That was just one of many tips shared by Anita Windisman of One of a Kind Marketing at a meeting Feb. 1 of the IABC/Toronto Professional Independent Communicators. An early adopter who joined the network just five months after it launched, Anita once introduced herself to a LinkedIn executive as member number 34,435. That’s early, considering there are now more than 120 135 million members!

To put it bluntly, if you’re not on LinkedIn, you don’t exist, Anita told the group. “It isn’t the sexiest tool, but it is the most useful,” she said. It’s great for personal branding, maintaining an up-to-date contact database, identifying decision-makers, and helping rank your company higher in Google searches.

Anita advised the group to be active and visible on LinkedIn, using these 10 tips for optimizing LinkedIn profiles:

1. Upload a great photo. “Great” means a head and shoulders shot with a neutral background where you are smiling and dressed in business attire.
2. Write a compelling headline. Don’t just put a title and company name. You have 120 characters to create a sound bite that conveys the value you offer. This is also a place where you want key words that help you turn up in searches.
3. Tell your story in your summary. You have 2,000 characters (although as Barb Sawyers pointed out, you’d be doing readers a favour by taking fewer). Write in the first person (“I”). Use key words. Be conversational. Showcase your expertise without boasting. Avoid the most overused buzzwords like creative, motivated and extensive experience.
4. Add your current position, making sure to describe it with key words and two or three accomplishments. Note that you can now have multiple current positions, and you can drag and drop to put the one you want listed first.
5. Add any volunteer positions. Recruiters look kindly on this! It also opens up conversations.
6. Add your education. This is great for networking because it opens up alumni connections. Anita has her MBA listed here because many people use this as a search qualifier.
7. Customize your links. Don’t list the generic “website” but brand it with your company name (choose profile > website > edit).
8. Personalize your public profile URL. The default has a bunch of numbers and letters. Make yours clean and crisp by personalizing it (profile > public profile > edit). If your name is common, add your middle initial or some other identifier.
9. Add certifications and credentials under profile> edit profile > add sections.
10. Add skills. You can have up to 50, but aim for 12-15 (who is good at 50?).

Once your profile is in good shape, work on building  your network:

• It’s not a popularity contest or a numbers game; only add people you know and trust.
• When asking to connect with someone, use “we’ve done business together” rather than “friend.”
• Be sure to personalize any requests to connect with how you know the person or where you met or who you have in common.
• To use your connections for prospecting, search for the person you want to reach, and see how you are connected. Rather than use the LinkedIn tools, though, pick up the phone and call your connection.
• Check in once a day. Be sociable, share business-related updates, comment on other people’s updates.

Anita also told the group that company pages are underused, and this is also a good option if you don’t have a website. If you add a company page, link it to your personal page under websites. Anita considers Microsoft an example of a company page done well.

For more on LinkedIn:

• Donna Papacosta’s summary of tweets from the session
• Tips from a PIC meeting last year about LinkedIn
• LinkedIn Q&A about use

Recommended reading:

• Tom Peters, “The Brand Called You,” Fast Company (on the importance of branding)
• Keith Ferrazzi, Never Eat Alone (on building a strong network)

True, that frequency has taken a beating since I started the online BA that’s still in progress. Blogging is the first to go out the window when I’m busy. Still, I’m trying to do a better job of collecting my thoughts by jotting down quick ideas and finding possible photos and illustrations ahead of time.

The category “word cloud” on the right reveals that I talk a lot about words and communications, both worlds where I basically spend my days. I also like to share writing tips and post about the independent life, social media, marketing and life in general. And I just can’t resist the occasional “general nonsense” that often includes fun with (what else) words.

What I have learned from keeping up my own blog and reading and responding to others:

• If you like a blog post enough to retweet it, why not take the time to comment on the blog first? We can look at our stats and see which posts are more popular, but unless readers comment, we don’t necessarily know what struck a chord.
• Blogging is a great way to meet and get to know people, especially if you take the time to comment and get into discussions with others.
• It’s okay to let people know you’ve written a new blog post (on Twitter, for instance), but in my opinion, it’s better to let your readers point to it on their own rather than asking people to retweet it unless it’s a type of public service announcement.
• To paraphrase Mark Twain‘s famous comment, reports of the demise of blogs has been greatly exaggerated.

Thank you to the people who have taken the time to read what I’ve written and comment here on the blog or when I’ve seen you in person. It means a lot.

Oh, and happy 5th anniversary to fellow blogger and strategic communications planning expert Les Potter, ABC. We met after cosmically starting our blogs about the same time before meeting in person at an IABC conference, and I am now privileged to call him friend.

Photo credit: Rawich and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Professional organizer Deanne Kelleher has seen it all before, and blames our disorganization for the headaches caused when we can’t find a file. Who wants to admit to the client on the phone that you’re frantically searching for the file being discussed, and you can’t find it?

Deanne’s advice at the January 12 meeting of IABC/Toronto’s Professional Independent Communicators boils down to three points:

1. Group like items. Pull in all those files on the desktop and tucked away in email and on USB keys and put them in the same location. For instance, a folder named “Clients” might have sub-folders for prospective, current active and recent customers.
2. Create naming conventions, write them down and stick to them. Decide what the categories are that you need to capture in the name (date, brand, model and so on). Work from the general to the specific and use an underscore for clear definition between words (division_department_workorder_number). Document the process in an operations manual.
3. Don’t “over folder” — that is, keep the quantity of folders down.

While much of Deanne’s advice was specific to the PC world, she suggested that Mac users could be more organized, too, rather than relying too much on the Mac’s handy “spotlight” search feature. And for both groups, remember to regularly back up your files!

As for the ever-growing problem of email overload, Deanne’s tips included:

• Schedule dealing with email into your day.
• Have a system that assigns mail to folders.
• Create similar folder names in your in-box and filing cabinets for easy retrieval.
• Create a “to read” folder and a “throw this out but not yet” folder.
• Speed reading and skimming are helpful.

While Deanne is all about being organized, she encouraged the group to customize what we do with our files to how we work. “Rigidity is not a healthy place to live,” she said.

 Photo credit: Michal Marcol and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Between booking the trip and heading to the airport, however, I found out that a major school project would be due the day after my return, for which the professor would not grant an extension. A group project in the other class was due the day I left, and two other papers were due as soon as I got home. Gulp!

Around the same time, entrepreneur Peter Shankman — founder of Help A Reporter Out — blogged about people who comment that they are “jealous” when he travels. He says, “They were jealous that I took the trip. As if they couldn’t.”

He went on to bust the top six reasons people say they can’t take a trip or  “jailbreak” their lives: no money, job doesn’t allow it, friends won’t understand, wife and kids, scared, don’t have time. All excuses:

“If you really want to make more time to do the things you ‘have’ to do, thus allowing you to do more of the things you ‘want’ to do, you need to do a few things differently,” he says.

There were reasons not to go on that trip, but I had plenty of reasons to go on that trip, too, and I did. And you know what? The prof miraculously gave the whole class an extension on one of the assignments, I negotiated an extra day on another, all projects got done on time, and I had a great trip.

As I’ve blogged about before about the need for balance, work will always be there, but the choices you have may not be. Don’t miss them. So next time you’re wishing you could do something but don’t think you can, think again. Are you sure?

Image credit: Arvind Balaraman and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Well, maybe it does want to keep me, although that isn’t clear.

I went to the website to check options because I had been thinking of getting a competitor’s paper on just one day. Did it make sense to stop the other paper for that day or just leave the suscription as it was? While checking prices, I discovered that new subscribers — not yet VALUED subscribers — could get the paper for half price for six months.

I called to ask politely why VALUED subscribers weren’t offered a similar deal. Eventually I was able to get  half price for four months if I paid with automatic monthly billing. But why did I have to ask?

Meanwhile, I’ve let a magazine subscription lapse, although I’m wavering. To encourage me to renew, the magazine just sent me a promise to send me a free cookbook as part of the Special Renewal Savings Rate.

If we as subscribers and customers are so valued and appreciated, why aren’t companies stepping up to SHOW us that appreciation with the goodies they dangle in front of people who aren’t yet customers? Why do they wait until we hear that someone else got a cheaper rate, a bonus something, a sweeter deal? Why do they make us call and demand better treatment, the same treatment a prospective customer would get?

I know, it’s a sign of the times. A sad sign, to be sure.

Image credit: Salvatore Vuono and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Correct the malapropisms, where one word is used mistakenly for another, like “I was prostate with grief” vs. “I was prostrate with grief.”

Make a word as fast as possible with the tiles given in Scrabble Sprint. (Apologies for the addictive nature of this!)

Find all the food-related words in the puzzles with Eat Your Words.

How strong is your vocabulary? Can you tell the difference between a bunker or the rough on a golf course, or recognize a board game as Kendo or Go? Show your stuff in Name That Thing.

Enjoy!

Image credit: digitalart and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

So I can only be jealous that Daphne Gray-Grant, the Publication Coach, again achieved her goal of reading 52 books over a year. (Here’s her list of recommendations.)

Between Daphne’s recommendations, suggestions from friends and ones I’ve heard about, my “books to read” list is now close to 100 books. With school continuing to mid-July, my work is cut out for me.

Are you a book reader? Do you track how many books you read?

Image credit: jscreationzs and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

1. How to get paid what you’re worth
2. What an unpaid bill says about you
3. Some tips for following up
4. Marketing on a tight budget
5. 20 things I’ve learned in 20 years
6. 10 tips to network like a pro
7. Outreach doesn’t have to be pushy
8. It’s like magic: referrals help you diversify
9. How freelancers can use LinkedIn
10. Freelancing 101 tips
11. Tips to regain your daily focus

Thanks for visiting the Red Jacket Diaries in 2011, and here’s to a great 2012 for all of us!

Image credit: Salvatore Vuono and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Having reached a short holiday break, I can see clearly something I’ve not done very well, and maybe you aren’t very good at this, either. It may be difficult to do when juggling the many components of your life — work, friends, family, maybe school, a social life — yet it’s so critical to keeping some perspective and really living your life.

I’m talking about CELEBRATING.

Life is fleeting. We need to recognize and celebrate and cherish each moment. Every effort, every achievement, deserves at least a brief acknowledgment: “I’ve completed this task in spite of all the obstacles; well done.”

So take a minute to acknowledge the effort required to get you where you are. Whether it’s mastering Julia Child’s beef bourguignon, or learning the rhumba, or finishing a multi-page analysis of newspaper coverage of increasing gun violence in Canada, or just making it through another year, our achievements are worth celebrating. Cheers to us!

Champagne cork image: Matt Banks and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

< A message in my in-box today.