How LinkedIn is Saving My Tookus/Tuckus

Urban dictionary says both spellings of the word Tookus are correct. I like Tookus, because of the double entendre effect.

Anyway, like I said before, LinkedIn is the subject of this post, in particular, how it saved my butt. I’ve had a relatively empty LinkedIn profile for eons, but never really understood what I was supposed to be doing on it. I thought it really sucked that I only had 11 connections, and I just kind of wandered away from it. For a long time, it was another place where someone could look up my name and find out that I wasn’t some kind of scam artist.

As I’ve said before, I’ve been sick for about 4 months. I didn’t say, and should have, that I have also been out of the loop for about 8 months, working on the project that resulted in my illness, which might as well be four years in internet time, at least when you’re supposed to be reporting on the latest and greatest thing in website traffic and how the average small business person can ethically take advantage of it. I felt like I was drowning, and losing my touch.

Two promotions I had put on, back to back, had failed in my estimation (which is the harsh terms that I put an offer to my list by Friday and didn’t make at least two grand at the end of the weekend).

I was starting to think that I was crazy, and also that I was being too stubborn in not calling for back up. But how would I reach the 1000 people in my email rolodex without spamming anyone and without it taking forever? Enter LinkedIn. I went to the site, and imported one of my address books, and it turned out that over 200 people I knew were active on LinkedIn. So, instead of sending the standard message, I went through and found small groups of five or less people that I knew in the same company, and sent them a message, mentioning the people we were connected to, asking for help.

At a certain point, I started to send messages one at a time. It was cumbersome, but less so than writing individual emails. And I could tailor each message to state the kind of help I desired.

And making the help I wanted of use to them helped greatly.

I proposed mutually beneficial connections, such as - I have a few connections through my writing that can help publicize you fast, how about an interview. That way, I win - I get exposure for the interview, they win, because they get even more exposure, and the reader wins, because everyone loves an interview.

Responses started rolling in faster than I could respond. (My email is currently being screened by a relative and a friend until I get better, and they are subsequently forwarding them to my personal mailbox. It’s a bit clunky, but it works surprisingly well for the backlog of thousands of emails.)

And people are willing to help, far beyond what I would request, in answer to some long past favor or mention I once made of them. Being the type of person who doesn’t give in hopes of getting back from the same place, it feels like an embarrassment of riches, and in a good way.
I guess the moral of the story is, when you’re sinking, get in the passing boats. And if there are no boats passing, well, there’s always LinkedIn. :) It allowed me to reach out to people without violating privacy, and many of them linked back. Through their system, I also got some good intros from my network, praised a live-saving service, and was offered a glowing testimonial by a past customer.

[tags]tookus, tuckus, linked in, linkedin[/tags]