 Howdy, so today I'm gonna talk about LinkedIn and I'm gonna talk about some of the pros of LinkedIn and some of the cons Now for those of you who don't know what LinkedIn is and come on. It's 2015. How do you not know what LinkedIn is? LinkedIn is basically a social media site for business. It's for people who Either are independent like me or maybe you have certain job skills You're looking for a new job or you're looking to meet other people who do what you do or Every once in a while you're looking to make connections with others either you know to to get another job or to hopefully make You know get business in essence. That's what it is So LinkedIn what it allows you to do is it allows you to set up a profile? You can set up your name You know what your business name or the position that you do you can write it up If you want to just like it's a resume But there's a few other cool things that you can do with it This is one of the pros by the way for instance on my LinkedIn page And I will put a link here so you can just go take a quick look at it if you want to But on my LinkedIn page, I highlight all the different things I do with my particular business right now I highlight groups that I belong to but I also have some videos on there So I have videos from this blog where I talk about well pretty much anything but mainly blogging and social media, whatever I Have videos from my business YouTube site where I talk about leadership and Healthcare finance issues and you know other things like that I have blog posts because I write for my consultants group So I have links to that and you see pictures and you know different things like that So that's something that's kind of neat that you can highlight if you're found in other spacers Such as blogs or if you've written articles for other people you can put those things on there Also, if you're able to get somebody to give you recommendations you can get those on your site So that's pretty cool and it's got this area about influencers that you know if you're influenced by Coca-Cola You can follow. I don't know why you'd be influenced by Coca-Cola But you know maybe you work for them or maybe you work in a company where you're looking to make their serve for them That doesn't work kids just to let you know anyway So that's one of the you know the big pros of it. You can write it as a resume, but you can be a little bit creative also Another one is that they have these different groups and some groups are specific to things such as blogging I'm thinking about starting a group about blogging and social media But there's other groups that have that some of them are for beginners and some of them are for people Who've been doing it a long time some groups are all about social media marketing So, you know, you have different things like that. I only belong to a few groups right now I have tested a lot and I will come back to that because that's also going to be part of the cons Now another thing you can do is you can write articles and you can put articles on there And if you're able to Basically be considered as an influencer You can get a lot of people who will you know look at your articles and you can post You know links from your some of your blogs or you know You post the content in there which works out a little bit better You can actually set something up so that if you have a blog post go live And if you're like me I have my blog post that go to Twitter live Well, two of my blogs goes to linked in when they go live So that's actually you know kind of cool But then you have all these different people that you can get as connections And one of the cool things about that is that once you're connected with them If they have someone else on their list and you want to connect with that person you can go through the person You're connected to and ask them if you can connect to some of these other people So that's kind of cool. So that's kind of the pro side of being on linked in now Here's the other side The other side one, you know how I was talking about those groups that you can join and do all this stuff Truth be told the majority of groups are pretty lame It's hard to get a lot of engagement in most of the groups There are some where you get some engagement and usually it's from people who are new at something And they don't really understand it So you can provide some kind of answers for them and that's actually kind of cool You can be seen as an influencer in the group But a lot of other groups they have tens of thousands of people who consider themselves as members of the group who never Participate at all and you get a lot of people who will just post links in there a lot of time Just not their own link. They're just posting all kind of links and stuff and no one ever says anything I mean, I'm of the opinion if you're gonna post a link at least have an opinion or write something about it before you post A link instead of just posting a link. What is that? But people are doing that for me if you're doing that you're wasting your time on social media So you have that now second thing you now have you have a lot of spammers You didn't used to LinkedIn used to really check those people really well But now I get invites from some of the strangest names people who well, you know what I don't know if they're bots I don't know if someone actually physically went there. There's no picture. They say there's something like Queen so-and-so dentist That's all we'll say anything else there They used to really you know screen that stuff out now They don't now quite often you get messages from these spam accounts that you didn't even follow and you get tons of that in the Groups as well people don't monitor their own groups that they set up which is the shame like you know Come on if you've started a group at least monitor it Now if you're part of the group and you see that stuff you can actually flag it as promotion or spam or whatever But that's not supposed to be your job. It's supposed to be the job of the person who created the group Next about those articles. I was talking about when I first started writing articles or putting articles on LinkedIn back in January Those things exploded I couldn't believe how many people were actually seeing my articles and I was getting all kinds of comments I have one that almost I think it was somewhere close to 2,500 People who saw it and it was wonderful. I'm thinking wow. I have found a new audience That lasted maybe a month and a half and then suddenly I'm getting 2030 sometimes I don't even get numbers like that and Part of me has said well, maybe I should stop putting those articles up because you know I don't know what LinkedIn's criteria was for you know Deciding who got to go where or anything like that But somehow along the way they decided I didn't fit their criteria for anyone Who was worth sharing and trust me? I mean, you know, I don't want to make myself look like I'm all that But there's a heck of a lot of other stuff that's a lot worse than mine Of course none of those people get seen either, but there are some really good people So there's some really good articles out there and there's some folks who I love to see There's a guy named James all trusher. I don't know how you say the last name But his articles are there all the time. He's definitely an influencer and I love his stuff I never even heard about the guy until I started reading my LinkedIn I guess he's been around for a good long time, but you know, if you're looking to market yourself that way It's a little hard. Also, it's hard if you're trying to reach out to certain people But you can't get them to respond Now this is one of those kind of strange things that I've always talked about with social media where I say Stop joining every group. You think you should be a part of just because it's not social media Yes, I'm sitting here telling people that if you're in business, you should be on LinkedIn However, if you're not gonna do anything with it, don't bother. Just like I tell people with blogs I believe that most businesses should have a blog I believe that a lot of people would enjoy having a blog But if you're not going to write anything on it, don't even start you look bad So you get these people on LinkedIn who may be in your kind of business and maybe you want to connect with them The majority of them will never respond They don't see it because they don't get on LinkedIn all that often They just set up a profile because they thought it was the thing to do and they've never gone back Some of those people have never updated anything except they put their position in there in the place They work now and nothing else You know that makes it difficult for you to even think you can make business But now here's number four or I just don't even know what number I'm up to but here's one more con I've told you about the spam, but I haven't told you about those folks who will contact you and tell you They've got a business proposal for you and then what they're basically trying to do is to get you to do their work for them I get that all the time. I have people who want to connect with me You know, I have now learned because I'm one of the first I was one of the first 600,000 members I don't know what order I was in but LinkedIn actually sent me something Commemorating that after so many years. I thought wow that was kind of cool. So anyway What happens is you know, you will get these messages and they don't really say anything in the message except I have a business proposal for you or whatever. I'd like to talk business with you and they give you a phone number or whatever and Then you contact them or maybe they send you an email and it's garbage They all want you to basically market them Market your own stuff, but if you're stuffing work and market them at the same time. Come on, really so if I had to have a balance there With all the cons that I just gave you I'm still going to say overall if you Are in business if you're working for someone and you're looking to possibly move up someday If you're looking to make certain business connections It's pretty important for you to be on LinkedIn. It can definitely help more than it can hurt But if it can do anything with it if you're gonna set up an account and never ever ever ever ever ever Go back. Don't do it. That's what I got for you about LinkedIn If some of you are out there on LinkedIn and you've had more success than me or you've had some issues leave a comment Let's talk about it. Y'all take care