Higher ed professionals: LinkedIn’s changing. Does it deserve more of your attention?

I wrote this for Higher Education Marketing Report. How is your college or university using LinkedIn, and what limitations are you experiencing?

LinkedIn’s changing. Does it deserve more of your attention?

In August, LinkedIn introduced University Pages, a feature designed to give colleges a better opportunity to tell their stories. One byproduct of this launch is that LinkedIn’s doors are now open to a much younger audience. Instead of waiting until they turn 18, young adults can now start using LinkedIn at age 14 in the U.S. and as young 13 in other countries.

As a result of these changes, many colleges are giving LinkedIn a closer look to consider whether it will help them attract attention from prospects and, therefore, whether it should be a more prominent part of their social media strategy. While it’s certain that some institutions will find tremendous potential in LinkedIn, it’s likely that most colleges will find only serious limitations. Understanding where the opportunities lie is simply a matter of understanding who is most active on LinkedIn and who tends to spend their time elsewhere—despite LinkedIn’s efforts to court them.

To understand this dynamic, it’s important to first consider LinkedIn’s motivation for adding University Pages and welcoming younger users. There are several factors at play:

• One primary consideration is LinkedIn’s historical irrelevance among teenagers compared to other social media sites. By shutting out everyone under the age of 18, LinkedIn made this a fait accompli and had no momentum to build off as these younger audiences matured. LinkedIn’s recent shift towards youth, then, is an attempt to steal back some of this market share.
• Another factor is the large population of education professionals on LinkedIn. Higher education is the third largest industry sector in terms of LinkedIn members, behind only information technology and services and financial services. That makes for a potentially high return on investments made in better serving higher ed—especially when you consider…
• The platform’s limited impact on colleges to date from a student recruitment and retention standpoint. Whereas other businesses have always been able to use one-to-one connections and Company Pages as marketing tools, reaching out directly to their audiences (especially in the B2B sector), LinkedIn’s miniscule teen user audience gives colleges little opportunity to market to one their most important constituencies.
• Ultimately, of course, it all comes down to money. More users equal more eyeballs to sell to advertisers and more prospective users of LinkedIn’s services and premium memberships.

While these factors help explain why LinkedIn launched University Pages and lowered its age limit, an important question remains: Do the young people LinkedIn is courting really care? And, consequently, is it a good place for higher ed marketing professionals to spend their time? The answer is somewhat mixed, but it comes down to one simple truth: despite LinkedIn’s changes, it’s not yet certain to be a good student recruitment platform. Higher ed marketing professionals, therefore, would be wise to take a wait-and-see approach before investing too many resources into LinkedIn.

Does that mean that LinkedIn should be avoided altogether? No. The platform is a clear winner for higher ed marketing professionals involved in external relations—areas like advocacy and fundraising. After all, no social media platform provides a higher concentration of high wage earners, and its focus on users’ professional lives gives the college’s content a better chance to reach these audience members when they are in the appropriate mindset. In addition, LinkedIn may be an excellent platform for reaching adult learners interested in completing a postsecondary credential, whethera certification or associate degree from a community college or a graduate degree from a university. Being more established in their career path, there’s a good chance they use LinkedIn and they’re likely to recognize the value of a college education in improving their employability and earnings potential.

For many higher ed marketers, however, this represents a small component of their work. If your true imperative is reaching younger prospects, it’s important to remember that many of them—especially those still in high school—simply don’t have LinkedIn on their radar, regardless of the platform’s attempts to woo them. LinkedIn, it seems, doesn’t become relevant to the majority of us until our career goals are clearly in focus. This means LinkedIn’s longstanding age restriction, it seems, was less an impediment to growing a younger audience and more an acceptance of the inevitable.

There absolutely are exceptions to this. You won’t have to look to hard to find the occasional ambitious 15 year old, for example, who’s already using LinkedIn to make connections and chart a career path. However, one of the most critical aspects of using social media well is the discipline to know that potential is the enemy of likely—while everything has potential to work, that is, what matters most is what’s most likely to work. For higher ed marketing professionals, then, the potential in the new LinkedIn should remain just that—potential—until it proves its worth with the specific audiences they serve.

Small business owners: a LinkedIn resource just for you

 

If you’re a small business owner wondering how to get more out of LinkedIn, there’s a new site exclusively for you.

The LinkedIn Small Business Resource Center includes tips on personal branding, marketing, sales, and hiring–and as you’d expect, there are also an ample number of plugs for paid LinkedIn products. For an overview, read this post by Harsh Mohan.

How to use LinkedIn to Build New Relationships: my guest post on the ALDE blog

 

“Handshake – Hard Times” by Spot Us on Flickr

 

In February, I presented at the Association of Lutheran Development Executives International Conference in Jacksonville, Florida. One of my topics was how to use LinkedIn to build relationships. To recap my presentation, I’ve written two guest posts for the ALDE blog that cover both enhancing existing relationships and building new relationships. The latter was published last week and can be viewed here.

 

 

Quick Tip Tuesday: How to block a LinkedIn user

Late last month, LinkedIn announced a much-awaited feature: the ability to block other users. While blocking has long been standard on most social media sites, LinkedIn was one the few remaining holdout…until now.

So, how do you block a LinkedIn user? Start by going to his or her profile. If he or she is not a current connection, click on the down arrow to the right of the “Send [User] InMail” button (see below) and select “Block or report”:

If the user is a current connection, choose the down arrow to the right of the “Send a message” button, and choose “Block or report.” You’ll be prompted with a dialog box that looks like this (I’ve omitted the user’s details, of course):

Check the box to the left of “Block,” click on “Continue,” and follow the prompts from there.

It’s also important to consider why you might block someone. There are a few obvious examples, but I’m interested in your thoughts. What would prompt you to block someone instead of just hiding them, disconnecting from them, or never connecting with them in the first place? Share your thoughts in the comments.

This is how most people use LinkedIn

Remember, if you want to get more out of LinkedIn, establishing a profile and making connections is the start, not the finish.

Quick tip Tuesday: LinkedIn resources for college students

“Hire Me mortarboard” by John Reiser on Flickr

College seniors are about three months away from graduation, and that has many of them thinking more closely about their careers. One of the topics that’s likely on their minds is how they can get started or ramp up their efforts on LinkedIn. After all, it’s the social platform most likely to help them find opportunities and get traction in building professional relationships.

If this sounds like anyone you know, here are a few resources designed specifically to help students make the most of LinkedIn:

• “LinkedIn for Students” is pretty self-explanatory: a one stop shop for learning more about LinkedIn
• LinkedIn’s Higher Education page is worth a look, too, because it’s primarily targeted toward students
• “Conducting LinkedIn Profile Reviews with Students” is a resource for higher ed professionals, but students can use it as a checklist to make sure they’re telling the best possible story on LinkedIn 
• “Jobs for Students and Recent Graduates” is exactly what it sounds like. It includes opportunities that employers have identified as appropriate for those just out of–or in some cases still in–school
• “Start Mapping Your Career With LinkedIn Alumni” is a blog post designed to help students learn how to connect with those who have graduated from the same institution
• “Introducing New Profile Sections Designed for Students” is another relevant blog post
• LinkedIn Job Seeker webinars provide job search tips (these are available every few weeks)

Finally, it’s worth checking with your college’s Career Services department to see whether they have a LinkedIn group or other resources. Most Career Services staff are eager to help, and their services are free–a great perk to take advantage of before turning your tassel.

Three Ways to use LinkedIn to Enhance Your Existing Relationships: my guest post on the ALDE blog

I’m writing a series of guest posts for the Association of Lutheran Development Executives blog in advance of my presentations at their 2014 annual conference in Florida. The first is called “Three Ways to use LinkedIn to Enhance Your Existing Relationships,” and you can read it here. How are YOU using LinkedIn to make good relationships even better?

Rapportive helps Gmail users make relevant LinkedIn connections

Every day, you access a great source of additional LinkedIn connections: your email inbox. There’s a good chance that many of the people who send you email would be good additions to your network, but you may miss the opportunity thinking you’re already connected or just because LinkedIn is out of sight, and therefore out of mind. If you’d like to change that, and you’re a Gmail user, it’s worth taking a look at Rapportive.

Rapportive, which was purchased by LinkedIn in 2012, gives you a snapshot of an email sender’s social media profiles–including, of course, LinkedIn–from within Gmail. That means you can see at a glance whether you’re connected to a given sender and you can start the connection process right from Gmail. Rapportive provides information about more than just LinkedIn: you can also see whether you’re connected to a sender on Facebook or whether you’re following him or her on Twitter–and you can even see the sender’s latest Tweets. Rapportive also allows you to add notes about a given connection that only you can see, much like the LinkedIn Contacts app.

Here’s an example (see screen capture below): Jon Nelson had emailed me the other day, and I noticed he and I weren’t connected (see red arrow). I clicked on the “connect” button, and Rapportive allowed me to customize the message.

Is it likely that I would have connected with Jon had I not installed Rapportive? Possibly.  But using Rapportive reminded me of the opportunity a lot more quickly than I would have realized on my own.

Want to learn more about Rapportive? Check it out here–and let me know what you think.

StayFocusd helps you change bad habits–and spend more productive time on LinkedIn

Bad habits: we all have them. As you get a little older, you realize the key isn’t eliminating them entirely. It’s more a matter of finding ways to mitigate them and steal back some time and energy for things that really are worthwhile.

That’s why I love the Google Chrome plug-in StayFocusd, an app designed to limit your time on certain websites. You’ll notice I didn’t say “eliminate” time on certain websites: part of the genius of StayFocusd is that you still can give in to the occasional urge to check out Facebook photos, watch YouTube videos, or check out the latest headlines on The Onion. However, by limiting your time on those sites, you’ll do so much less often–and be more aware of how often that temptation kicks in.

Here’s the catch, though: any time you avoiding spending on one time-sucking, unproductive website can easily be reallocated to another time-sucking, unproductive website–unless you have a plan. And that’s where LinkedIn comes in.

I’ve written before about how you can use LinkedIn effectively in just 10 minutes a day. Chances are, some of you reading this post already devote that much time to LinkedIn every day–maybe even more. However, there are probably some of you who don’t, and who have been trying to find the time to make it work.

You probably see where this is going.

So here’s a simple solution: take an honest look at how you spend your time on the web (there’s an app for that, too), and then use StayFocusd to reel it in. Maybe spend 10 fewer minutes on Facebook or Twitter and commit to spending that time on LinkedIn instead. Don’t assume it will be easy at first–you may even need to put an “appointment” with LinkedIn on your daily calendar–but know it is possible. All it takes is a little discipline…and a little help from your friends at StayFocusd.

3 ways to thank your LinkedIn connections

“Thank you” by Avard Woolaver on Flickr.

This time of year, nearly everyone–even unsentimental old cusses like me–gives some thought to what they’re grateful for. And if you’ve had any success at work in the past eleven months, there are probably a few professional connections on your “to thank” list.

Depending on the relationship, some of them will undoubtedly deserve a substantial gift or gesture. But what about the people you’d like to acknowledge without breaking the bank or overloading your schedule? There are three ways LinkedIn can help:

1. Endorsements. I’m not the biggest fan of LinkedIn endorsements, but they do have some value–especially when given to connections who don’t yet have many of them. Being among the first to give a connection a deserved endorsement will likely stand out more than one given to someone who’s expertise has already been well acknowledged by other LinkedIn users. Those just starting a career may be good candidates for this.

2. Recommendations. How do you properly thank those who already have dozens of endorsements? Give them a LinkedIn recommendation instead. Because it takes more effort to make recommendations, they tend to be better appreciated. Look for connections who have zero or only a couple recommendations and take the time to acknowledge what they do well.

3.Introductions. What can you give the LinkedIn connection who seems to have it all? Introduce them to someone in your network who may be in the market for their services or who may be a resource to them. Choose “share profile” on a connection’s profile to make the introduction, or download his or her profile as a PDF and email it to someone else. Either way, you’ll be helping two people in the same amount of time it would take you to help one.

The best thing about taking the time to thank your connections is that it doesn’t take much time at all–especially when you consider the potential upside in improved relationships. It’s yet another example of how, as the saying goes, it’s better to give than to receive.