Becky Robinson's Blog, page 79

Training for LinkedIn Success: Focus

My best training runs are typically ones in which I am focused on what I most want to achieve. What I want is to run strong, to train effectively for my upcoming marathon (75 days.)

My best focus comes when I have a great song and rhythm in my head. If I repeat the lyrics of a song in my mind, I breath evenly and run steadily.

You will be most successful on LinkedIn if you maintain focus on what you most hope to achieve.

If you are hoping to develop business opportunities or see a new position through your LinkedIn profile, you need to make sure that your profile is rich with the keywords people would use to search for someone like you.

Here are five steps to follow to bring (and maintain) focus to your LinkedIn profile:

Consider these questions. What differentiates you? What unique value do you bring to the marketplace? What do you specialize in? What do you want to be hired to do?
Choose a few focus words. As you ask yourself the questions, distill your answers into a few focused key words that correspond to terms you think people might use to search for people like you.
Edit your profile. Once you have identified your focus, edit your profile to contain your keywords. If possible, make sure your keywords are included in every section of your profile, including your headline, summary, and experience. Add your keywords as often as you can and in as many places as you can, but do so subtly and in context, not in a forced or obvious way. If possible, request recommendations from satisfied employers or clients and ask them to include your keywords. Including your keywords frequently will increase the chances that the right people will find you — and will ensure that anyone browsing your profile will be able to quickly determine whether you are a fit for their needs.
Add new relevant experience regularly. A LinkedIn profile should be a living document. Regularly review your profile to be sure it contains your most up-to-date experience. When you do so, include your keywords as often as you can.
Whenever your focus changes, update your profile in include your new keywords. In the event that you change your career focus, be sure to change your keywords to reflect your new focus. Be as thorough as you can! If you change jobs, add your new position and any relevant, keyword rich details to help people understand your differentiating value.

When your LinkedIn profile is focused, you will position yourself to be successful in reaching your goals.

Tell me something! How often do you update your LinkedIn profile? Are the right people finding you through LinkedIn?

Featured on Friday: Meet Team Member Elizabeth Johnson

Today’s Featured on Friday is a fun one for me. The blogging world is an interesting way to build community. It was through my own personal blog that I first met Elizabeth. She had been kind enough to leave a comment, which I then clicked through to discover her blog and we started commenting back and forth.

Over a few months of blog hopping, I eventually discovered that she was about to release her first book and was looking for ways to promote it. It’s a long story, but the end result was that I got to help her launch Touching the Hem last spring, and through the process, she ended up coming on board the Weaving Influence team. That’s what I like to call a WIN-WIN!

Meet Elizabeth Johnson

Tell me a little bit about yourself, Elizabeth. 


I am a disciple of Christ and wife to my college sweetheart, James. I’m a fighter of chronic illness, a writer, and a lover of theology… all of which led to getting my first book published last spring! I also blog regularly at DogFur and Dandelions, read voraciously, and love connecting with new friends. My husband & I are currently living in South Carolina, where we’re preparing for a dual ministry in church planting and the Army chaplaincy.



How long have you been doing work for Weaving Influence?



I started working regularly with Weaving Influence in April 2013 – right around the time my book was published. It was exciting to me, as an author, to be a part of promoting other authors across the web, and I’m constantly amazed at how God brought it all together.



What’s your favorite aspect of your work?



That’s a hard one to answer – not because there’s no favorite aspect, but because there’s too many! I love our team – we have some amazing people who teach me so much, not just about the job but personally too, as we struggle and grow together and cheer each other on. I love that I get paid to do what I was already doing for fun, for myself – but now I get to help others with it, too. I love that it’s helping me overcome the effects of a serious illness, by allowing me to add structure to my days and stretching my capacity (in a good way), while offering enough flexibility that I can still adequately care for my physical needs.



What’s your favorite pastime?



Reading! I joke that I was born with a book in my hand. The truth is, I taught myself to read when I was three, and haven’t stopped since.



How did you meet Becky Robinson?



Short answer: on Twitter (fitting, isn’t it?). Longer answer: somehow I came across Carrie Koens’ blog, and started reading it and getting to know her on Twitter. Through her, I was introduced to Becky (and the other team members of Weaving Influence). Becky had just released  31 Days of Twitter Tips , which I found tremendously helpful, and we began interacting on Twitter as a result. I quickly grew to admire her passion and ideas that became Weaving Influence, and am thrilled that I now get to work under her leadership and expertise.



Tell us something unusual about yourself.



We love visiting state parks and national parks – for both the national history and the mountain trails. We enjoy learning firsthand about our nation’s greatest moments and heroes, and exploring God’s beautiful creation together. In fact, that mutual enjoyment stems back to the beginning of our relationship… when we were hiking in a local state park, and I tripped and fell (quite literally) at his feet. We started dating seriously just a few weeks later, and the rest is history! How’s that for a love story? 

Thanks for telling us about your Weaving Influence story, Elizabeth! We’re glad to have you on the team!

Training for LinkedIn Success: Collect Praise

Along the route, at nearly ever mile, we saw the signs.

Someone wanted Monica to be encouraged during her half-marathon. At each mile, they placed encouraging, inspirational posters, calling her out by name, reminding her of her own inner strength and perseverance.

Even though the signs were not intended for me, I felt buoyed by them.

Whenever I am working hard to achieve something big, I appreciate encouragement and support from others. In my marathon training, I must constantly remind myself that I am strong enough. Part of what fuels me is the mental file I’ve created of what others say about me and my running, including the words of my running partner, Laura, who consistently reminds me that I have endurance to run distance.

As you work hard to achieve something big with your career, recognition and praise from others will contribute to your success. To be successful on LinkedIn, you need to collect praise — recommendations from people who know, recognize, and call out your strengths.

Here are a few tips about gathering LinkedIn recommendations:

Request LinkedIn recommendations from people who know you well. The best recommendations on LinkedIn will provide specific, concrete examples about your strengths and abilities. In order to provide details, people must know you well.

Give direction as to what you’d like your recommendation to include. The words someone uses to write your recommendations matter. When possible, provide key words to those writing recommendations. The more key words contained in your profile (and recommendations are part of your profile), the more likely you will be to be found by people searching for the unique value you offer.

Make the process as easy as possible; be alert to opportunities. When working with a client or colleague, you may hear them say words of praise that would be a great LinkedIn recommendation. Be alert to those opportunities and ask for a recommendation! In those cases or others, your friends or colleagues may appreciate you drafting a recommendation for them. While it may feel strange, this is a gift because it gives you the chance to be sure you include the important details that will help showcase your abilities.

Ask for new recommendations regularly and find ways to share positive feedback about your work with others. Make “collecting praise” a regular part of your influence-building regimen. Ask for recommendations when you’ve completed a project or engagement. Don’t be afraid to ask former clients for recommendations, even months after the fact. Once you have great recommendations, you can repurpose them on your website or for use in social media updates to reinforce your brand value.

Be generous in recommending others. As often as you are able to do so enthusiastically, write genuine, specific recommendations for others. When you give without asking for anything in return, you may be surprised and pleased with the results.

In training for LinkedIn success, gathering recommendations is a critical activity. Who will you gather praise from today?

Tell me something! What tactics have you used to gather LinkedIn recommendations?

 

 

Featured on Friday: Dr. Kathy Cramer

If someone asked you what your biggest “WIN” was for the week, what would you say? Becky likes the Weaving Influence team to regularly share our wins, no matter how big or small. During book promotion weeks, my wins usually revolve around Amazon numbers or new book reviews or the number of tweets that have been sent out. It’s certainly been a week of wins for Jim Blasingame, and we love celebrating each one of them.

As the project manager for our book launches, I don’t have quite as much direct interaction with clients as Becky or the lead project managers do. As an introvert (INTJ, if you want the whole truth), I’m usually okay with that, and it’s one of the reasons this job works for me. But sometimes, picking up the phone is the only way to quickly and clearly come up with a solution, and even I, introvert that I am, get tired of miscommunicating through emails. This week, my WIN was getting to spend a few minutes talking with the subject of today’s post, and discovering what a delightful person she is.

Meet Dr. Kathy Cramer

Where to begin? Kathy is a psychologist, author of nine books, creator of Asset-Based Thinking (ABT), and won an Emmy for her film Stress: A Personal Challenge. She’s a business consultant who has worked with companies like Starbucks and Microsoft, but who also assists many educational and non-profit organizations. If you want to see her in action, I encourage you to watch her TEDx talk (you’ll learn more about ABT too!).

Her new book, Lead Positive: What Highly Effective Leaders See, Say, and Do, is scheduled for a big launch March 17 – 21; in preparation for that I found myself on the phone with Kathy, discussing details about several pages we’re creating for her. What took me by surprise was that despite her impressive credentials, she could not have been more down to earth. She’s charming and gracious, funny and engaging – just five minutes of speaking with her and you’d want to rush out and buy all of her books to see what she has to say. Since she’s a little busy writing books and sharing her wisdom around the country, the next best thing is to…

Connect with Kathy Online!

You will absolutely want to visit (and bookmark) Kathy’s beautiful website (drkathycramer.com). Find her on Facebook, follow on Twitter, add her to your Google+ circles, and connect on LinkedIn.

February Special Offer

As previously mentioned, Dr. Cramer is the author of nine books, including the best-seller, Change the Way You See Everything. During the month of February, Kathy will be giving a code for a FREE iBook version of her best-seller to everyone who pre-orders Lead Positive. I’ve mentioned before that I am a lifelong bookworm, so free books always make me a little giddy. If you want to take advantage of this special offer, click through to the Pre-Order page for specific details on how to claim your free iBook. Interested in reading a sample from her new book? Click here.

 

Sprint Day

Thursday is speedwork day for me in my marathon training.

I run a shorter distance, faster, in hopes that I will improve my cardiovascular endurance overall, resulting in an ability to run longer distances faster.

I have never been a super-fast runner, but I have certainly been much faster than I am now. What is encouraging to me is to see how consistency in running over the past 5 weeks has resulted in marked growth and improved fitness. With just 86 days until the marathon, I must stay focused on training effectively.

On sprint days, I run fast. On long run days, I run significantly slower. On tempo run days, my pace is somewhere in between.

In running my business, I have sprint days, also: all out, full speed, pushing ahead with everything I have. Like running sprints, sprinting in my business requires full focus. Almost everything else fades as I focus on the tasks at hand.

Those sprint days set me up for greater success on the other days because I get used to the momentum of moving faster — so my overall pace is quicker. It doesn’t matter if my sprint at work is as fast as yours — I just choose a pace for my sprint days that is faster than my usual days. The only person I am racing is myself.

What does a sprint day in business look like for you?

For me, a sprint day includes identifying needs in my organization and identifying people who can fill them. For example, I just got off the phone with a subcontractor who is willing to take responsibility for some details related to keeping our website up-to-date. Assigning tasks, delegating, and training are sprint-activities which will allow our company to be more successful long-term.

A sprint day also includes moving more quickly toward the future by evaluating current leads and potential work in the pipeline, completing and sending proposals, and projecting income expectations for the next quarter and beyond. I am sprinting when I am able to know where I am in this moment and can set my eyes at where I’d like to be in the future, all while taking quick steps forward.

Consistency in adding sprint-days to each work week, going faster for short periods of focus and productivity, will help me move toward my desired future.

Tell me something! Do you add sprint days to your work week?

It’s Just Hard.

On the center of my bulletin board above my desk, I’ve posted a print out of “The Small Business Success Attitude” by Jim Blasingame.

It’s secured, smack dab in the middle of the board, with a red push pin.

During the moments when I find running my small business to be a difficult and daunting prospect, I read Jim’s wise words, like these:

I accept that my small business will face challenges every day.

Today: Day #3 this week that school is cancelled for extreme cold temperatures. It’s also the 10th school day this month that school has been cancelled.

When school is cancelled, I juggle motherhood + business. I love having my kids around. And. When we can’t leave the house, when they can’t play outside, when school cancellations also mean that my office helper can’t work regular hours without bringing her kids along (she has four!), I feel challenged. I feel edgy. I long for a return to the routine of our lives.

If my business is to survive, I must face each challenge.

Since this is my business, any issue, problem, or concern is my responsibility, ultimately. It doesn’t matter that some of the work that must happen is outside my comfort zone. I can outsource and delegate tasks and details, but I am ultimately responsible. If I am going to thrive and continue to succeed, I must face each challenge. Today, the challenges are relatively easy: a disrupted routine and schedule. Other days, the challenges are significantly more difficult.

The only thing in question is how well I will respond to challenges. The future of my business will depend on the answer to that question.

In the scheme of things, distractions at home are small challenges. My kids are playing happily. Tinker Toys are littering the floor outside my office, but they are old enough to pick up after themselves. They will go back to school soon enough and I will miss their smiles and mid-day hugs.

Yet, the reality today is that I work with their happy noise, and I strive to be as productive as possible.

I have chosen this life: chosen to work at home,  and chosen to work with a virtual, distributed team. When my office helper and her kids stop by to work, we welcome them and share our lunch. I can’t control the weather, but I can control my response.

It’s just hard sometimes. I am choosing to respond in positive proactive ways.

Jim Blasingame wrote his new book,  The Age of the Customer, to help small business owners like me find success and relevance. I am honored to support the launch of his book this week. I encourage you to buy a copy (or several) this week for small business owners in your life. 

Training for LinkedIn Success: Who Is Watching You?

If you want to be successful in leveraging LinkedIn, you need to create and execute a plan to increase your connections, every week. If you travel, for business or pleasure, you can use LinkedIn to connect meaningfully with people who live and work in the city to which you are traveling.

I’ve been relating LinkedIn Tips to my marathon training, so here’s a quick update in case you’re interested: I am keeping my commitment to training with four runs each week. (Confession: I packed but did not use my running shoes in Atlanta, since my LinkedIn network resulted in a booked schedule and no free time. So, last week I missed one run.) With 88 days until race day, I feel that I am right on schedule.

Want to know the secret to my consistent running?

I know who’s watching me.

My husband tracks my training; he’s training, also. My team is paying attention and cheering me on — Rachael, who works with me in the office daily, asks about my runs and helps me in blocking time to complete them. Sharon, a friend who I see regularly, has decided to train with me. If I plan 13 miles on the weekend, she commits to run the same distance. When weather allows, we run together.

Knowing others are paying attention motivates me to keep my commitment to train.

This analogy is a bit of a stretch, so be patient. Knowing that people are looking at your LinkedIn profile — knowing people are watching — can be a motivation to you in keeping your commitment to train for LinkedIn success. At the most basic level, if you realize that people are actually looking at your profile, perhaps you will be motivated to keep your profile up to date.

Who is watching you?

You can use a free tool on LinkedIn to see who is looking at your profile.  On your home screen on LinkedIn, you can see how many people have recently viewed your profile by looking on the right sidebar. While some data may only be available to premium LinkedIn members, you can gather some important information by regularly checking to see who is watching you.

On a weekly basis, click the section from your home screen on LinkedIn to see who has been viewing your profile.

Are you already connected? If yes, perhaps you can take the opportunity to send the person viewing your profile a friendly note, if even to just say hi and check in.

If you are not already connected, is the person viewing your profile someone you know? If the person is someone you know, you can take the opportunity to request a connection. If the person is not someone you fo not know, take a few minutes to review their profile. Is there a logical benefit to making a connection? Is there some value you can add for that person? Is there an opportunity for collaboration? If so, perhaps you want to send a connection request.

This simple step of a weekly review of anyone who has been viewing your profile may ignite a new connection or may spur a creative idea for future collaboration.

Who is watching you? When you find out, you may be able to use your knowledge to create opportunities — for yourself and others.

Tell me something! How are you doing in training for success on LinkedIn? What questions do you have that I can address in future blog posts?

Featured on Friday: Jim Blasingame

January started as a very busy book season for our team at Weaving Influence. Just three and a half weeks into 2014, and we’re already gearing up for our third book launch of the year! Although most of our clients books have a common thread – leadership – no two books are exactly alike. Last week, we worked to build the buzz for Leading Valiantly in Healthcare by Catherine Robinson-Walker. This week, we were gathering buzz about the 5th edition of Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans. Next week, we’ll be utilizing our team of buzz builders to help spread the word for The Age of the Customer®, the new book from today’s Featured on Friday focus…

Meet Jim Blasingame

You may know him better as the Small Business Advocate®, sharing his wisdom on a weekday radio talk show dedicated to small business and syndicated since 1997. He’s also the author of Small Business Is Like a Bunch of Bananas and Three Minutes to Success, and is very excited about next weeks launch of The Age of the Customer®, which promises to make you think differently about the relationship between businesses and customers, which is currently in shift-mode. In addition to writing books and being an award-winning radio show host, Jim is also the president and founder of Small Business Network, Inc., a media company dedicated to serving small business, and gives high-energy keynote speeches. Yes, you could say that he is a very busy man!

Connect with Jim Online

Find Jim on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter. And don’t forget to bookmark his blog for additional reading!

What’s Coming Next…

Next week is the big launch (January 27 – 31), and there are plenty of ways that you can get involved if you want to promote a man who has done so much to help those working in small business.

You can start by reading the free sample chapter – and if you like it, there are share buttons scattered through the sample so you can quickly and easily tell your friends. If you like what you read, go ahead and pre-order your book this weekend, or make plans to place your order next week – this helps with the numbers on Amazon and is an easy way to participate in any launch.

If you want to help build the buzz for Jim during the launch week, check out the page of ready-made tweets and graphics that you can share on social media. Like them all? Use them all – we love to see a lot of chatter during a launch!

Finally, in the week following the launch Becky Robinson will be hosting Jim for an hour long webinar (FREE – as all our webinars are!) to talk about the ideas in The Age of the Customer®. Register to join them on February 4th at 12 pm (ET), and bring a friend!

Is Your Way The Only Way?

Or do you tend to yield? Do you give power away to your talented people?

Veronika, a manager in a global drug research and development company, woke up one morning and recognized that 20 percent of her employees were doing 80 percent of the thinking. She was concerned for a number of reasons:

The 80 percent of her employees who weren’t really using their creative and intellectual abilities also seemed to be disengaged or just going through the motions at work.
The competition would gain an edge if her company didn’t use talent better, get more creative, and stay on the cutting edge.
She and a handful of thinking employees were overstretched and spent much of their time answering questions and meeting with others to solve their problems.
She had lost some talented employees and learned in the exit interviews that they were not being challenged enough and had grown bored.

Veronika knew she needed to do something and do it soon.  So she hung this sign on her door:

What? That’s it? Well, yes, basically.

Veronika explained to her employees that she had been underserving and undervaluing them by answering all of their questions and giving them step-by-step direction. So when people came through her open door and asked their questions as they always had, she pointed to the sign and asked them powerful, thought-provoking questions like these:

What do you think the problem is?
Who do you think should be involved in solving this issue?
What are the choices we have?

These questions empowered people to solve problems creatively, to lean on each other instead of on the boss, and to come up with multiple options.

She gave encouragement and praise as people struggled to produce outstanding, creative solutions and new approaches. Her team’s productivity and retention rates surpassed all others in the organization.

There is more to Veronika’s approach than meets the eye. The “No Answers” sign could be an annoyance if the follow-through did not include key elements:

Trust your employees to come up with the answers. Even if you would have done it another way, consider the approaches they create and support them all the way.
Manage your reactions when you yield and they crash! Collaborate with your empowered employees to learn from the mistake.
Stop micromanaging.  Let go.  Stop looking over their shoulders.
Give the spotlight away. Share the stage and the applause with your team members.

Yielding will increase the odds of retaining your best people. As you give people more power to create, make decisions, and truly affect the success of the team, their job satisfaction (and your odds of keeping them) will go up. At the same time, your ability to compete successfully and accomplish your business goals will increase.

You have phenomenal power to yield. Try it and see what happens.

 

Beverly Kaye is the Founder of Career Systems International. Sharon Jordan-Evans is the President of the Jordan Evans Group. This blog post is based on concepts from Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em: Getting Good People to Stay by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans. This bestselling book provides twenty-six strategies to keep talented employees happy and productive. In addition to updating and revising all information for the fifth edition, the authors have included more international stories and statistics. Available January 2014 on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere!

Training for LinkedIn Success: Consider Your Location

Due to the extreme cold, I am completing most of my training runs on the treadmill these days. When the temperature rises above 30, I look for opportunities to run outside, and my favorite spots include our local parks, where I encounter friendly faces, both human and animal.

Staying local (with running or networking) can be limiting. Just as running in new locales energizes my training, to find new ways to grow your influence, consider your location.

To grow your online influence through leveraging LinkedIn, consider how travel, for business (or pleasure) can present opportunities to deepen and renew connections.

Depending on how many connections you have made on Twitter, you likely have connections in many major US cities.

Consider Your Location

Plan Ahead In advance of planning a trip, consider whether you might have extra time to fit in meetings with your online connections. If possible, intentionally build extra time into your trip to allow for in-person networking. On a recent trip to Charlotte, I enjoyed the chance to spend part of my afternoon with longtime online friend Wally Bock.

Use LinkedIn’s Search Capabilities Search your LinkedIn connections to see who might live in the area to which you are traveling. Thoughtfully consider what value you might bring to those connections. Set aside any particular agenda and focus on relationships. How can you strengthen them? Face to face time is powerful!

Tag and Message Your Connections. Once you have searched, tag your connections in the city/region to which you are traveling. Craft a warm, personal message. Include the dates of your trip and windows of availability for meeting with people. Be specific about what you are hoping to accomplish. Sending a note to your connections will also have the added benefit of strengthening your ties and helping you be memorable, even if you are unable to meet people in person. Your note may be a reminder to the person to connect later by phone for collaboration.

Look for Connections Among Your Connections. It is possible that some of your connections in a particular city would benefit from knowing one another. If your time for in-person networking is limited, perhaps you can meet with several friends and once and introduce them to one another. If your budget allows, you may even want to host a happy hour or dinner for several connections in a city. Or, to meet many people at once, you can invite a group of people to join you for a coffee hour (Hat Tip to Jason Womack, who hosts #coffeechats wherever he goes!)

I am looking forward to travel later this week to Atlanta to consult with a long-term client and meet a team member for the first time (!) and I followed the steps outlined above: I booked an early flight to free up a half day for meetings; I sent a note to my Atlanta connections. I made plans to meet with several connections while I am in Atlanta: one long-time online collaborator, one client, a person from a non-profit I’ve done some pro-bono consulting for, and a potential client. I also, as a result of my LinkedIn location based outreach, spoke to one connection for the first time, and renewed conversation with two others.

Tell me something! How do you leverage LinkedIn while traveling?