I recently attended a Linked In training course to ensure I’m making the best use of its capability.  The facilitator, Mark Williams known as Mr LinkedIn (mark@etn-training.co.uk) is one of only 3 Trainers in the world to have been previously accredited by LinkedIn and the only one from the UK.  He explained in plain language how to use (and not use) LinkedIn, the benefits, the dangers and potential of this fast-growing networking facility.

Currently there are 150+m users worldwide (c 9m in the UK) and this is increasing at approximately 1m per week (40k/month in the UK).  See  www.mrlinkedin.wordpress.com  for more breakdown on these impressive statistics.

Like many people, I have been on LinkedIn for some time now, so my main objective for attending was to ensure my profile was fit for purpose and ensure I am making the most of the opportunities! One of my primary reasons for using LinkedIn is to enable potential clients to view my profile and determine if I have the credentials to train their work force.

With more and more potential clients using Linked in as a vetting tool, this is becoming key for many people. 

10 key things I discovered;

• The importance of using key words in your headline (so people can immediately see your area of expertise as well as for optimisation purposes)
• Ensure you include vital information such as email/contact details clearly in your summary
• Ensuring recommendations are from the right people- people who can genuinely recommend you
• Look at whether you can expand your specialities (to aid optimisation again)
• Add buttons so that people can follow you and find you through other means eg  twitter
• Ensure you engage with people before you ask them to connect and personalise your invite – why should someone connect with you if they know nothing about you or how it might help them?
• Use the statistics available to see what traffic you have to your profile
• Explore other tools such as LinkedIn Signal to gather market intelligence (including outside of your network).  Look under the News tab to find this.
• Join appropriate groups to access information, current hot topics and access new contacts
• Include a suitable business-like photo (not a holiday snap!)*

*If you don’t include a photo and you ask someone to connect that you met some time ago, how will they remember who you are?

If you are on LinkedIn, you want people to find you, that’s the whole point! Investing some time making sure your profile is effective could pay dividends.

For more blogs and guidance on using social media appropriately click here 

There is currently a heated debate raging in the HR community about whether organisations should have a Social media policy. Neil Morrison Group HR director at Random house sparked the debate by insisting that using a social media policy demonstrated a lack of trust in employees. Many have responded that it is about giving people clarity rather than being patronising.

We would agree with that view. Generally people in a work environment want boundaries – they want to know what is expected of them and where the lines are. This extends to many areas of behaviour at work, not just use of social media. Having a policy provides that guidance.

One comment made was that what you call the policy doesn’t matter; you just need to be sensible. We wholeheartedly agree with being sensible – we have been advocating a common sense approach in these blogs for a while – but actually we do think the language you use and what you call the policy makes a difference

Even using the word Policy may distance the people it is meant to relate to – “Guidelines” has less of a dogmatic ring to it. If the content is written in plain language with examples that relate to day to day activities, it will sound less legalese. It’s about ensuring it does what it says on the tin. For example, if you call a policy about appropriate behaviour “Dignity at work” (which many organisations do) does that tell people it is about appropriate behaviour or suggest it is more about equal opportunities policies?

Working a great deal with organisations in this area we were interested to see what terms our clients used – so we have been asking them. We suspected that while we call support in this area Managing Appropriate Workplace Behaviour, managers would use other terms and the results have been very interesting. Many will use the words that reflect the situation as they see it eg dealing with office banter, managing difficult people, conflict in teams. That has been a very helpful insight for us in terms of marketing our support in these areas. But it also underlines that getting the language and terms right when you communicate with your audience is key.

So we don’t agree with Neil Morrison – companies should have policies, but they should think about how to word them and how to communicate them so that they are meaningful.