There seems to be a trend among leaders of great companies to have very dull LinkedIn profiles. I see three reasons for this.

1. Demographics. Some of these guys are baby boomers, so it will take a while for brand “me” thinking to get to them (if ever). Not all Boomers suffer from this condition, but many Type A males are wired that way.
2. They are busy building great companies. So is their LinkedIn profile adding value to them personally or corporately? I think a unified marketing message is helped by a profile in keeping with the CEO and company value proposition.
3. STP (Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning). LinkedIn is not the key audience for these CEO’s, so expending effort to reach that market is a low priority.
4. Bagging Big Game. The world – or at least anybody who matters in it – knows who these guys are. They don’t need to tell us who they are.

I think Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh falls into that 4th category. Talk about your sparse profile. But with a track record like his, it’s a case of “if you have to ask, you can’t afford”. He’s sold two companies for combined $1 Billion USD over the last 11 years.

Now LinkedIn is not in itself a network – it is a tool for networkers to use. You’ll want to continue your networking efforts outside of LinkedIn.

What should you do specifically inside LI to grow your network within an industry or geographic region?

1. Get a gmail address for LinkedIn and add it to the bottom of your profile (in the text of your contact settings), invite connection requests from people in those industries (spell them out). Gmail will filter most of the spam that will emerge from this and you can change that email address every few months.
2. In the Interests part of your profile list the industries you are specifically looking for as they appear on LinkedIn
3. In the Summary part of your profile list the industries and geography you are inviting connections from and state that you welcome contact from people in these industries.
4. In the Current Job part of your profile list the industries and geography you are inviting connections from and state that you welcome contact from people in these industries.
5. Do a People search for the industry refine the search and sort by degrees away from you. e.g. Showing the first 500 users in your network matching your criteria.
   • Users in Medical Devices
   • Sorted by: degrees away from you
6. If you invite connections in this way, please do not click I Don’t Know (IDK) if you don’t want to connect with them. Just delete or archive their requests. Clicking IDK penalizes the inviter and can get their account suspended. If they are persistent inviters then IDK them or Accept and unlink that way they can’t invite you ever again.

Quick Tip: Premium members receive free inmail and they sort at the top of each page. Send an INmail introducing yourself and what you are looking for. Write your own boilerplate and do not use LinkedIn’s boilerplate text. If you’d like to connect with them, tell them and offer to send an invitation later. Otherwise offer whatever information is in your “keeping in touch” pipeline.

Read non-premium profiles in 2nd degree and beyond, looking for an email address. Those without email addresses leave your two choices:

• Request an introduction via your network. People with small networks trust introductions via that network.
• Google is your friend for anyone who looks really interesting. In Australia call their company and ask for them

That’s how I got started before I joined the LIONs. Funny thing is that most of the IDK’s I’ve received have been from people who know me but didn’t know my surname.

I’m not terribly happy that I am “granting to LinkedIn Corporation a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable license to use this information in the course of offering the LinkedIn service“. That’s from the LinkedIn User Agreement. It’s the irrevocable nature of the license I don’t like.

Then again I’m providing the same license for my personal information that I’m uploading in my profile. It’s the cost of having the profile highly visible.

I’m using Facebook more than LinkedIn but Facebook is a bit out there for conservative business types.

As usual I’m an open networker and happy to connect with you on any social network platform that I am already a member of.

Suddenly over the last month or so I’ve started seeing old colleagues and friends POP up regularly. So I’ve checked back and found some of the fun stuff there quite compelling. o I’ve been adding apps, writing on walls, and reconnecting with people I haven’t seen in a while because life got in the way.

So if you’re on Facebook, send me an invite.