By Roving Social Media Reporter: Kristen Weaver
I can’t tell you the last time I was actually awake at 6am…. but this morning I woke up bright and early to get ready for Meredith Oliver’s new seminar as part of the WOAMTEC Social Media Bootcamp! Today’s session is on LinkedIn, and I’m looking forward to learning more about this powerful business networking tool.
My drive across town was an eclectic mix of old school Janet Jackson (Miss Jackson, if you’re nasty), The Ting Tings and Iron Maiden. Fashionably arriving about 40 minutes early (in true Kristen Weaver style), grabbed a blueberry bagel (from Via Panera), a banana and some orange juice – I’m set up, logged in and ready to learn about LinkedIn!
Meredith’s boot camps are really great because she does so much hands-on training. We all were able to bring our personal laptops to plug in and follow along. Because honestly, hands-on is one of the best ways to learn and become familiar with these new tools.
Ahh, Allen has arrived and decided to harass me about my upcoming housewarming party. If you don’t know Allen, he’s Meredith’s husband (aka Partner in Crime) and super-dad to Brady and Molly Oliver (Molly is the fabulous facebooking dog and infamous, in her own right).
8:30 am – Meredith just kicked off the lesson! Everyone is so attentive! She’s opening by asking everyone what new ideas they took with them following last week’s Facebook session and how they’ve used them. Lots of great accomplishments! Everyone’s been working on their Fan pages, linking and “being wild” – ok, well some of them got the message 
Everyone's hard at work with LinkedIn!
Key takeaway point: There’s a difference between your hub and your traffic driver. Your hub is where you want to direct your customers and clients. You can use one of your social media sites, or your website as an effective “hub”. Your traffic driver would be your other social media – which will direct your traffic to your hub. Social media can be so overwhelming sometimes, it’s best to start out with one site that you’re comfortable using, and try to direct your traffic there. For instance, if you’re better with LinkedIn, use that as your hub and direct your Facebook Fans to view articles and discussions you start on LinkedIn.
8:45 am – Now, on to LinkedIn. LinkedIn is great because there’s only one log in. You don’t have to worry about having a personal page, business page, fan page, etc – like you do with Facebook. Meredith decides to engage us in a little networking task to show the similarities between in-person and online networking. It was a perfect ice-breaker, and I met some really cool new people (who later requested I connect to them on LinkedIn during the “Connections” lesson!) 
Key takeaway point: LinkedIn is a personal to personal relationship builder. In Facebook, some of our focus is on building the relationship of an individual to a business (i.e. fan page), but LinkedIn is all about YOU. This is your place to shine!
We had a full house this morning!
9:30 am – Discussing how to add, and network with, new connections! Meredith is talking about great “web-iquette” for asking people to become connected, and why it’s different than asking for friends on Facebook. Accepting friends on Facebook can be touchy when you don’t know them – because it’s usually a personal page – full of your personal photos, status updates, thoughts and friends. On LinkedIn, it’s a safer professional environment to request connections. Your profile is more of a resume that you share with other professionals. It’s your safe place
9:50 am – Ooooh. Learned an awesome new trick for LinkedIn invitations! Soo cool…. (I’m not going to share though, you’ll just have to attend her next LinkedIn Seminar!)
10:00 am – On to making money! Meredith is talking about ways that you can use LinkedIn to boost your business. We’re going to tackle how to give and get recommendations (this can be a fantastic way to boost a bad day) – and why you should always return the favor. I’ve had a few people request recommendations that I didn’t work with closely enough – Meredith attacked this sticky situation with ways to be thoughtful and creative without hurting feelings.
The venue was perfect - there was a lot of brainstorming, questions and personal attention!
10:30 am – Recommendations – done! Groups – done! We’re just flying along. Great comments and questions from the group in attendance. Great marketing brainstorming! Great ideas and new ways to market yourself, your blog and your website! Attendees have been group-making-crazy this morning! I’ve already seen about 3 of them start new groups for their business. This is great! I love seeing how a few good ideas and some useful tools can make you a marketing maven!
11:00 am - Meredith threw a little Twitter in. Ok, I admit, I took a little detour to meet with a colleague outside the conference room – so I actually missed the Twitter part of the morning, but that just makes it even more secret!
11:15 am – Covering the awesomeness of Ping.fm! Very easy, very useful! I blogged about Ping awhile back, and I still consider it to be one of the most useful, time saving Social Media sites out there!
11:30 am – Meredith is wrapping up our amazing Social Media Bootcamp all about LinkedIn (and a little about Twitter and Ping). Some of this can be overwhelming at times – so Meredith provides all kinds of support from flash drive training, virtual training and even full service help where she’ll set everything up for you. Definitely worth looking in to!
I’m really impressed with her Flash Drives that you can pick up at her seminars. She actually records herself while recording her monitor and takes you step by step through sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Bootcamp goers get a special discounted price on these, too! She has them on many different topics – and they’re like your own personal one-on-one training session with Meredith!
Next week, we reconviene for some really cool YouTube training with her handy Flip Camera! I’m really excited about setting up my own Video Channel for my photography. The possibilities are endless, and Meredith helps to give you the tools to be creative and socially mediarific!
If you want to check out her next seminar – definitely send her an email to RSVP! There was a full house today and seats are going fast, so you’ll want to get in as soon as possible! (and you don’t have to show up 40 minutes early… but I probably will!)
(PS: I made the picture using the icons from IconSpedia!)
Tags: blogging, bootcamp, creating wow, creatingwow, facebook, internet, internet marketing, internet marketing expert, internet marketing help, internet marketing hotline, internet marketing support, kristen weaver, linkedin, meredith communications, meredith oliver, ping, ping.fm, professional speaker, Social Media, social media marketing, social networking, twitter, web marketing help, web marketing strategy, WOAMTEC
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By the way, thank you for such a fantastic training this morning! Can’t wait until next week’s session!