Six Tools to Quickly Create Your Social Network on the Internet!
Let’s summary some of our recent posts on the tools you can use within Linkedin to build a social network quickly and easily. The Linkedin program is a social networking program specially designed for business people. It lacks the size of today’s popular social networks like Facebook. However, with 35 million participants it is still very robust. As a participant, you can use Linkedin software to build an on-line network easily and quickly. Here are six Linkedin tools that will save you time and effort in building your digital network. More importantly, it gives you control over the entire process!
Import Your Contact (March 28, 2009) Using the Add Connection icon in Linkedin, you can import your email addresses from your Outlook program as well as email servers like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and others.
Linkedin will import a complete list of your emails and addresses from these programs. You select the people you want to invite to your network. You can use a standard Linkedin invitation or create your own, more personalized invitation to join. With one click you can send email invitations to all your selected contacts.
Download the Outlook Tool Bar (April 4, 2009) You can integrate your Linkedin program with an Outlook Tool Bar. What will this do? Once you have this tool bar, every email you receive through Outlook will indicate in the upper right hand corner of the email if the person is already on the Linkedin program. Click on this icon and you can immediately send an invitation to join your Linkedin network. I have done this with emails I have received from some of the leading experts in my field. It takes only a minute to generate the invitation right from Outlook. Now you have opportunity to connect with some of the best experts in your industry and invite them to be part of your network.
Invite Colleagues and School People (April 6, 2009) When you compete your Profile in Linkedin you add information about the companies where you have worked and the schools where you have attended. Using the Add Connection tab, Linkedin will search its data base to find matches for people who are associated with the same companies or who attended the same school as you. You decide which colleagues or school people you want to invite into your network.
Manual Invitations (April 8, 2009) You can use a manual form of inviting others to join your network. You create an invitation message and use Linkedin to send it to six people at a time. Repeat this process as often as you like.
Groups (April 12, 2009) The Linkedin program has hundred of groups–people who join together around a common theme or issue. When you join a Linkedin Group, you now have access to thousands of other like minded people who are already members in that group. With these group members, you have the opportunity to both, give and receive from others; show your expertise as well as get more exposure for your business from a group of people who have your same interests at heart.
Recycle Your Invitations For a variety of reasons, not everyone will respond to a first invitation to join your network. You may want to invite them a second time. Inside of your Linked Profile, you can click on “Sent” items. There you can find out whom you have invited and the current status of the invitation, Pending, Accepted, etc. You can decide if you want to resend an invitation.
Conclusion
To do you see how easily and quickly you can use this Linkedin to proactively build a your own network of people? It doesn’t have to be time consuming or laborious. It can be a process you control. Check out Linkedin at www.linkedin.com.
To be continued, your comments are welcomed…
Al Hanzal
www.successfulmarketingtools.com/wordpressblog
