Guy Kawasaki Pimps LinkedIn.com

How is that for title Guy? Perhaps not professional enough, but “pimp” as a verb has entered the popular parlance and it doesn’t have so much of a negative connotation as it did when Iceberg Slim titled his novel.

Bonus points for unexpected literary reference.

10 Ways to Use LinkedIn by Guy Kawasaki

I wrote about this before when I read about it in my RSS feeds in Opera. However I stuck it in a comment on a previous post about LinkedIn. So today I go to LinkedIn.com and right below the menu bar is a text link to Guy’s post on how to make the best use of LinkedIn. I’m not sure how many people read the comments I sometimes add to my own posts as follow up information.

Since I revisited MyBlogLog I haven’t noticed a huge surge of traffic but I now have faces and names and identities to put with some of my more casual readers. I still think your core blog reading base is in your RSS subscribers. This is what Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba stated was the best indicator of a quality blog, funnily enough I think they said that in another Guy Kawasaki post.

It seems I’ve become a card carrying member of the Guy Kawasaki fan club. It is all the fault of two of my teachers at the Sauder School of Business, actually they were full time VCs at Chrysalix, they made “The Art of the Start” an optional text book for our venture capital class.

Professional Social Networking

Now that older, I’ve once again resolved to be more positive and professional in my writing. After all I’ve passed all three CFA® exams so can I do anything less? You can’t change the past, but I have to not dwell on it as much. Even with all the complications I’ve managed to acquire over a 100 LinkedIn contacts, I could have had more, but it is quality not quantity. I’ve discussed this with Ian Christie, who was an early advocate of both LinkedIn and blogging among professionals. ‘Leafs’ are your friends and business associates who join LinkedIn but they just aren’t that keen at networking so have no contacts but you, the even less keen don’t sign up.

I’ve also written how I invited someone a year or two ago when I was trying to expand my network and they never joined, but they must have gotten a few more invites from other people. I only send one request, if they don’t respond, I don’t hassle them. Maybe I’ll remind them of it next time I talk to them, but I don’t resend requests. Anyway these people I’d almost forgotten I invited got nagged by someone other than me into joining and the system remembers my invite and voila 100 contacts.

Growing your Network

Another thing I discussed with Ian Christie was my thinking on a critical mass. Maybe it is 47 or 58 or maybe it is 100 but if your network grows significantly large and had enough quality connections in it, people would eventually ask to join it. Five hundred may be the magic number but some people are “open networkers” and they will let anyone join their network trying to acquire thousands of random contacts.

Contact should be people you know. Old classmates from my undergrad days have found me in LinkedIn and I’ve found a few that way too. It helps to have a memorable name, that is what I told Saskia. You don’t forget the only Saskia you’ve ever met.

I was a bit ahead of the curve on LinkedIn. I made my profile public. I put the link to my profile on my blog. I invited select people early then sat back and watched my network grow organically without loading my entire address book and bulk emailing people. I also personalized all my invites and tried to invite people I was close to and trusted.

LinkedIn doesn’t work unless you keep your profile up to date and actually respond to emails. Maybe a few of my ‘leafs‘ who are also casual blog readers, will be inspired by Guy Kawasaki to improve their profile and strengthen their network. Peter Chow also encouraged our class to not forget LinkedIn and to stay in touch. Peter Chow tries, he helped a lot of people including Damien who suffered a tragic loss during our MBA program.

LinkedIn is also being used as a verb, like Google. I’ve used it that way since the start of my MBA program. This is really beneficial for a brand and is a result of choosing a good brand/company/domain name.

Now it is twelve years later and I have less enthusiasm for social networking and I eventually purged every single Sauder MBA classmate from my LinkedIn network and life, they just kept hurting me long after there was any point other than spite or apathy. They still haven’t realized the price I’ve paid, but considering how often I’ve been unemployed since completing my MBA, I’m well aware of the price of trusting and going out of your way to help the wrong person.

If you have thoughts on LinkedIn you can leave them below.

This entry was originaly posted on January 10th, 2007, it was last edited on February 23rd, 2019 and is filed under: Technology and tagged: Guy Kawasaki, Ian Christie, LinkedIn, MBA, Networking.