Recently I’ve received several questions from readers about connecting with people on LinkedIn. Most of the questions are something like this: “I receive connection requests from people I don’t know at all, with no explanation of who they are or how I might know them. Is it rude/unwise to just ignore these?” This brings up the issue of one’s personal LinkedIn strategy, so I think it’s worth exploring.
I don’t invest an enormous amount of time on LinkedIn, but I do think that for purposes of findability, every freelancer should have a profile on LinkedIn or a similar site. These sites rank very highly on search engines, so if clients are scouring the Internet for a translator, there’s a good chance that they will come across your LinkedIn profile. In addition, I use LinkedIn as a virtual business card file; it saves me from keeping track of the e-mail addresses of all of my business contacts. I also belong to several LinkedIn groups; I lurk more than I participate, but I still find them valuable.
People seem to have a variety of feelings about LinkedIn connections, ranging from:
- only wanting to connect with people who they know personally and work with, resulting in a potentially small but very high-quality network
- being willing to connect with new people, if those people provide an explanation of why they want to connect
- actively connecting with anyone, also known as the LION (LinkedIn Open Networker) strategy
I can see rationales for all of these strategies, but in general I think I take the second option most often. One reason I’m an active social media user is that my local client base is very small. Colorado is not as international business-oriented as the coastal states in the U.S., and the major industries here (mining, agriculture, renewable energy) are not areas in which I translate. So, I have to broaden my horizons if I want to keep finding new clients. For that reason, I’ve done some active cold-contacting on LinkedIn, mostly in the form of sending contact requests to people who are in some of the same LinkedIn Groups I’m in (with a free account, you cannot cold-contact just anyone on LinkedIn). I’ve explained that I’m a US-based French to English translator specializing in law, international development and corporate communications and that I’m interested in expanding my contacts in that person’s country/industry. In general I’ve found people to be very receptive to these types of contacts. At the same time, I am reluctant to accept contact requests from people whose names I don’t recognize, and who provide no explanation beyond the pro forma “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” message.
Readers, any thoughts on your LinkedIn strategy and your rationale for it?
I use a relatively similar strategy to yours.
My policy is to mostly accept invitations from people in the same industry and from people who have worked from same employers than I have before, even if I wouldn’t know them. Usually in both cases we already have shared contacts, which in a way verifies the contact for me.
I use it as an online cv, but also as a communications tool, hoping that people read my updates. I don’t update often there, but important stuff every now and then.
I also aim for the LinkedIn profile to strengthen my professional message: my network shows what kind of people and in which organizations I have been dealing with professionally, which hopefully underlines my competencies too.
I also add people I meet, regardless of industry, because a broad network certainly doesn’t lower the chances of findings interesting tasks. The more people know who I am and what I do, the more chances there are for someone to be interested in my services or knowing someone who is.
I have found my most interesting task (with good revenue too) through a contact established on Twitter, so I very much intend to keep on using social media to find business.
My preferred LinkedIn option is also the second one. Until recently, my LinkedIn profile was only for the purpose of, as you said, ranking high in searches and also as a point of reference for some clients and colleagues. Nevertheless, this last use doesn’t make much sense if you already have an active and attractive website, where you provide information about your practice and yourself, as well as a CV.
Having said this, lately I found LinkedIn groups to be very informative. I’ve participated in some and also started a couple of conversations. The only problem I foresee if you decide to participate in groups is that it can be very time consuming because people usually expect to hear back from you if you initiate a post or make a comment. LinkedIn doesn’t have the 140-160 characters limitation, so people expect substantial (long) answers from you.
In general, LinkedIn is considered as a solid social network for professionals, which appears to set it apart from the conversation that start in other online environments, such as Facebook.
I also use the second strategy. It’s working pretty well for me. I’ve made solid contacts with whom I want to keep in touch that way.
I don’t send connect requests to strangers in groups, but I do send email messages, then connect later if the chat turns into something useful.
I use something of a cross between the second and third strategies. I will accept invitations from people who are out of my network – and who provide no explanation – if I can tell that they’d be valuable contacts. That said, almost all of my networking activity is limited to 2nd and 3rd degree contacts.
One of my plans for 2011 has been to increase my social media activity in general. I have yet to secure any business from LinkedIn, although I have used LinkedIn on occasion to find translators who can satisfy a need for one of my clients that I cannot (e.g., by providing a language pair that I don’t work in). I’ve occasionally found work on other social media sites like forums, so I know the advantages.
Aside from spending too much time on LinkedIn and other social media, the only potential pitfall I see is through having a profile that doesn’t accurately convey one’s professional experience and skills. Don’t misrepresent yourself but don’t sell yourself short either!
I think I am closest to the second option, if not perhaps between the first and second option. I started out very conservative, linking only to people I have met, know personally and have worked with. However, these days, with social media, you can get to know someone without having met the person or worked with them directly. Therefore my connection policy has loosened up quite a bit. I do not see any problem in denying a request if I do not know the person in any way, sharing the same interest group on LinkedIn is not enough.
Prompted by this blog, I finally did some work on my LinkedIn profile. I may be a professional translator, but it would seem that I have created a mixed language salad which gives entirely the wrong impression.
I am sharing this to show others how to make blunders in a methodical fashion:
I have been living in Portugal for a little over two years. Many of my computer settings are set to Portuguese to facilitate the integration of this language into my thought processes. My Facebook interface is in Portuguese, as is my LinkedIn one. No problem, for me. I understand it. I had originated my own resumé in Portuguese (and had someone check it for linguistic correctness). So copied and pasted that to the profile. On my LinkedIn interface, there is a little gadget which beckons: “Import your CV in English to create a complete profile”. I could swear I did that and saved the changes. It took at least half an hour! I view my profile. There is no CV in English to be seen. It is almost all in Portuguese, with the odd stray mention in English of “freelance translator”, one recommendation in English, and a few key phrases in both English and Portuguese put there by me. Then keywords in English, French, German and Portuguese, for search engine optimisation.
I know (because I asked) that although my Facebook interface is in Portuguese, all my English-speaking friends get purely English content on their Facebook pages. So I sent a message to my Facebook friends which said:
“I have proclaimed today Eejits Day in my honour.
Please can someone go to this link and tell me if there is anything resembling a resumé in ENGLISH. I put one there in Portuguese. I created it in English too. But I cannot see it. Thank you kindly.”
Two responses which tell me a lot:
(a) “I tried to sign in but got stuck on the instructions when I was too lazy to figure out empresa and comp….damn – navigated away from the page!”, and
(b) “ok = went to page, hit translate in the Google bar and it was quite successful, although here and there it said Inglês, not English! Altogether fine!”
Well! Defeats the object of the exercise if readers have to use “the Google bar” to find out what a translator is saying!
It can only get better from now on. 🙂
Hi, has anyone come against this situation: my LinkedIn profile was set up in English but after using the translate bar to read a Portuguese colleague’s profile, my English profile was translated into Portuguese. I can’t fix this and when I clicked onto the translation bar to toggle back into English my last name of Viveiros became Nurseries, and my company name, Arquipelago Press, is now Archipelago. Advice, anyone?
Hello Fernanda
I have spent a long time getting my LinkedIn profile the way I want it.
The confusion is that there are two places to change the language. The one most monolingual people use is right at the bottom of the page. This is probably the one responsible for changing your surname. There is another drop down menu at the top right hand side of the page marked Profile/Perfil.
What you have to do is decide which is going to be your “Perfil principal/main profile” – the English, or the Portuguese. Then set up that profile perfectly. Then, you will also see in the top right hand corner a link which says “Create page in another language”. Click on that, and choose the other language. Then enter all your details AGAIN in the language of your choice. This should have the effect of keeping your name, and your company name unchanged. If you want to see the net effect of it, I will accept you as a connection if you ask here:http://pt.linkedin.com/pub/allison-wright/29/3b0/290
Apologies to Corinne for hijacking Thoughts on Translation briefly, but I am sure you will not mind, since it furthers the interests of multilingualism.
Regards
Allison
As you have mention above in your post that linkedin profile has very high rank in google, but there is complete strategy to make that profile which will be picked by google and put you on the top the list.
Please go through below link and try to put some points on your linkedin profile . hope this should help others as well.
here is a link
http://www.grads.linkedin.com