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The Biggest Mistakes People Make Using LinkedIn-Part 2

Written on April 26, 2012 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Marketing

We’re continuing our conversation on The BIGG Success Show with Wayne Breitbarth, LinkedIn expert and author of the book: The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success: Kick-start Your Business, Brand, and Job Search.

We’re discussing the five biggest mistakes people make when using LinkedIn. In Part 1 of our interview we talked about:

- Biggest Mistake #1: Failure to dedicate sufficient time to their LinkedIn efforts.

- Biggest Mistake #2: Underestimating the importance of crafting a dynamic, keyword-filled personal profile.

In this segment, learn about these mistakes:

Click a player to hear Wayne talk with George & Mary-Lynn on The BIGG Success Show podcast. (Duration 9:50)

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Biggest Mistake #3: Failure to recognize the importance of having lots of trusted professionals in your LinkedIn network / Not getting recommendations.

What Wayne says is the most powerful aspect of LinkedIn

How LinkedIn is like the “6 degrees to Kevin Bacon”

Why 35-40 connections is NOT enough to fully use LinkedIn and the number you should shoot for

Why Groups on LinkedIn are the second most important part of using LinkedIn

There are over 1.2 million Groups on LinkedIn, learn how to get more connections using them.

How recommendations can help you come up more often when people use the keyword search tool to attract more leads.

Biggest Mistake #4: Using LinkedIn to advertise your products and services.

Why the traditional forms of advertising doesn’t work in social media

Your Powerful Formula for promoting yourself on LinkedIn is to: Help people, share valuable information, and build relationships.

How sharing your work in terms of questions and discussions will take away the “in your face” advertising.

Why you should spend time listening on social media spaces to learn the communication skills.

How to listen on LinkedIn by simply visiting your home page.

Why Groups provide a listening tool for you too.

How to find conversations in your space using keywords and a tool hardly anyone uses: “LinkedIn Signal” or “Search Status Updates.”

Wayne shares an example of how he was able to connect with a potential client who wasn’t even in his network by using the listening tools in LinkedIn.

Visit Wayne’s website for a free chapter of his book The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success and to learn more about his LinkedIn training offerings.

Next time, learn about a silly little thing that many companies overlook on LinkedIn and why it hurts your brand.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00804-042612.mp3

Tags: audioblog, bigg success, branding, Business, communication skills, george krueger, interview, kevin bacon, linkedin, mary-lynn foster, Personal Branding, podcast, power formula, Relationships, social media, the bigg success show

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6 Great Ways to Keep a Conversation Going

Written on August 22, 2008 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Communication, Networking

When you meet someone for the first time, the hardest part is usually just getting the conversation started. But sometimes it’s also hard to keep it going.

We did some research and found a lot of articles on the internet about starting a conversation, but few about keeping it going. We also found that many suggestions for conversation starters would probably be better conversation “continuers”.

So we thought we’d focus on that part of the conversation today.

Hear us share our conversation continuers on The Bigg Success Show! Just click the purple play button: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

With some people, it’s tough to keep the conversation going. They may be extremely shy or you might just not “click” with them. In those cases, you may just have to resign yourself that it’s not going to happen and move on.

6 ways to keep the conversation going

One simple way to keep a conversation going is to ask questions. Don’t get too personal. Keep it light-hearted. Also, don’t fire them off so rapidly that the other person starts to feel like they’re being interrogated. We use this one a lot, particularly early in a conversation. But here are six of our favorites ways to keep it going:

#1 – “What’s the best book you’ve read recently?”
Variations could be best movie, TV show, or music they’ve heard.

#2 – Offer up some interesting trivia.
Just don’t go Cliff Claven on them! If you’ve heard something that intrigued you, and it’s germane to the conversation, share it!

For example, we heard not long ago that 80% of all men said they would marry the same woman all over again. However, only 50% of all women said they would marry the same man. Can you see an interesting conversation coming out of that tidbit?

#3 – “If you could trade places with one celebrity, who would it be?”
Variations could be favorite actor, or you could limit it to favorite living actor, etc.

#4 – “If you could do college all over again, what would you get your degree in?”
This question also has many interesting variations. For example, you could ask them what’s the one class they would like to take now.

#5 – “What are you working on that’s fun?”
We heard this one from our friend Chris Brogan. It makes “What do you do?” seem boring, doesn’t it. We loved this question the first time we heard it.

#6 – Create a game.
We like to come up with a word of the night or phrase of the day. It’s an interesting word that naturally came up in the conversation. Ideally, it’s a word or phrase with a double meaning of some sort. Then see how many times it can be worked into the discussion.

What’s your favorite way to keep a conversation going?

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