linkedin for journalists

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Robin J Phillips

Digital Director, The Reynolds Center for Business Journalism

+Biggest Rolodex EVER!

150 million users

200 countries

Professional focus

Updated by users

Very portable

Carry past colleagues with you

Sorted by company, industry, geography

Updated by users

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+LinkedIn highlights

Founded in 2003

Alexa ranks LinkedIn.com No. 12 site in world, No. 9 in U.S.

Becoming more social - FB and Twitter connections

Supports groups – more than 1 million of them

May 2011 IPO, opening price jump from $45 to $122.70 ($93.05 a week ago)

Rolled out an “Apply with LinkedIn” feature in November

BBC traffic from LinkedIn increased tenfold January to June 2011

Huge database for journalists to dig into

+Simple tips

Maintain a current profile (even if you’re not looking for a job)

Complete your profile & have at least 50 connections

Don’t use a cut-and-paste of your resume

Make your profile public & give it a custom URL

Recommend people (anyone you’d write a reference for IRL)

But avoid recommendation “swapping”

Join groups, discussion boards, eavesdrop and get involved

Keep non-professional SM accounts separate from LinkedIn

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+Using LinkedIn as a (well-organized) database

intuitive

+What we’ll talk about today

LinkedIn as a database

Personal use

Groups

Jobs

Skills

Searching for people

Searching people at companies

Finding current employees

Finding former employees

Digging into company data

How to search in stealth mode

+Personal use – networking, bragging

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+

+

+

+Groups – belong to or search

Alumni

Corporate

Professional

Conference

Networking

Non-profits

… other

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Group you should join

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+Groups – conversations, story ideas

+Jobs – finding, tracking

+Skills – yours and theirs

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Searching for skills in profile

Skills - looking for an expert

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+People search, company

+Narrowing the field

+Advanced search

+Em

plo

yees

Drill deeper

+Drill deeper

+Past employees

+Company search

+Company search

+Insight Statistics: Liz Claiborne

+Company search: HSBC

+Company search: HSBC

+Company search: HSBC

+HSBC Financial Services

+HSBC Financial Services

+HSBC Financial Services

+HSBC Financial Services

+HSBC Financial Services

+HSBC Financial Services

+Staff with new titles

+Full page

insightful statisticsNetflix

top

botto

m

+Past and future employers

+Past and future employers

Chegg?

+Chegg

+BeatsRetail

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Industriesreal estate

+Search in stealth mode

As a journalist, you may not want people to know that you're following a company (or look for a job). If you want to follow companies in stealth mode, here's what you do:

1. Hover over your name in the top right hand corner of LinkedIn

2. Click "Settings" when it appears in the drop down menu.

3. On the next page, under, "Privacy Controls," you should see a link that says, "Turn on/off your activity broadcasts." Click that link.

4. Uncheck the box next to, "Let people know when you change your profile, make recommendations, or follow companies.”

+Your LinkedIn guru

Follow Krista Canfield and attend one of her sessions.

Former reporter who thinks like a journalist

+What you learned today

LinkedIn as a database

Personal use

Groups

Jobs

Skills

Searching for people

Searching people at companies

Finding current employees

Finding former employees

Digging into company data

How to search in stealth mode

Robin.Phillips@businessjournalism.org

Slides are in handouts or send me a note