But I’ve decided it’s time to revitalize Linked Intelligence. For whatever issues I have with some of the decisions LinkedIn makes, it’s still by far the most useful networking tool both for me personally and for businesspeople, i.e., my clients, generally speaking.

It also seems that a whole new batch of people are discovering it, and thanks to Twitter, a bunch of them are discovering the super-incredibly-useful resource, 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn. Plus, more people have written more cool ideas about how to use LinkedIn, and I want to include them in the compilation.

Finally, there are potentially now more ways to monetize this (hey, just being honest). There are a couple of great products I’ve participated in, such as Jason Alba’s book, I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??, and (finally!) LinkedIn For Dummies. I’ll also soon have available the audio program I did with Joan Stewart on using LinkedIn to support your publicity campaign.

So if you’re new here, welcome. If you’re visiting again, welcome back.

Image Bart Groenhuizen via sxc.hu

It’s easy enough to set up a profile, make a few connections, join a couple of groups, etc. — the basic mechanics. But actually finding customers, business partners, media opportunities, employees and so on via online networking is as much art as science. It’s not a mechanical activity — you’re still dealing with real people with real feelings, and good virtual interpersonal skills can mean the difference between fantastic success and frustration.

Next Monday, September 22, at 12:00 pm EST, (9 am PST, 10 am MST, 11 am Central, 5 pm London, 6 pm Cairo, 8 pm Dubai, 11 pm Bangkok), I’ll be doing a teleclass with networking expert Diane Darling, author of The Networking Survival Guide and Networking for Career Success, entitled “Maximizing LinkedIn and Other Online Networks”. During the call, Diane and I will discuss:

• How to best use social networking sites - e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Meetup
• How NOT to use them
• Ways to make your invitation stand out
• What if I get asked to help someone I don’t know?
• Why go online? I just call people
• How do you get real business
• Why an online presence is important
• Mistakes that are easily avoidable
• Ways to expand your network without compromising friendships
• Best ways to give referrals
• How to tactfully reject people
• Due diligence to do before forwarding a request

This isn’t a how-to on the basic mechanics of using these sites — this is focused on the hard part: the “soft skills” that will actually make you productive, not just busy.

The cost of the class is $20 for the first 10 people that sign up through this link ($25 after that).  [NOTE: Sorry for the previous problems -- link is fixed and we've kept the price at $20, even though there will be over 100 on the call.] A recording will be available for your review, or for those who can’t attend at the scheduled time.

By the way, for a valuable online networking lesson, watch The Virtual Handshake blog later today for the story of how Diane and I ended up doing this class together.

I particularly like the emphasis on the idea that using LinkedIn isn’t just about building connections, but about actually getting business done. As LinkedIn expands functionality, expect to see more reinforcement of that concept. More on this in another post.

I also like their use of the map analogy. I’ve used this myself before when talking about how the practice of open linking makes LinkedIn less useful.

I’m a big fan of their videos, particularly those explaining Web 2.0 technologies. If you liked the video above, you might also enjoy:

• Social Networking in Plain English
• Blogs in Plain English
• Wikis in Plain English
• Online Photo Sharing in Plain English
• Social Bookmarking in Plain English
• RSS in Plain English
• Twitter in Plain English

If you like their videos too, Lee and Sachi can be hired for custom work and hi-res versions of their videos can be licensed for commercial or educational use.

Starting this Thursday, June 5, you can learn some of the most current techniques for growing your business in the Escape 9 to 5 Teleseminar Series.

I love what the organizer, Melissa Gerdes, has to say about the series on the registration page:

Why are we doing this? It’s simple. We love our lives and we love helping other people experience the realities of entrepreneurship. So we want to see the wonderful life you create for yourself. (Mostly, we do it because it’s fun.)

The teleseminars will be held on various weekday evenings in the coming weeks, and the first one is…tomorrow! I’ll be doing mine on “Winning on the Social Web” next week. So go ahead and register now so you don’t miss anything.

Sean has a new e-book coming out — watch for it on his blog.

As you may have surmised, Linked Intelligence is no longer a part of the b5media network. It was by mutual agreement, all on good terms. In the simplest terms, 6 posts a week doesn’t work for me, and less than 6 posts a week doesn’t work for them. I had a great experience at b5 — love the staff and my fellow b5 bloggers who I got to know.

But there’s more to the story…

Actually, I’m going to be phasing out Linked Intelligence. I have a few more posts I want to write here, and I do plan to leave the site up indefinitely. There’s a lot of good content I’ve created here over the past couple of years, hundreds of inbound links and thousands of monthly visitors. I don’t want to just toss that away and leave a bunch of dead links around the web.

So why am I phasing out Linked Intelligence?

It’s a combination of things:

1. I’m incredibly busy with other things. This is first and foremost. Between promoting our new book The Emergence of The Relationship Economy, the many projects and prospective clients we’re working on at Link to Your World, my ongoing work as Entrepreneurs Guide at About.com, and so on, I need to reduce the number of things on my plate, and this blog is lower priority.

2. LinkedIn is doing some things very well now that they weren’t doing when this blog started. LinkedIn didn’t even have their own blog until a year ago. It got off to kind of a slow start, but now they routinely announce and explain new features, offer tips & tricks, highlight LinkedIn media coverage and (my favorite new edition) share user success stories. I created this blog to fill a need, and LinkedIn is finally filling much of it themselves.

3. LinkedIn is doing some things far worse now than they were two years ago. LinkedIn has become simply impossible to deal with as someone trying to evangelize their platform. I could give my own personal dirty laundry list a mile long, but I won’t — what they do to other people is more than enough. When I see how LinkedIn continues to ignore and/or mistreat some of its strongest evangelists and power users and refuses to address issues that have been going on for years, I simply no longer want to have my personal brand tied to their brand (that’s OK - they probably feel the same way, strangely enough).

I think LinkedIn is a great tool, and I will continue to use it, advocate it to my business associates, and train clients on using it effectively, but I’m just not going to waste any more of my time promoting it when they are not just unsupportive, but downright hostile to those of us who try to do so.

I’ll be writing some more about this in the near future — not because I hate LinkedIn, but because I love it. I think their current policies are going to drive it into the ground, and I hope that some of the investors and executives are listening, because right now, the real conversation that’s going on among LinkedIn users doesn’t seem to be having much impact on the decision-makers.

Image by Kevin via Flickr

Image by tamaphi via Flickr

5th P of Marketing - First 4 Steps in Social Media Engagement

In it, he describes “the fifth P of marketing” – Participation. He says that companies that want to engage in social media need to do 8 things:

- Be where the users are
- Facilitate easier means of communication with them
- Create brand evangelists
- Be a source of information on the company
- Respond swiftly and honestly
- Start publishing content
- Stir internal company conversations
- Improve product and user experience

So, one year later – how do you think LinkedIn is doing in each of those areas?

I’ve set up a simple survey – just rate LinkedIn on a scale of 1 to 5 in each of those areas.

Feel free to discuss the topic further here in the comments, but please not at the exclusion of responding to the survey, which should take less than a minute. Also, please feel free to repost this anywhere you want – there’s no limit on the number of survey responses, and the more we have, the more meaningful and impactful the data will be.

Image: Marco Michelini via stock.xchng

Image by .hj barraza via Flickr