The Bible (and Tim Rice) tell us that Peter denied Jesus three times. But if you are denied three times on LinkedIn, you may not get flogged, but your account will get flagged … you will need to enter in a person’s email address in order to send them a Connection Invite.

This happens if you send out invites and people click on the “Don’t Know” button instead of ignoring or accepting your LinkedIn attempt. Unfortunately, as it proved to be for me, this is mainly due to lazy people who don’t want to just ignore the request (not everybody may want to connect with you … for whatever reason) but LinkedIn only sees that people claim not to know you, and one of their big marketing pushes is that LinkedIn is only for people who actually know each other.

So can you tell who denied knowing you? Yes!

1. Log into your LinkedIn profile and click on Contacts on the left hand side. (Note to LinkedIn management, for web usability, this really should be “Connections” to keep things standard, not “Contacts”)
2. After your contacts/connections are displayed, look near the right hand top margin for “X outstanding Sent Invitations” Click on the words “Sent Invitations.”
3. You can now page through all of the invitations you have sent, and look for “Doesn’t Know” in the status column.
4. Call up your colleague and ask why they said they didn’t know you!

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If your account is flagged as too many people saying they don’t know you, LinkedIn says you can email them at cs@linkedin.com, explain to them that you know the rules and aren’t spamming users, and they will reportedly remove the restriction. Which is good, since many of us use LinkedIn to find people we may have lost track of, and knowing their current email address is part of the goal, not the pre-requisite.

Filed under: community, community, LinkedIn, Troy Rutter | Post a comment

After all of the advances in Internet technology, and the sheer number of useful and creative web sites that have been developed since then, one single thing continues to drive visitors to sites, and in turn make money for some, lose it for others who don’t understand it – content.

What is this mysterious word they call content? Like many things, content means different things to different people. But one thing is for certain: Those who know how to produce it, benefit from it. Those that do not are harmed by not having it.

Content.

Your own content, other people’s content, computer generated content, user generated content, it’s different but yet all the same. Someone, somewhere, has to create it. And someone, somewhere has to put it together and present it to the rest of us.

Back when Yahoo started its rise to power on the Internet, it’s content was generated through one of the very first “web spiders” that would go out, collect information, which would then be categorized, and presented in the Yahoo directory. The content was collected and presented, but technically the creators weren’t writing the content themselves, their robot was collecting the data. Then came user submissions. Suddenly you have millions of people all submitting – not content – but merely links to content, in essence generating UN-content which was then turned into content.

I am about to save you a lot of money. If you look at ClickBank, or search the Internet on how to make money online, you will eventually be enticed to buy a $197 package that has “detailed case studies” and today’s hottest thing – online videos for you to watch.

They all come down to the same basic principles:

#1 – Find a product to market

#2 – Write content

There you have it. Now fork over the $197. I have read countless numbers of eBooks on how to quit your day job, retire early, get rich on the Internet, and even Tim Ferris’s book on the Four Hour Work Week… it all, unfortunately, comes down to finding a product/service and writing content.

NOT sales content. REAL content.

One good, 300 word post a day on a blog, or one article a day on a regular web site can be good content. But you have to keep it up. If you knew that a 300 word article a day would someday be worth $1000-$2000/day… wouldn’t you do it?

With real content comes real community. With real community comes user-generated content, which should complement, not replace, your own original content otherwise your community will get bored.

If you want to attract a community, you have to keep generating content. Otherwise they can, and will, find another web site whose owners WILL write that 300 word article a day.

Filed under: content, content | 2 Comments

If you run a free-flowing message board, or even a blog, you have to make it clear to your community just what behavior is acceptable and what is not.  This is usually done through a “terms of use” or even a posted message called a “posting policy.”

There is nothing worse than removing a post or comment from your blog, and then having the poster in question rallying the troops, protesting that a post was deleted, crying censorship, and creating infighting and chaos on your board or blog.  By adopting and posting specific guidelines, you will at least have something you can point to and say “this is the reason why.”  This may or may not prevent a flame war, but at least you have something behind you.

What constitutes a good posting policy?  That is up to you.   I try to be more open and free in my community requirements, so my posting policy may simply state

• No advertisements
• No flame wars
• No “I’m leaving the board forever” posts
• No profanity

Simply, sweet and to the point.  This will give you the backing you need if you ever need to delete or hide somebody’s post/comment.  In the end, it is your community, and you have the power (and the right) to deleted anything for any reason (posting on your board is a privilege, not a right) - but at least now you have something in writing that you can refer people to.

Do you have a “posting policy” on your board/site?  What does your say?

Filed under: community | 3 Comments