If you have a ton of people writing that you are generally great, that can actually diminish your Profile. Specificity is the meat. So try to pick people who are considerate and who know you from different angles. Your reader will often tire if you have ten “jobs” and each one has ten Recommendations, especially if they don’t add value.
• Don’t worry about wordsmithing or micromanaging how people say things, but do ask them to correct things that aren’t clear or that you couldn’t defend.  It is more authentic to let people speak in their own language.  Do, however, ask them to comment on a certain aspect of your expertise or performance in a certain situation.

Although there is no set number, if you remember these three things, you’ll get it right.

About Briefs

LinkedIn Briefs is a new series of quick advice by Executive’s Guide to LinkedIn Blog to help people become more aware of LinkedIn’s potential to change businesses and careers. I invite you to share your thoughts and ideas for future briefs in comments below.

If you like this brief, please share with friends.

Learning More

I lead periodic seminars globally, where participants master these issues and many others. The next one is Chicago’s Social Networking Bootcamp, featuring LinkedIn, Twitter and blogging on August 19-21.