‘Tis the season for good tidings, holiday parties, shopping, music and time with family and friends. It’s also a good time to simplify. LinkedIn can help you with that.

Focus on doing one thing with LinkedIn over the holidays. . . .
Read More: Happy Holidays with LinkedIn!]]>

Jan Wallen, author of Mastering LinkedIn in 7 Days or Less

‘Tis the season for good tidings, holiday parties, shopping, music and time with family and friends.  It’s also a good time to simplify.  LinkedIn can help you with that.

Focus on doing one thing with LinkedIn over the holidays. How do you decide what’s the best thing to focus on?  The holidays are busy, so pick something that doesn’t demand a great deal of your time, yet gives you a good return on your time investment.

For example, now is a perfect time to connect with people you meet and reconnect with people you haven’t been in touch with for a while (perhaps those who send you holiday cards).  Invite them to connect.  A few invitations a day really adds up without taking a lot of time.  Remember to always add a personal note in the invitation that refreshes their memory about where you met and how you see networking together.

Or if you don’t have many Recommendations, request them from people you worked for, worked with, and from people who have worked for you.  Someone who reads your LinkedIn profile wants to know what it’s like to work with you from several perspectives and what you can do for them.  It may be a company that’s looking for the perfect candidate for an open position or opportunity, or it may be they’re deciding who to bring in to work with them to solve their business challenges.  Be sure the Recommendation they write is results-oriented.  The best way to do that is to tell them what you’re doing now and ask them to relate what they write in your Recommendation to that.   Say something like, “I’m building my business now, and want potential clients to know what it’s like to work with me.  It will be helpful if you include how we’ve worked together, how you found it to work with us, and the results we helped you achieve when you write your Recommendation”.

After the holidays, review your LinkedIn profile and be sure it’s aligned with your goals for 2012.  Set a goal for 2012 to maximize LinkedIn and integrate it into your marketing and business development plans so you expand your reach to the thousands and thousands of people who are on LinkedIn.  Take advantage of the endless stream of opportunities on LinkedIn.  I’ll tell you more about how to do that after the holidays.

And though I will remain a user of Linkedin and perhaps even a paid-member of Linkedin, my days as a self-appointed Linkedin . . .
Read More: LinkedIn Loses One of Its Strongest Evangelists]]> Yesterday, Vincent Wright, founder of MyLinkedInPowerForum and dozens of related groups, announced yesterday that he will no longer be an active evangelist for LinkedIn, although he will remain a member and active user:

And though I will remain a user of Linkedin and perhaps even a paid-member of Linkedin, my days as a self-appointed Linkedin evangelist ended, yesterday.

Some people say that there’s no such thing as giving too much… yes, there is, and Vincent gave too much, by his own admission:

Therefore, sometimes we have to do a checkup to see whether what we’re doing is what we should be doing for our greatest benefit, pleasure, and profit. From time to time, we need to check to make sure that what we are doing will be of real-world benefit to our friends, family, and business associates. We must do this even with the things we permit ourselves to have deep, abiding passion for.
…
Some of you have heard me say this before but for who haven’t, I need to say that I’m WAAAAAYYYYY behind schedule in reducing the amount of time I’ve allocated to Linkedin.

Personally, while I’m sad to see LinkedIn lose one of its staunchest supporters, I’m glad for Vincent that he has realized the need to shift his focus.

See, one of the “dirty little secrets” of networking is that there is NOT always a direct correlation between what is touted as “good networking” and financial success. I fully believe in the idea of “givers gain”, but as usual, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

In the Bible it says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” There’s an important implication there that many people miss. Love your neighbor as yourself. If you don’t love yourself — more importantly, if you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of your neighbor.

So Vincent (and all you other heavy networkers out there), please take care of yourself. You can give your best to the world when you have the time, energy and financial freedom to do so.

Vincent works his tail off on . . .
Read More: MyLinkedInPowerForum Picked Among Best of Yahoo! Groups]]> The MyLinkedInPowerForum Yahoo! Group, run by friend Vincent Wright, has been selected for the Best of Yahoo! Groups page. Now I’m not sure how often they rotate this page, but I think it’s weekly. Still, out of approximately 7 million Yahoo Groups, it’s quite an honor, and well deserved.

Vincent works his tail off on MLPF and the dozens of spin-off groups he has created (yes, he does have help from dozens of moderators, as well).

While LinkedIn has a limited kind of group functionality, it doesn’t offer any kind of group-based interaction — something many people (not I) feel is missing from LinkedIn. As a result, numerous groups have appeared on other platforms to help LinkedIn users connect in a more communal fashion. In addition to MLPF and its spin-offs, there’s also:

• LinkedInnovators Yahoo! Group
• LinkedIn Users of Facebook
• LinkedIn Users on Orkut
• 4HWW LinkedIn Business Warriors
• LinkedIn Lions Yahoo! Group and Meta-Network*

There are also several LinkedIn-focused blogs in my blogroll down on the right. If you know of any others I’ve missed, please post a comment and let me know.

*I know some of you are probably wondering why I’m linking to the Lions group, since I’m such an avowed “use LinkedIn as intended” guy normally. Well, the fact of the matter is that while I may disagree with them, Chris Mayaud, who runs it, is a friend of mine, as are many of the other most-connected LinkedIn users — they’re good people. And while I stand by my opinion about that approach, well, if that’s your thing, now you know where to go, if you didn’t already.

Vincent Wright, the founder of the MyLinkedInPowerForum Yahoo Group and 150 or so niche spin-offs, announced Monday . . .
Read More: Vincent Wright Shutting Down MyLinkedInPowerForum]]> UPDATE: I noticed the other day that this post is still attracting a lot of traffic. FYI, due to popular demand, Vincent changed his mind, and MLPF is still very much alive and well (as of April 2008).

Vincent Wright, the founder of the MyLinkedInPowerForum Yahoo Group and 150 or so niche spin-offs, announced Monday that he will be shutting down MLPF:

I want to inform you of my decision to bring MLPF to a conclusion 40 days from today, on this coming February 9, 2007.

That date will complete one of the most interesting and fulfilling 2 year periods of my life.

I’ve had a chance to get to know you as good men and women and I’ve learned and learned and learned – a lot. I cannot put into words how good I feel about what I’ve learned from you.

In turn, I hope that I’ve helped some of you to look more closely at the power resident in Linkedin. And there’s plenty of power, there. It is filled with people – all of whom are focused on business. And that, as Martha Stewart would say, is “A good thing”.

At the same time that I’ve learned invaluable lessons from interacting with you and thousands of other people from all around the world in all manner of industries, there is also a cost to carrying MLPF.

That cost is beyond my personal means to carry, alone.

Though I can still see many things more to do with MLPF, I need to focus on improving my personal prosperity. And if I attempted to carry MLPF too much further, I’d starve – and that’s not nearly as much fun as you may think!

Bottom line: Realistically, this grassroots effort can no longer be done alone and it certainly can’t be done alone AND for free.

And, at this time, I’m compelled to admit that I’ve been unsuccessful in my efforts to successfully fund the group’s grassroots work. (Though unusual work, it IS work.)

Thus, I’m choosing to end my work with the group(s), 40 days from today, on February 9, 2007. On that date, I hope to be able to tell you in detail about my next step.

While I’ve not made a final decision as to how to close the group(s) or what to do with them, as I prepare proper steps to do so, I also have to prepare for other pursuits.

So, I’ll be limiting my work with the groups to just 2 hours per day for the next 40 days.

I hope and pray that this will have only a negligible impact on you. But, again, I must prepare for other pursuits. (I’d also like to socialize a bit more! )

I hope you will join me in celebrating the friendships that we have made and the business that has been done via MLPF.

I hope that we’ll also celebrate MLPF as one of the useful types of community things we can do in this ever evolving virtual world that has become so important to us.

Though we weren’t always on topic, we, nonetheless, generated over 19,000 messages thus far. Those messages aren’t just text. They are interactions. People interacting with people – expressing concerns, addressing issues, solving myriad problems, and celebrating some successes. If your time permits, you ought to spend a little time looking through the MLPF Archives before February 9th.

Now, with an ever increasing number of good groups and blogs which can help the general Linkedin user benefit from the power resident in Linkedin, I’m confident that this is a good time to make such a decision, and a good time for me to direct my focus more narrowly on projects that I’ve held in abeyance over the past 2 years.

Before closing, I want to sincerely thank each of you for your support, your friendship, your incredible knowledge, and your very thoughtful counseling in making meaning with MLPF.

I also wish to publicly thank the great Moderators for their time and thoughtfulness and for lending their names to me in this highly intriguing virtual project. For that, I thank them sincerely. I thank them deeply. I thank them relentlessly.

Of course, I still intend to run my mouth with those members among you who are my close friends. So, you’re not totally off the hook from me, yet!

In closing: I wish you and yours the very best of the best in 2007 and beyond.

Keep strong and let’s have a great time learning from each other and maximizing our personal opportunities with MLPF over the next 40 days…

–
Thanks!
Vincent Wright

As you might imagine, that sparked an extensive round of well-wishing and gratitude combined with a bit of dismay and a dash of rumors, which he quickly quelled. Many members have suggested handing over the reins to someone else (or multiple someone elses), but no word on that yet, nor on the fate of the other spin-offs he founded, many of which are now co-moderated by other people.

Vincent’s departure will certainly leave a void, especially if MLPF shuts down completely. However, I seriously doubt it’s the last we’ll hear from Vincent, or the end of his evangelism of LinkedIn. Also, while MLPF is the largest and most active LinkedIn-related Yahoo Group with nearly 5,000 members and over 19,000 messages in just under two years, it is not the only one. LinkedInnovators, with nearly 3,000 members (probably mostly overlapping) and about 5,000 messages in about the same time frame, would be the most likely candidate to fill the void if MLPF is shut down entirely.

Vincent has given a remarkable amount of his time and energy to the community of LinkedIn users via MLPF. While I firmly believe that “givers gain”, I know that all too often it takes longer than expected and some of the greatest givers have to make some changes to take care of themselves. Gratitude doesn’t pay your rent and good will doesn’t put food on the table.

I don’t think “charity” is the answer. But I do think it is incumbent on each and every one of us to serve those who serve. If you know Vincent and appreciate what he’s done via MLPF over the last two years, a “thank-you” is good, but a “what-can-I-do-for-you” is even better.