I am now actively using Twitter and Facebook and my face-to-face meetings too have increased in number. Whereas my usage of LinkedIn is limited to accepting Invitation requests, updating my status using Ping.fm and paying my yearly charges for the Personal Plus Account [ which seems to have been discontinued for new users ]. I intend to use some of the LinkedIn groups to increase visibility about my new ventures as well, but apart from that, I do not have a LinkedIn strategy anymore.

In general, I have observed that more and more people – individuals as well as companies – are increasing their online presence using a strategy of creating a good website, linking it with networking platforms and engaging customers as well as making friends at a personal level. Generating awareness about your brand is a good way to increase sales.

Bootstrap Logo has already worked on projects for two clients : Integreater.org and PowerOfChange.com

Brilliant start Imtiaz!

Some more pointers on how to make the best of your LinkedIn profile :

• On your profile, don’t forget to edit the Public Profile link. This is the link people can use to land up straight on your LinkedIn profile. For example, you can include a link on your website saying “Visit my professional profile on LinkedIn”. Currently this link, in your case, is http://www.linkedin.com/pub/6/b18/68, which is difficult to remember. Make it something simpler – like mine http://www.linkedin.com/in/naina – easier to remember and if you are sitting with a client who wants to see your LinkedIn profile immediately, you won’t need to fumble looking for the link or getting the client to sign in onto LinkedIn.
• If clients who have worked with you / are working with you are already on LinkedIn, ask them to write a recommendation for you directly on your profile. To get a well-written recommendation or to write a good one yourself for people who have worked with you in the past, read this for examples of well-written LinkedIn Recommendations.
• Add more education details and based on those search actively for people who might know. For networking on LinkedIn, it is always best to start with people you actually know – classmates, neighbors, past clients, people you have interacted with online, etc. Then, eventually, progress to connecting with people who are open to networking – there are people who will have the following keywords in their LinkedIn profile : InvitesWelcome, LION, Open Networker – search for these keywords and send an invite to connect to these people. Don’t forget to include a link to your website in the message you send to them, in case they want to see what it is that you do. I am an open networker myself and whenever I get a request to connect networks that has a URL in the signature or anywhere else within the message, I ALWAYS click.
• Be a LinkedIn LION yourself. Mention it on your profile that you are an Open Networker and that invites are welcome. Read more on how being a LinkedIn LION can help.
• Join some groups. Make sure that the groups are relevant to your expertise as well as what you aim to do on LinkedIn. I am a member of the LION as well as Open Networker and Invites Welcome groups – joining these will help you expand your network on LinkedIn manifold and in a short time-span. Your aim should be to increase awareness about yourself amongst other members.
• Visit the Questions and answers section and search for questions related to your expertise. Since one of your forte is LINUX, search questions related to the same and answer them. This will not only help in increasing awareness about you as an expert on LINUX, it will also generate another list of invites from people who would want to have you on their contact list for future reference. It’s a snowball effect.

That should be it for now lest I overwhelm you with the various possibilities on LinkedIn! In due course, I’m sure you’ll find out enough for yourself as well. Good luck and happy networking!

I am moving from Bombay to Gurgaon [ from the state of Maharashtra to the state of Haryana in North India ]. Just completed the website dedicated to the apartment in question.

Briefly, it is 1,080 sq. ft. in area with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, one kitchen, one living plus dining room and one balcony. For photographs of the apartment and the housing society, please visit the I-805 website.

For finding out the price, please get in touch!

aside has created a new promotional code in collaboration with Dreamhost, which gives you $10 off from any of the hosting packages you choose. The promo code to be entered on Dreamhost’s website to avail this offer is aside2008

Dreamhost is a hosting provider based in the United States. I’ve been with them since March 2005. Excellent support even for newbies.
I have registered all my .com domain names with them and host my .in domains with them as well.

The image below will show you the features Dreamhost provides [ which, by far, are the most extensive I've seen for any hosting provider. ] I recommend Dreamhost to all clients and friends for their ease of use, functionality and features and reasonable prices.

Clicking on the image will take you to the Dreamhost website where you will be able to see the feature list in detail and also see the price packages available with them. A screenshot of their pricing is as follows :

I subscribe to the Graphic Design Q&A on LinkedIn as an RSS Feed on Google Reader. Browsing it today, there was a question framed as follows :

Hi, can anyone tell me how to create similar flash catalogue? http://www.oriflame.sk/prod/offers/CurrentBrochureFrontpage.jhtml I’d like to know how to make such a loop? I’m not interested in companies that do it for money. I would like to do it on my own – is there any ‘script’ or ‘code’?

LinkedIn is a professional online business networking platform – I might add it’s one of the best. When you do anything on LinkedIn, publicly – even a slight change in your profile – everyone else on LinkedIn comes to know about it – and that is THE reason why one needs to be very professional in all dealings.

What I’m trying to say is, there’s a better way of saying, “I’m not interested in companies that do it for money.” Before you even get to the stage of coming onto LinkedIn to ask your question – if you’re looking for a ‘script’ or anything for free, it would be prudent to search for it on Google. If you’ve already searched on Google and it turned up nothing, either there isn’t anything available or you probably didn’t use the correct search terms. And if you’d like to know how to make something and are unwilling to pay for it, at least be nice and say “I’m a newbie – can’t afford to pay for it – can someone who knows how to do it share their expertise please?”

And to do this on LinkedIn is even worse. It’s not Craigslist or a Freelancer Exchange.

There are so many ways one can use the Question & Answer facility to increase visibility and accessibility – the statistics aren’t visible but there are many people who actually read the questions and take time to reply to the ones they have knowledge about – before posting their answers, they read the other answers posted before them and post only if they have something to add.

If you have even an iota of doubt whether you should post that question on LinkedIn, don’t.

While the look might not appeal to you right away – we’re used to the slick looking current interface – but wait till you realize the potential of MODULES! Yes modules! Yay! Have you been using Netvibes / iGoogle? If you have been, then I’m sure you realize how powerful that web-app is – now imagine LinkedIn delivering something similar for online business networking – for your PROFESSIONAL / work-related stuff!

Right now they have only three modules : Job Search, Answers and People Search but imagine what all they could add! Just thinking about it gives me a headache – imagine the potential! What if they made a module for feeds for people you’d like to connect with – for example, I’m always looking for Alumni from my school [ The Army Public School, Delhi ] and my B-School [ SCMHRD ] and instead of doing a people search for new people on LinkedIn every month – what if I could defined a filter and convert it to a feed and have that displayed on my LinkedIn home page – so that whenever someone from my school / B-school joins LinkedIn, I can find out almost immediately! Oh the pleasure! [ I'm sure there are other more powerful modules that LinkedIn has already thought of - I just can hardly wait for them to roll it out! ]

And I really like the small rounded-rectangle with my brief profile on the left sidebar. It just looks really nice. And the small bit of immediate information about the number of people on my network.

LinkedIn seems to have expanded to 17 million people – as I read from the About LinkedIn page.

This is exciting! Kudos to LinkedIn for always being one step ahead of the competition and always giving some love to the users! Brilliant stuff!

That’s how the feature is visible on my main dashboard page when I log into LinkedIn – on the right hand sidebar.

That’s what the display looks like when I click on the sidebar link – it shows me people’s titles who have visited my profile in the last three days.

• It does not give me names of people – so there is no direct access to the visitor’s profile.
• Each result is a click able link that allows you to search for the particular person based on their title in their profile heading. Most people do not have a very specific title in their profile heading so search results tend to run into 500 for most of the queries. I got two searches where the results were 11 and 7 in number.
• It’s an interesting way to determine how much your profile is viewed. And who are the typical bunch of people who view it. Doesn’t give much detail though. Unlike in Xing, where they tell you exactly who came and checked out your profile – it has turned out to be beneficial to make a connection and even get business.
• You can also change your visibility setting where you can choose to either show your name and headline or you can chose to show your industry and title – these are called anonymous profile characteristics or you can choose to not show at all that you visited someone’s profile.

The feature is still in Beta – maybe they’ll come up with some additional functional and useful features like maybe showing us what keywords were used when the visitor landed on our profile.

LION : LinkedIn Open Networker

If you are an open networker – meaning that you’re open to connecting networks on LinkedIn with people you don’t really ‘know’ – then it’s a fantastic idea to put that on your profile. I have “LION” on my profile headline. Others who have the same on their profiles also, usually, have their email ids listed on their profile making it easier for you to send them a direct connection invite. You connect with fellow-LIONS and your network grows. Usually exponentially because most LIONS are avid networkers.

That’s one of the most under-used and successful ways of growing your LinkedIn network.

The reason I’m talking about it is because after a long gap, I re-started proactive networking on LinkedIn today. I sent 42 direct connection invitations to fellow-LIONs today – about four hours ago. 19 have already been accepted. That’s a damn good score – within four hours too. I have no doubt that all 42 will be accepted before the end of this week.

And you can search for fellow LinkedIn LIONs by using LinkedIn’s very own in-built ‘Search’ feature – just search for the term ‘LION’.

The Lion sketch above is a derivation of the tattoo design by Elizabeth, converted by Naina. For usage permission, please get in touch with Elizabeth.

The question was asked by Zale Tabakam and answered by a multitude of people. I’ve sent an e-mail to Zale thanking him for asking the question that elicited such lucid answers.

The potential of LinkedIn Answers is thus pronounced as analogous to “sky is the limit”.

[ Disclaimer : I am not an official/unofficial spokesperson for LinkedIn and neither are they paying me for any advertising. ]

One of the blocks I’ve run into is trying to convert friends and business associates into LinkedIn users. Apart from the fact that internet-usage in India is still dismal, somehow, an online portal “strictly” for business does not appeal to most. It rocks my world though.

While the technology/backend part of it might not be palatable to a majority of social/business networkers, it would indeed solve the problem of re-building of contacts whenever we join a new networking portal – and there are many already existing and more sprouting by the day.

Brilliant thought nonetheless and like him, I’ll wait till someone comes up with a front-end for this solution. Till then I am going to carry on with the arduous task of re-inviting connections on the new networking website that I’m going to join this week!

I have seven recommendations on my LinkedIn professional profile as a graphic/web designer, one recommendation as a Creative Head and one recommendation as a business consultant.

Under the Service Provider directory my profile is listed as having only two recommendations as a Graphic/Web Designer and one as a Business Consultant.

I wonder why there is such misinformation? It affects my business directly – since I use LinkedIn for work and it is such an important part of my business development and helps me to generate revenues, such misinformation affects my revenues!

I have written to Customer Support and LinkedIn and lets hope they not their usual tardy selves with the reply and the solution/explanation. [ Will update this post about the same ].

Another grouse I have with this system of Service Provider categorization is that it allows me to choose the best professional from a certain category only in a given geographical location – which is a huge advantage no doubt. But it should also have an option to allow me to search for the best professional in a certain category in ALL of LinkedIn. I know I’ll come out tops so I’ll be happy to have it implemented

UPDATE I

Check the comments to hear LinkedIn’s side – they were prompt with this one

The best way to access the Worldwide listing would be to use this URL. Clicking on the globe icon is supposed to work according to the LinkedIn reply below but it doesn’t.

The Service providers recommendation listing shows only those recommendations that are given by clients. So if your client chooses a different options instead of “I was Naina’s client” then it will not show up on the service provider’s directory. The other recommendations made by people you’ve networked with will also not show up because in all likelihood you haven’t worked with these people – and this a fantastic thing that LinkedIn has taken care of [ sometimes I think that there are so many tiny little things that are so important and LinkedIn manages to take care of pretty much all of them ].

I have frou client recommendations as a Graphic/Web Designer and two of the clients did not choose the “I was Naina’s client option”. One has chosen “was a consultant or contractor to Naina at aside” and the other has chosen “was with another company when working with Naina at aside”.

So the system is open to human error and manipulation [ as all systems are ] and my only recourse would be to get in touch with these two clients and request them to edit their recommendations!

I’ll update on how that goes!

The announcement is followed with three screenshots, one of openBC from 2003 – 2004, one of openBC from 2004 – 2006 and one of the new Xing. Looks all good to me. Looking forward to the re-launch.