Let’s Connect: Using Linkedin to get ahead at work - Ajay Jain

What the book is talking about is LinkedIn, an international business networking website, which can make the world of business a much smaller place. Specially with the network that he or she creates. Interestingly, if you are connected on this business networking site the possibilities are just endless like accessing faraway markets, landing dream jobs, raising capital, attracting the best of talent, building corporate brands and more.

The structure is so simply put, even though if someone has not heard about Linkedin and picks up this book, he will surely be able to understand as to what the power of Linkedin can do for him. At first, the author has highlighted as what should go in your profile and what does not work on Linkedin.

The most important part of the book is the “10 ways to get Linkedin to work for you”. Ajay has explained in each of the 10 ways with cases and quotes from individuals who have successfully used the networking site in that particular approach. This is something unique in this book, where the authors has taken the efforts of compiling the user experiences for each of the approaches that he mentions. The 10 ways are:

i Your Ever Expanding Rolodex
ii LinkedIn Answers: A Global Focus Group
iii Networking Plus
iv Branding and Marketing Yourself
v Hiring People
vi Finding a Job You Love
vii Finding Vendors and Service Providers
viii Running Background Checks
ix Entrepreneurs: Get Opinions and Investors
x Selling & Brand Building

Author highlights that the most important aspect that one can leverage Linkedin to gain popularity, to be an expert in his/her field, to gain new business, to build network and many more advantages is using the Linkedin Answers section. There is a whole chapter which highlights as to how one can use this feature. Listening, participation being the key in today’s social media environment. Linked Answers is the platform to be on. This is the best way to build credibility amongst peers and even provide a little threat to the competition, you already know and you are waiting to convert the information to knowledge.

Some observations:

• One thing that surprised me the most that, we as Linkedin users has an limit to inviting to 3000 people to join.
• LIONS -Linkedin Open Networkers - these are networkers who allow anyone to see their email address and are are open to receiving the invites from anyone
• The boxes which highlight and exemplify a point does not come as an intrusion, but highlights the point in discussion
• If you are in growing stage, Linkedin will help - Connecting with trusted individuals, specially for freshers, start ups with people that are powerhouse in their own domains
• Backgrounds check on service providers or even individuals, this will help in establishing one’s online reputation.

After reading the book, i realised that there are so many potential opportunities waiting to be tapped on networking site. So as the author’s suggests, “Do you want to be Linked In or Linked Out? The choice is yours”.

You can catch me on Linkedin

This 248 pages book, Public Relations for Asia, has just been launched and a brief glance at its index of contents looks promising.

The book is divided into four parts. The first part deals with the context and theory of PR. The second part deals with PR strategy and planning. The third part is on PR Skills, which includes chapters on writing press release/ feature, how to do a media interview, how to call a journalist, how to generate creative ideas, how to design an online press office, how to exploit the new media,planning and managing PR events, internal communications, presentation skills, writing good speech, briefing design work, and using language and images to influence people. The final part talks about the future of PR.

A bit irony here is that the authors of the book - Trevor Morris and Simon Goldsworthy - are senior PR practitioners in the UK. So you might feel that this is a bit of talking down on how to do PR by experts from mature PR markets to the poor PR practitioners in evolving Asia. We would have loved to have some views and studies on how the PR markets are developing in various Asian markets, and how PR is different here from the western countries. Having said that, this book is said to contain lots of case studies from Asia, as well as from other parts of the world. That should be a good read as well.

All said and done, this looks like a good handy book for any young PR professional. We have got in touch with Simon and are trying to get something for India PR blog readers. Let’s see what works out. A more detailed review is coming up.