Click Edit Profile and inspect the large white box that begins with your Current job positions. If you completed the previous information described in my blogs, Past jobs, Education, and Websites should be listed. If you have a Twitter account, you can add that next.
Public Profile. At the bottom of the box, Public Profile permits you to set up your own personal LinkedIn URL link. Why? you ask. Colleagues can click directly to your profile. Just add it to your signature line. After your title, institution, e-mail, phone, and URLs for your Websites and blog, tack on the LinkedIn URL. You want to make it easy for colleagues and clients to see your credentials and contact you. If they can’t find you, they’ll pick someone else.
Update box. While you’re at the top of your profile, you will notice a white box under your name and location box. In the bottom right, it says Post an Update. When you click that Post, you can announce your professional activities to your network. For example, you can post blog titles (as I do regularly), research activities, attendance at a conference, a new article or book, recent surgeries, dental appointments, and any other info you want your connections to know. When you post your “tweet-size” message, it will be sent automatically to your connections, if you pick that option. In fact, you can have your actual (Twitter) tweets appear regularly in this update. It is recommended that you post updates a few times a week to raise your LinkedIn rank in Google, which is most everyone’s goal in life.
What’s Next? What’s missing in your profile? A PhD from Harvard? A thousand connections? You’re getting close. It’s Recommendations by employers and colleagues who praise your performance and production. You need 3 to complete your profile. How do you get these recommendations? That’s next.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH SOCIAL NETWORKS?
Social networks are not just the rage, they have revolutionized the way we communicate. There is even a movie about Facebook, but I forgot the same. The networks are free and open to every age, from diapers to diapers.
So what’s the problem? The networks have different purposes and require time to contribute. If you don’t contribute, they don’t serve their purposes and benefit you. And TIME is a major issue with all of us.
This blog series is about one specific network, designed for “professionals”: LinkedIn.
TRADITIONAL NETWORKING RESOURCES
Consider our traditional networking resources:
1. stone tablets
2. business cards, held together with a rubber band or paper clip
3. napkins with smeared ink name and phone no. (WAIT! That was for dates.)
4. Rolodex® cards
5. printed directories from institutions, associations, and conferences
6. mobile phone directory
7. PDA directory
8. other “on the fly” techniques you have used
Over the past decade, our institutional Website posts our profile with publications in some set format, which complements 1–8.
WHAT OPTIONS ARE THERE?
Now there’s another option to 1–8: your iPhone® or Black’n Blueberry®. Well, your phone is an option since it can contact anyone and connect with just about every piece of electronic equipment, but that’s not what I meant to type.
What I meant was: LinkedIn. It’s kinda the professional counterpart to Facebook or Twitter. Instead of tweeting or facing, you are linking. Is it a gimmick or a waste of your valuable time?
ARE YOU ON LINKEDIN?
Academicians, in particular, seem to be unaware of LinkedIn and those who are on the network rarely use it to its full potential. “Why?” you’re thinking, or maybe not.
Administrators and faculty are overwhelmed with a bazillion tasks that usually do not require a vast network of colleagues and the need to build a network, advertise a business, and/or hunt for a job. According to my latest calculations, there are about 4 administrators and 3 faculty who use these services on LinkedIn.
Academicians teach, write grants, conduct research, advise students, mentor faculty and students, grade, administer departments, plan faculty development events, write journal articles and books, present at conferences, consult, attend a quadrillion meetings, plus other activities I missed. So why aren’t you on LinkedIn? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?
So, let’s consider 10 reasons why you should NOT join LinkedIn in my next blog.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
Are you ready for 2.0? Me neither. Hold on to your keyboards. Here we go:
WEB 2.0 (2004–present)
This 2nd generation was “read-write” (Berners-Lee), social Web with interaction, active participation, and content generation. The term was coined by Darcy DiNucci (1999). It’s been called the “participatory Web” compared to Web 1.0 as the “Web-as-information source” (Decrem, 2006). It had a user-centered design to foster interactive information sharing so that users could be contributors, producers, and consumers. Examples include web applications, social media, video sharing, blogs, wikis, mashups, and folksonomies (categorizing content through tags) (see Wikipedia on Web 2.0).
USER-ORIENTED AND INTERACTIVE: Encyclopedia Britannica Online was replaced with Wikipedia, which relies on users (collectively) to constantly and quickly generate content. Users can write their own content and comment on others’ content through blogs, network groups, and social media. They can post their own social and professional profiles for others to review and create pages to advertise their businesses, events, and products on these sites. Users can even build their own social network with Ning. Other interactive services include Skype, online banking, and job and employee searching on LinkedIn and many other sites.
RELIANCE ON USER CONTRIBUTIONS: Some Webs rely almost entirely on user contributions, such as (a) social (Facebook, Twitter, Digg) and professional networks (LinkedIn), which permit users to create and share audio, video, text, and multimedia content, (b) photo (Flickr) and video (Flickr, YouTube) distribution and sharing sites, and (c) professional listservs. Without these contributions, most of these sites might vanish into cyber-air.
BOTTOM LINE: Overall, Web 2.0 facilitates creativity, information sharing and dissemination, dynamic, ever-changing content, and collaboration which has led to Web-based communities and the hosted services listed above. It radically changed the way people use the Internet, from 1-way to every which-way.
Tomorrow I’ll examine some of the criticisms of Web 2.0, and then on to Web 3.0.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
1. Carry Work When Traveling
If you really want to stay in control of your workload or jump ahead, carry work materials when you’re on the move. This time saver is one of the most effective time management techniques you can possibly use. Before jumping, whenever you leave your home, office, ship, or football field to go anywhere, take a briefcase, bag, or backpack with work materials and laptop with you. Don’t leave without something (including your American Express card—ya never know what will pop up), but don’t take everything, especially any vertebrae-breaking, cartilage-tearing monster course textbooks or complete dissertations.
SAMPLE OF TASKS
Today, as you travel to almost every destination, wait time will be involved. During that travel, you could complete the following 20 tasks:
• grade papers
• edit term papers or essays
• edit thesis chapters
• respond to e-mails from students and colleagues
• read articles for an article or chapter you’re writing
• write a section of an article or book chapter
• edit a manuscript
• write a review for a journal manuscript, grant proposal, or book chapter
• write a course lecture or student activities
• write an agenda for an upcoming meeting
• write the minutes from a past meeting
• write a letter of recommendation for a student or colleague
• write your letter of resignation
• write pink slips to whack your staff
• add a few items to your “to-do” list
• write a blood curdling murder mystery
• plan how you’re going to spend your federal stimulus check
• read The Chronicle of Higher Education for job options
• write a blog
• revise your profile on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn
You may have noticed that about 65% of those tasks require writing. That seems to be a significant component of our job description. Estimate your wait time to decide how much and what type of work to take. Depending on how you travel, your work opportunity will vary. Several travel options will be examined in the next blog.
COPYRIGHT © 2009 Ronald A. Berk, LLC & Coventry Press
