In prepping for Version 3.0 of Rock The World with your Online Presence, our hit LinkedIn Profile and SEO book, we had to make a little extra room. Since our book was released, right after the LinkedIn design change in late 2009, the LinkedIn Company Profile feature came on board and we had to dive into it of course. In the Rock The World book we refer to these instructional videos as “Timeless Updates”.

In this video, we (Mike O’Neil and Lori Ruff, The LinkedIn Rockstars), explain the limits regarding LinkedIn Company profiles. Lori even provides some extra tips that only VIEWERS of the video get to learn.

TO SEE THE EXTRA TIP – watch the video!

Limit #1 – The key LinkedIn limit regarding company profiles is the space allowed for the Company Description. It is 1,500 characters and carriage returns count as 2 here. Use a word processor and copy/paste the text. ♦ Special characters ♦ are not a bad idea either. Short paragraphs, some bullets. Think of it how you would think of a LinkedIn Profile Summary in many ways.

Limit #2 – Specialties are tags that you can add to increase your appeal to individuals and search engines. You get up to 20 keywords or key PHRASES. Watch the video for the secret tip on getting the most out of Specialty tags.

There are other limits that you are not likely to run into (# of products or services listed). If they become significant, we will feature a post on those as well.

See related post on LinkedIn Limits

Click below to see the Integrated Alliances Company Page, follow if you like.

Does this help?

Facebook is really hard for Business to Business (B2B) professionals, aka LinkedIn users, to grasp. It just isn’t second nature for business people, who tend to be a bit older than their Facebook counterparts.  I liken it to the “PacMan generation” vs the “Mario Brothers generation”.  As one who grew up with squealing modems (300 bps then 1200bps), it seems foreign to me as well. I profess I am a fan of PacMan, Galaga, Asteroids and even PONG.

“Growing up LinkedIn” in the Social Media era makes it even harder. Us “Pacmen” and “Ms. Pacmen” are database minded, we recall bulletin boards, character-based systems. People are records in a database that we search on to engage others for business. That idea is turned entirely upside down with Facebook – 180 degrees.

The differences become  so apparent when we teach LinkedIn-oriented people to use 1) Facebook or 2) the Pair of LinkedIn AND Facebook or 3) the triple play – LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

The first big things that they must deal with is the Facebook Profile vs. the Facebook Page. I have even heard other Social Media experts slip up in their speaking, and it really throws audiences for a loop.  Profiles are for People and Pages are for business entities and business activities.

This Post will focus more on Profiles. The next will focus more on Facebook Pages.

Here is the simple, straight, abbreviated scoop:

Facebook Profiles are different than LinkedIn Profiles, although they are both share the “1 to 1″ principle. Every person on Facebook MUST have a Profile. It is your identity. A profile is like a Social security Number (SSN), there is one per person.

While it is possible to have more than one it is a violation and one does not want to be in violation of Facebook rules. Good luck getting end user support to clear up problems, nor the problems of the “other” 500,000,000 users.

ONLY PEOPLE HAVE PROFILES. Freeway Ford dos not have a profile with First Name = Freeway and Last Name = Ford (nor any variant). Businesses have PAGES and I will cover that in another Blog Post.  Do NOT use a Profile for a business, unless you don’t care if all your work is simply gone someday.

The LinkedIn profile is fully searchable, both within LinkedIn and via Google. Repeat – The LinkedIn profile is fully searchable, both within LinkedIn and via Google.

The Facebook profile CANNOT BE SEARCHED for content in any similar way. No need repeating. It just isn’t for that, it was designed by a college student for other college students. LinkedIn was designed by business people for business people. In fact, the investors in Facebook are all ON LINKEDIN and were early adopters of LinkedIn.

See related story on The Social Network Movie

Facebook was started by Mark Zuckerberg in college, as we see in the hit movie “The Social Network”. In fact, Facebook was originally called “The Facebook”, which in turn was based on a student photo book used in Residence Halls at Harvard. Original users of Facebook were required to have an @Harvard.EDU email address to even participate.

Soon one school wasn’t enough, even one country wasn’t enough, the .EDU email requirement was lifted and so the story goes. In fact the movie indicates that it was the infamous Shawn Parker, Founder of Napster and Plaxo, that took Facebook international and suggested the name be simplified to simply “Facebook”.

In came the investors, there were some shake-ups and it is now a great movie, one that The LinkedIn Rockstars, Mike O’Neil and Lori Ruff, watch over and over. We learn something new each time.

Why?

The Social Network is about ENTREPRENEURSHIP. The company is a social networking company, but it could be Apple or Microsoft or Google or one of any number of other companies.

Watch the movie from THAT perspective and it opens entirely new parts of your brain. It’s not ABOUT Facebook, but rather the CREATION of company that became Facebook.

Related post – Why business people have so much trouble with Facebook

Life at #20 in the world on LinkedIn is different. Little things that for most load up in a few seconds can take minutes and even time out. You receive this message:

“Your LinkedIn InBox is currently unavailable. You can continue to use all of LinkedIn’s other great features”. I guess the massive network taxes their servers a bit. I get it.

I had been to the heights of 29,990 connections on LinkedIn several times before, but never all the way to 30,000. In fact, I have removed over 1,500 (fake or real) people from my network before getting to this point.

This time I wondered what would happen if I actually hit it.  Well, I have news to report.  First though, this is what 30,000 looks like:

Here it is in another place:

But wait, that’s 30,048 and 30,001. The LinkedIn Limit is 30,000.

Well, it appears as though there is a math bug in LinkedIn that few would ever know about, then again notice.  This is what it really is:

So, what happens if you have 30,000 connections and try and accept an invitation? It just keeps refreshing the screen. No message, just a continual refresh until you delete at least one connection.  That’s the real scoop from the very front lines of LinkedIn.

I just deleted another 200 so I could begin connecting with others, people that are CURRENT in my business life. Who was #30,000? It was none other than the CEO at Jeffrey Gitomer’s TrainOne, Noah Rickun. Jeffrey Gitomer, whom I have seen perform live, is my mentor along with the likes of Chris Brogan, Joel Comm and even Steve Jobs. Noah is also an accomplished Social Media speaker, appearing often around the country (around the world actually).

In the work that we do here at Integrated Alliances, training on LinkedIn and speaking on Social Media, we do a lot of R&D and this is an example of the depths of our R&D. For another great looking network, look at LinkedIn’s #98 in the world (#8 woman) Lori Ruff.  Lori is one of the worlds foremost authorities on LinkedIn, Social Media and SOCIAL MEDIA PRIVACY.

I always knew that music brought together a team of individuals in a way that is truly magical. I remember the concerts that my employer in the 1990′s, Random Access, knew so well. Management bought big blocks of tickets to shows like The Rolling Stones, Phil Collins, etc. The people we took with us became our best customers if they were not already.

We strategically invite business partners to join us in our Rock Band called “School of Rock”. Playing music together on stage using SIMPLE instruments is amazing business bonding. We’ve been doing Rock Band at restaurants and bars for over a year we really like how SIMPLE it is to participate.

I am at Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp in San Francisco learning to create, play, record and perform classic rock music with other “campers”. The “counselors” at the event are real rock stars and I see that they each have business acumen. You will see why.

There is this whole other level beyond Rock Band that I am being exposed to and it is rampant with business overtones. These musicians are small business owners and the company sells a service (their playing, instructing, appearance at events, etc.). Their marketing is based on their brand and the brand of their “past employers”. This is the life of a Rock Star, at least one that is no longer out touring and playing “with the band”.

It was Rudy Sarzo of Whitesnake, Ozzy and ??? that brought these ideas out. Picture the scene – 5 musicians of all kinds of ability thrown together in a room to find a way to jam together – the herding cats principle. He’s the boss and everyone treats him like he’s E.F. Hutton, a very cool E.F.

It made me think of the similarities between the Band and the Business. After all, this is why I am here – to find new influences that we can share with our clients.  It’s a real eye opener.

Band                       Business/Company
Brand                      Brand
Players                   Employees
Lead Singer             Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Lead Guitar             Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
Hit single                 Hot Product
Booking Agent         Sales Rep.
In the studio             Product Development
On Tour                   Product Deployment
Downloads               Sample product
Radio Interviews        Marketing
Free Records            Schwag
New CD                    Version 2.0, 3.0…

Follow me as I explore new territory in this mix of LinkedIn, Social Media, Social Networking and Live Rock Music. See all my links.

Why is in that lowly little Denver Colorado has THE MOST PEOPLE IN THE TOP 100 ON LINKEDIN? It leads cities that simply dwarf it in size.

This is the “LinkedIn Network Scorecard”. I just moved up from 2 slots to #23 as I near the LinkedIn Limit of 30,000. Yes, there is a limit and it can be reached.

Denver 8
San Francisco 6
Boston 4
New York 4
Chicago 4
Washington DC 4
Charlotte, Phoenix, and LA round it out with 3 each

I have an idea how Denver got to rank so high and I can “back it up” like Kid Rock says.

The first Integrated Alliances LinkedIn Network Building Workshop was taught in Denver in 2007. It was delivered to the Rocky Mountain Association of Recruiters (RMAR), the local branch of the national association entitled National Association of Personnel Services (NAPS), whom we just spoke and trained for again at their annual conference in St. Louis. This PRIVATE training class funded the R&D that went into such a class.

As a result of adding LinkedIn Network Building Webinars, there are lots of NON-Colorado people in LinkedIn’s top ranks as well.

Why is this important? How does a big network pay off? I’ll share a personal story that is current and kind of exciting (at least if you like music). Yep, it involves Rock.

I’m traveling to San Francisco to Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp and am on the place coming into the Bay Area as I write this. To help uncover business opportunities on this trip to “The Motherland of LinkedIn and Social Media”, I am hosting a LinkedIn Rockstar Tweetup while I am there. It is being help Mon Nov 8 at the Hard Rock Café on Pier 39 no less and everybody is invited to the FREE event.

http://rcsf.eventbrite.com

As a result of my targeted network building effort, my direct Tier 1 connections in the San Francisco area exceeds 1,000. I sent each of them a short message (with clickable registration links) announcing my arrival and telling them about the LinkedIn Rockstar TweetUp. It takes a while to send these as LinkedIn only lets you send 50 at a time. LinkedIn sees no problem with sending the same message to all 1000+, whereas Facebook would label me a Spammer and shut me down long before I hit 100 sends.

With a small network I could expect a pretty small attendance at this event. With this big of a network, the attendance will be much better and the business opportunities will also be much better.

This is good common sense business prospecting circa 2010-2011. He with 100 connections can cold call while those of us with 1,000’s use LinkedIn instead. Well, some people love that cold call challenge and I salute them. I prefer something a little warmer. You decide.

SIDE NOTE - I am within days of filling up on LinkedIn at 30,000 connections. This is after I have already removed over 1,500 people (or LinkedIn ID’s I might say) from my network. I’ll tell the world how to spot fake people on LinkedIn in a future post. Stay tuned to see what maxed out LinkedIn network screens look like.

Integrated Alliances Founder Mike O’Neil, The LinkedIn Rockstar, is in San Francisco taking in Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp and he is taking LinkedIn and Social Media to new levels in the process.

Mike is the #25 most connected person in the world on LinkedIn at nearly 30,000 direct LinkedIn connections. He has the maximum of 5,000 Facebook Friends and enjoys almost 50,000 Twitter Followers.

Here, he talks about how to identify your local contacts and reach out to them using LinkedIn. This helps travelers get ROI from their business trips. Mike has over 1,000 direct LinkedIn contacts in San Francisco so issues of “scaling” become important. After all, you can only send 50 messages at one time using LinkedIn!

I am spending 3 days this weekend at Rock ‘n’ Roll, Fantasy Camp, learning how to create, play and perform classic rock music. This is part 2 of my journey. See Part 1

Where’s the parallel?  (There will be many so stay tuned to The Journey.)  You only get to join 50 LinkedIn Groups so you have to be careful how you invest your limited resources. You only get to wear a few concert T’s at Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp so it too is a careful choice as well. Who are the rockstars working as counselors for the event?  Who did they play for? Who where they on tour with? Where did I see them play?

As a Social Media specialist who rocks, I am often in a Rock T Shirt. It is a daily routine to pick out the “T of the Day”. No problem usually. I have 50 or 60 concert T’s (down from over 200 at one time) and some other cool options like Tie-Dyes, Mountain Dew, Cars, etc.

But, what do you wear when you are spending 3 days with members of Grand Funk Railroad, Aerosmith, Foo Fighters, The Wallflowers, Ozzy Osbourne, Winger, Pat Travers Band, Joan Jett and KISS?

This is what I am planning. What do you think?

Kid Rock (2007), Lynyrd Skynyrd (1994), The British Rock Symphony with Roger Daltry (1997), Jimi Hendrix Tribute (2010).

October 25, 2010

Fairfax, VA - Mingle360 is excited to announce a new partnership with The LinkedIn Rockstars, Mike O’Neil and Lori Ruff. The LinkedIn Rockstars will be adding Mingle360 technology to their training programs on corporate use of social media. In addition, they will also be providing training sessions at Mingle-enabled events to help attendees get the most strategic benefit and productivity from this new business networking power tool.

Mingle360 allows event attendees to connect with each other by simply clicking their thumb-drive sized MingleSticks together. After the event, a user simply plugs his or her MingleStick into a computer to update their online Mingle account with all of the new connections they’ve “mingled “ with. This gains immediate online access to information associated with their mingled connections—contact information, photos, websites and other collateral—as well as their profile pages on social networks including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. The system can even automatically send requests to new contacts inviting them to join their networks.

“The most respected corporations are using LinkedIn and other social networking media, and Mike and Lori are the world’s leading trainers on these increasingly essential tools,” says Dan Coffing, CEO of Mingle360. “More and more events are using the MingleStick and other Mingle technology as a means for presenters, exhibitors and attendees to easily make immediate and permanent connections that are intimately tied to their online social presence. Given the mutual core missions of Mingle360 and The LinkedIn Rockstars to empower businesspeople with cutting-edge networking technologies and strategies, our partnership is a hand-in-glove fit.”

“Most people will tell you that the single most important thing they get from conferences is the connections to people they meet,” says LinkedIn Rockstar Mike O‘Neil. “The Mingle360 system saves hours of productivity in follow-through after events. It allows both vendors and attendees to continue establishing new personal peer-to-peer relationships immediately without any scanning, sorting, data entry or loss. Account photos provide visual memory cues, privacy is taken care of automatically, and the system even eliminates the need for printed materials. We’re very excited to have Mingle360 as a new enabling technology for business networking. Training people to use it most effectively with their other social strategies is a natural extension of our work.”

About The LinkedIn Rockstars

The LinkedIn Rockstars, Mike O’Neil and Lori Ruff, are the world’s most experienced and engaging LinkedIn trainers. With over 500 high-energy group presentations to their credit, they focus on training sales teams, recruiting teams, executive teams and associations, showing users the mechanics and strategies of LinkedIn and related social media for the corporate world. Their Rock The World^TM books pique reader’s interest in LinkedIn and social media by using musical influences that inspire action while guiding participants down the path to online business success. www.integratedalliances.com

About Mingle360

Offered as a service to event organizers, the Mingle360 solution greatly enhances attendee networking at the event, surpassing business cards with up to date contact information and even facial recognition. It creates ‘buzz’ and excitement at the event and helps differentiate the organization from the competition. For more information, please contact Mingle360 at 703-425-0402 x111, or by clicking here.

Lori Ruff and I have been a part of CouchSurfing.org now for almost a year. In the last 6 months we have ramped up to the point where we had three individual Couchsurfing visitors at ONE time this week.

Couchsurfing.org has a process to certify individuals in the program and it costs a nominal amount to get setup in the system. Check it out!

If you’ve seen the movies “The Big Chill” or “The Breakfast Club”, you know how strangers are not strangers for very long when couped-up with one another. Such is the case here.

You never know who you might have request to “crash at your pad” or where you might stay. Here’s who we’ve met: a Guatemalan diplomat, a German filmmaker, a family from Poland, a National Geographic scale photographer, global travelers, an IT manager, those in town for the Widespread Panic concert, those considering a move to Colorado (a good idea).

It is a bit like a Grateful Dead concert where you don’t actually go in to the show – you just explore “The Village” outside for hours and hours, meeting people every few yards. Lori Ruff and I did just that in 2009. It is a highlight of the concert year for both of us. You meet the darndest people and some you would just NEVER expect (i.e., a high school football coach).

I felt this was such an interesting and powerful series of experiences that I actually put it on my LinkedIn Profile as a current position – Couchsurfing Host & Guest at IA Social Media. A quick LinkedIn search on the Boolean search term “Couchsurfer OR Couchsurfing” yielded over 800 hits just now!

See Mike O’Neil’s LinkedIn Profile with Couchsurfing listed: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeoneil

Want to see the AMAZING work of our German Filmmaker friend Chris Dahm ( @crisdahm ) before he completes his documentary-style footage of Lori and I?

.

At Integrated Alliances HQ                                With Lori                                        With Mike

See Cris’ Video Diary as he travels the world – WOW!

www.youtube.com/user/crisdahm or  www.crisdahm.com

One last thing before I leave you today…

We just finished up our second Rock The World Social Media book, Rock The World with Social Media. It’s “The Ultimate Social Media Guide for LinkedIn Users”.

Find out more and pre-order at www.RockTheWorld2.com. $21.95 gets you a Signed First Edition copy.

We are trialing 2 designs for our Rock The World North American Tour 2010 T-Shirt design.  Can you help us with your comments?  Tell us what you like, what you don’t like, which you prefer, things we might not be thinking of, etc. Estimate price point is $20.

                  Option #1                                             Option #2

These shirts will be available along with our book, Rock The World with your Online Presence, as we inspire, educate, and entertain professionals on LinkedIn and Social Media across North America. They will also be available for online ordering in May.

The current published dates for our IA LinkedIn Roskstar Profile Clinics^© thus far (dozens more to come):

Denver, CO April 21 – Info and Registration

Chicago, IL May 5 – Info and Registration

Charlotte, NC May 15 – Info and Registration

Atlanta, GA May 21 – Info and Registration

Interested in bringing the tour through your town or for a private speaking/training opportunity?  Call us at 303-683-9600.  We are planning the remainder of 2010 NOW, before we take this  tour International in 2011.

Want a Who shirt like Mike’s?  The Hard Rock Cafe has them available as a charity fundraiser.  Sorry, Lori’s Def Leppard was at the concert only!

INFO/ORDER

Like many people, I started out on WordPress.com for my blog, it was sometime in 2008.  Built up a business blog too, also on WordPress.com.

Now, most people in the know think of WordPress.com as the “poor man’s” WordPress. They are not wrong. It is WordPress.org where things get interesting. You have to become a bit of an IT Manager, but it is worth it. Some people hire a vendor – even better idea. WordPress provides a basic migration tool that brings much of what you have created over to the “other side”.

Now for the interesting part…

The OLD blog site is still there and is still being found by search engines, by others.  It makes you look REALLY bad, and amazingly bad if you are in the Social Media business like us here at IA.

I had just such an incident happen yesterday so it hits real close to home. We actually had 4 old WordPress.com blogs out there that were like abandon cars. One very insightful individual did the most logical thing in thinking that it was the live site, even though the concert dates on the calendar were all really old.

There are always issues in shutting anything with a URL down.  We still have some hooks pointed back there so this is what we did to solve the problem:

1. For every Page or Post that you think you need to leave a link in place for, do so by making them Drafts and/or Private. The links still work. This might be a time to change/update the Post/Page a bit.
2. Simply delete out the other pages so long as you think their is no linking to preserve.
3. On the Home Page, have links and text and even a graphic to redirect them to the new site.
4. This is a conservative approach.  You can just shut them down if you like as well.

Here is an example of an old site that redirects to the new site.

So – here’s the hard-earned lesson:

Anything that you create – a profile, a blog, a web site, will be there until you do something to explicitly take it down. Be thinking about what YOU might have hanging around out there…