How to build Silicon Valley (or not!)

Using social networks to build a world-class technological pole

When I first started to think about how I would build the next Silicon Valley, it didn’t take much time for me to realize that I missed several things to make this project a big success. I would need lots of contacts, money to travel around the world, solid partners, access to venture capital, reputable experts in many fields, political will, infrastructures and more. I also needed a way to get the word out, a way to tell everybody that this was happening and that I wanted them to be a part of it. As I was trying to figure out how to do that, I suddenly remembered that I had a LinkedIn account that could be put to some good use. I studied the site thoroughly and decided to investigate what the top linked people were doing to grow their network. In this page, you will find the strategies I employed to surround myself with business superstars that help me make better decisions every day.

What is LinkedIn?

If you are here, chances are we already met on this site. But if it’s not the case, allow me to tell you a little bit more about this fantastic service and what it can do for you.

Here are some facts:

• LinkedIn is a social network where you can interact freely with millions of people;
• Like other social networks, it relies on viral marketing to grow: you basically invite your contacts to join your network and are, in return, granted to contact theirs;
• What differentiates LinkedIn from other platforms is that it is primarily intended for businessmen and professionals, recruiters and job seekers… So, you won’t be able to post a picture of your dog there;
• You can think of it as a virtual board of commerce;
• It is very straightforward and easy to use.

 
And some advantages…

• It’s quicker. You don’t have to travel the country to attend conferences, lunches and never ending meetings to get acquainted with people. It is there and full of activity 24/7, no matter why you need it.
• It’s international. Want to speak with a decision maker in India, China or London? No problem: it’s just a matter of a few clicks. A lot of people around the world will learn about you and what you do without ever spending a dime.
• It’s useful. On LinkedIn, you have access to many of the best experts on any given subject. I have had some of my questions answered very intelligently within 2 minutes. In fact, that is how I came to use WordPress for this blog.
• It’s profitable. There are a lot of leads and opportunities to be discovered on this network. Build your business and your connections at the same time!
• It’s free. Most of us wouldn’t invest in our own personal branding. Because of its scale and because its free, this tool could give you a real competitive advantage when branding your name and accomplishments.

 
There are many other advantages, but I’ll let you have the pleasure to discover them by yourself.

How to build the ultimate LinkedIn network that will grow by itself

A lot of strategies can be used to build a strong network that will begin to grow by itself after a little while. These are the ones I tried, hope they can do you some good.

STRATEGY #1 – Having a strategy

Now, when you join a social network, you have to realize that you are there to market yourself, your business, products or services. You wouldn’t open a new office in Tokyo without a strategy, right? So why would you do it here? Decide what you want to accomplish for yourself and then, align every action and every single bit of text that you write toward that goal. Think about this, if I was to ask you what you were doing for a living, what would you answer me? Would you be able to make me understand it and differentiate yourself from your competition in less than 25 words? Practice your “elevator speech” and use it everywhere on your profile and in your interactions with people on LinkedIn.

STRATEGY #2 – Make a good impression

The most efficient way you have to communicate and get acquainted to other people on social networks is through text. More specifically, through your profile. Would you wear jeans in a ballroom? No? Well, try to be respectful of your fellow networkers by spell checking and correcting the information you publish, making them complete, useful and representative of who you are. The objective here is not to build a self-promoting brochure but to win the trust of others. Be professional, look and sound as credible as you can. If you want to know what it “feels” like to stumble upon a good profile on LinkedIn, check out Andrew ‘Flip’ Filipowsky’s.

STRATEGY #3 – Make yourself accessible

If you were alone in the woods and nobody knew where you were, how many visitors a week would you get? A profile without an email address and keywords is a lot like this. I have a free membership on LinkedIn and every introduction costs me one of my five credits. Therefore, I reserve them for highly targeted profiles. However, when someone clearly indicates that they are open to new connections, that their email address just sits there and that their profile looks somewhat interesting, I usually invite them to join my network immediately. Also, if you work in a technical field like me, you might want to list the abilities you possess one by one. It could be programming languages you know, customers you’ve worked with, movies you’ve produced and so on. These abilities will turn into keywords that will enable recruiters and customers to find you more easily. One last note: until LinkedIn is translated, for God’s sake please don’t write your profile in Russian! I am a French Canadian in Rome, doing what the Romans do.

STRATEGY #4 – Get recommended

Ok, now, LinkedIn will walk you through this part but I just wanted to stress the importance of getting recommended. Your profile on a social network is a lot like a web site on a search engine: the ones at the top of the list get more visits and make more money. On LinkedIn, you can order the search results by “Degrees away from you”, “Degrees and recommendations”, “Number of connections” and “Keyword relevance”. If you want to make the top of the list often it means that: (1) you want to be directly connected with as many people as possible (especially “hubs” as they have a lot of acquaintances), (2) you want A LOT of recommendations, (3) you want to include the right keywords in your profile (more about this later). If you are thinking: “Well, I already asked everyone I trust to recommend me and they did, I now have [x] recommendations”, you probably wonder what to do next as well. The answer is: provide something of value to them (for example, this page) and ask for their recommendation. As your network builds up and you help these people, you will get more and more. Professional networking is a two way street, always remember to give more than you take. In two words: recommend first.

STRATEGY #5 – Using the right tools

Believe me, the activity on LinkedIn can get overwhelming: there are many opportunities to uncover but if you don’t follow them, they will do you no good. Unfortunately, most social networks do not provide the tools that you need to do an amazing job so you will have to get them yourself. I use a special home brewed software called “Convergence” to manage my LinkedIn activities. I suggest you make your life easier too by finding the combination of softwares that is right for you. You basically need: a contact manager, a planner, a mailer, a blog and a website (if you want to go hardcore). The minimum you should get is a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) that usually include a contact manager, a planner, a mailer and more. SugarCRM and vTiger are two great Free Open Source Softwares CRMs that I would recommend. If you want to grow a large network, get yourself a mass mailer: phplist and OpenEMM are not bad although I find them a bit too complicated to install. Finally, for blogging you already know what I am using (WordPress) but I hear that Blogger and Typepad are also very good. The website will be primarily used to present your products and services so you might as well use the one you already got. Export your LinkedIn contact list, import it into your CRM and you’ll be all set to use LinkedIn at a professional level.

STRATEGY #6 – Connect with people you know already

This is the easiest part. Go get your address book, your business cards, your school yearbooks and come back. Got them? Alright. Now, simply do a search on LinkedIn for everyone you know or once knew and invite them to join your network. They are not on LinkedIn but you have their email address? Perfect! Use the “Expand your network” button at the top right of your screen and invite them all at once. If you have a good relationship with your customers and suppliers you should invite them as well. IMPORTANT: LinkedIn invitation might be perceived as spam by the individuals that are new to social networking. I suggest you take the time to write a description of the service and send it to them. Also tell them why you use it and what it can do for them. You will reduce your chances of the invitations being ignored. (You can use my “What is LinkedIn?” bit above if you want but please, give the address to my blog in return.)

STRATEGY #7 – Join associations of open networkers

The most obvious one would be the LinkedIn Open Networkers (LIONs) followed by TopLinked.com and MyLink500.com. Each site contains detailed instructions and tips that will tell you how you get the most from these associations. Usually, you will be able to find the email address of these members on their profile which makes it easier to connect. For starters, I suggest that you do a search on LinkedIn for, let’s say a chief technical officer that would also happen to be an Open Networker. Simply type: “lion cto”, hit the button and you should find many individuals to connect with. At the beginning, you should identify your customers, suppliers, partners and competitors industries and prioritize them: it will ensure a coherent growth of your network at the early stages. Open Networkers will basically give you access to millions of professionals: invite them by the hundreds. Note: if your network is still very small, you might not have access to any LIONs yet. If that is your case, visit the “Answers” section and look for LION participants. Alternatively, you can connect with me directly. I personally don’t think it is a good idea to write your affiliations in the name or headline fields as it will mess up imports and exports. Instead, add a job position or put it in your contact settings.

STRATEGY #8 – Join/Create your own LinkedIn groups

There is more to LinkedIn Groups than meets the eye. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of LinkedIn Groups available. Unfortunately, most of them are unofficial and are not listed on the web site. You should check the profiles of your connections for groups that suit you or, you can join them all! The main advantage of groups is that they link you with people outside of your network’s reach. They can also be used very effectively for targeted marketing. Try creating your own as I did with my “Friends of / Amis du Québec” group. It will bring people that share your needs or interests closer to you and you will have access to their email addresses. Some group owners set up web sites and mailing lists, if you do so, it would be wise to ask permission before you spam anyone.

STRATEGY #9 – Aim for quality within quantity

It is said that there is something fundamentally good inside each and everyone of us. The same is true of your network. By now, it should have grown to the point where you barely know anyone you’re connected with. Search within your network for people that you really want to meet, look who your friends are adding to their networks, search speakers you respect, authors you like and such. Then, simply invite them as you would invite anybody else but take special care to make your invitation meaningful, useful and pertinent. Ask people what you can do for them and they will help you in return. Get to know a few persons at a time by asking questions in “Answers” and inviting them on your blog or for a coffee. After a while, friendships will develop and the true power of your online network will be unleashed.

STRATEGY #10 – Capitalize on others popularity

If you’ve done all of the above correctly, one day you will run out of people to invite. So you should focus on getting others to invite you. How do you do that? One strategy would be to capitalize on others popularity. TopLinked.com (remember why you joined it?) publishes a list of the most connected LinkedIn members. They are easily the most “looked up” individuals on the network as well. So, take the first 25 names and add them to your profile somewhere. Their names will become keywords and you will appear in search results every time someone looks for them. You can do it with popular industries, widgets, competitors and even ice cream flavors: just make sure it is coherent with your “elevator speech”! This is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy that I highly recommend in the late stages.

STRATEGY #11 -Brand yourself

When you are amongst 19 million members (as of January the 8th 2008), it is hard to have your name remembered. Be seen frequently, be creative and different and chances are people will start to notice you. Then, you should do all you can to engage dialogs with them and nurture profitable relationships. There are many ways to “brand yourself” on LinkedIn but I would recommend the following three: (1) Ask questions, give researched answers, (2) Start a blog and invite your connections, (3) Associate with reputable members. Also look for the “WOW effect” in everything that you do. Send cards to your connections on their birthdays or on holidays, reply quickly, send flowers, again: dare to be different.

STRATEGY #12 – Do it all over again!

Just like a web site, your network’s strategy needs to be realigned and updated once in a while. So, start all over and: (1) revise your strategy, (2) look for ways to improve your profile, (3) add more ways to communicate with you, (4) get recommendations within your newly built relationships, (5) update your tools and be on the lookout for new ones, (6) go back to your business cards and invite more people, (7) find and join new associations, (8) create more LinkedIn groups or improve the way you manage existing ones (9) your network grew by itself, look for new quality connections within, (10) find out what’s hot and what’s not, (11) meet 20 people belly to belly everyday, (12) repeat step 1 to 11. Success is 100% guaranteed or your money back!

Conclusion

Wow, that certainly was more work that I expected. And so I hope that you will find some of the above information useful. If you did, I would appreciate your feedback in the form of a recommendation on LinkedIn. To do so, just visit my profile by clicking here and recommend me for the position “Power Networker at LinkedIn.com”. I will gladly do the same for you. Feel free to share your comments with more ways to build “The Ultimate LinkedIn Network”. Oh and what do you know? A hundred professionals joined my network while I was writing this!

Best of luck!

/mn

PS.: If you are convinced about the value of having a large network on LinkedIn but don’t have time to build it yourself, did you know that you could hire someone to do it for you? Click here to inquire.