Linking The World to China

The social software site LinkedIn has proved its worth to me here in China, and so has OpenBC, but not to the same extent. These social software sites offer subscribers a chance to connect with literally millions of people, which has to be said is not everyoneís first priority.

Here are my takeaways for getting the most out of LinkedIn with the least effort on your part:

1. Join LinkedIn and set your preference for maximum exposure. Let everyone connect to you and allow them to see all your connections. Welcome everyone and wrap your arms around the world. Donít worry, this is only temporary, weíre going to go on lock down later.

2. Find the LinkedIn Top 50 users and link to the the Top 10 using the Add Them As a Connection function. None of them will refuse you and it only takes about 20 minutes because they show you their email address. Now you have a huge base of people.

3. After a few days, during which time you do your real work, take a look at your database of people and decide if you want to go forward. Is this interesting? Can you see a lot more people in your target area? If so link to the remaining 40 people.

4. Wait a week and see how things have changed. More interesting? If so continue.

5. Look at the connections of the Top 50 and choose the ones that have high connections. Ignore the rest. Spend a certain amount of time connecting to these people and then stop.

6. Now change your settings so that your privacy is set at a higher level. You decide the level. Close off your connections to other LinkedIn users and only allow them to see your shared connections.

7. Identify your areas of interest. It could be Russia and the plastic injection industry, or Japan and the automotive industry. Find people in this area and ask them to connect to you. Ignore everyone else.

8. Finally, look inside your own contact base (you could even do this earlier). This is the set of people that you have a direct connection to ie. an email address. Invite them all to link to you.

9. Continue as needed. Now you have a very large base of people to connect to but you will not have been inundated with requests to connect while you built this base. Nor will you in the future.

10. If you have a blog, you might consider connecting it to Jaxtr so you can link your existing phone(s) to your LinkedIn profile. The phone number stays private so it is consistent with the approach detailed above. Now people who visit your profile can call you from all over the world for free. Amazingly, even if they call you from their mobile phone, to your mobile phone. Itís in beta but you can join here.

Tip ëO the Hat to Shally Steckerl for the directions to LinkedIn Top 50 and for inspiring my LinkedIn journey.

By Frank Mulligan