Welcome back! It's good to see you again. Please note that I am now publishing all new material at my hub site: StephenPSmith.com

Chris Brogan has an excellent post on using the power of your Linked-In connections to build your business and your brand.

Make Your LinkedIn Profile Work for You

LinkedIn is a professional network built around one’s employment capabilities. It is often referred to (I believe somewhat incorrectly) as an online version of your CV or resume. People who use LinkedIn expertly, like Christopher S. Penn, will be the first to say that this service is sorely underrated as a place to develop business, grow your capabilities, and promote your projects and opportunities. Here are some thoughts on amping up your LinkedIn presence.

There are a ton of useful links in the comments, too, as Chris’ readers jump in to help. This shows the power of the Linked-In community! I recommend that you read the entire article, but I wanted to put all of the links together for your convenience. Enjoy!

• Adam Nash summarizes a post by Guy Kawasaki on how to use Linked-In
• Rick Upton has a blog devoted to Linked-In strategies
• Mario Sundar has tips for adding Linked-In to your Firefox sidebar
• Jacob Morgan has 15 Tips for marketing yourself on Linked-In. These are 3 of the most important:
  1. Leverage your contacts to get introduced to THEIR contacts
  2. Join a group, there are tons of them
  3. Create a group, preferably one that either doesn’t exist
• Next, did you know that Linked-In has a blog?
• Finally, there is a video by Christopher Penn on Using LinkedIn to build your personal network, a presentation he delivered at PodCamp NYC 2.0

By the way, be sure to connect with me at Linked-In!

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6qcp3s. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

I have added a new badge in the sidebar that allows you to print or save these posts in PDF format.

The ECO-SAFE Foundation

Let’s Change the World

We can change the world by using each of our own unique voices. By placing the ECO-SAFE Merit Badge on your website or blog, you are using your voice and empowering others to participate in environmentally friendly behaviors on the web. The ECO-SAFE Merit Badge is a symbol of hope and love for the world we all live in.

Websites displaying the “ECO-SAFE Merit Badge” are providing environmentally friendly printing alternatives for their website visitors. As a collective group of people who use the Merit Badge, we are actively reducing the staggering number of web pages printed daily.

What do you think? Will it save paper? Will it help you collect useful information?

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/569lcl. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

Just a quick reminder for those of you who are using the book of days that I put together, it’s time to order the July through December edition if you haven’t already.

For more information on what it is, click here.

To order the second volume of the Book of Days click here.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6o3hdb. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

Study Hacks - Avoid Wasting an Entire Semester’s Worth of Work

In this academic year-end post, I want to offer up a simple system that helps make sure that you get some lasting value out of your courses.

The Knowledge Vault

The basic idea: During the first week after your courses end — that is, before you start forgetting everything — enter the most important ideas, insights, and resources into a long-term system that you can later easily reference. I call such a system: a knowledge vault. There are an infinite number of possible variations for constructing such a vault; here, I describe just one to get you thinking.

Click on over to Study Hacks and check out the system. Good stuff.

Here is another post on note-taking:
Study Hacks : The Study Hacks Guide to Note-Taking

In this post, I describe some of the most important note-taking strategies to grace the digital pages of Study Hacks. Take a look. If you master this step, you’ll enjoy significant improvements to your academic life.

A Study Hacks Crash Course on Smart Note-Taking

Why Most Students Don’t Understand the Real Goal of Note-Taking
A classic article from the early days of Study Hacks. It lays out my core philosophy on how to take notes well. You can use its “Three Laws of Reduced Study Time Note-Taking” as a general framework for the construction of your own customized note solution.

Read the whole thing!

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6x3ux3. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen