I must admit when I was first told about LinkedIn a few years ago, I didn’t quite get it. I set up my page and halfway finished my profile and went about my business. I linked to a few people who I worked with, but didn’t venture outside of my company or my realm. It was a “social network” I checked from time to time, and I mostly used it to look for candidates for positions I needed to fill when I was an HR manager.
When I began planning the Show Me the Blog Conference last year, I turned to LinkedIn to get the word out—and believe it or not, it ended up bringing a lot of people to the conference. I added it to the event calendar and viola, people who were truly interested in social media and blogging in our area were able to know about the event even if they weren’t in my network.
I have found that LinkedIn has been very useful in connecting to people on a business level. Twitter and Facebook are very social minded networks—LinkedIn is more geared to assisting your brand, business, or even yourself to get to the next level. LinkedIn now also has the ability for people to create a page for their businesses, much like Facebook has business pages. I find myself networking on LinkedIn more and more for business dealings and connecting with others in my area who may make great collaborators for future events.
It gives you the opportunity to learn about others professional strengths. And it is through this medium that I have found professionals that can help me and vice versa.
And while I cannot say that I am a LinkedIn expert, I know that in my daily life, it has come in handy many times. One of my goals this year is to get to know LinkedIn better and begin to value the connective power that it provides to its users. I also want to know what the difference is between a paid account and a free account, and what benefits does that paid version have that the basic doesn’t?
If one of you readers can clue me in, I would greatly appreciate it. In the meantime, I will continue to network and use it to gain valuable business contacts and information that can help improve my projects and brand.
Let’s chat. Are you on LinkedIn? What value have you gotten from it?
Connect to me on LinkedIn- Add me to your network 🙂
I have a half finished profile. I should really go back and revist Linkedin.
When I was searching for jobs, I used Linkedin to “stalk” the company and managers I knew I would be interviewing with. I’m not as active as I should be but I think the site is great, it’s like getting a sneak peak at the resume of successful people to see how they got to where they are and getting a chance to connect with them. I’ve used it to connect with professionals I have met at events and keep in touch with former coworkers/classmates.
I signed up for LinkedIn years ago and then never did anything with it, even though I know I should. My boyfriend said he’s been getting tons and tons of friend requests there lately (or whatever they are called) and we think it’s because the economy is still so bad here in Las Vegas, so everyone is trying to get a job or get more work.
I set up a profile and forgot all about it. I used LinkedIn when I was job hunting but after I found a job, I didn’t see the value in it. I’ll try to become more active on there – one never knows where that dream job may come from.
I have gotten my recent jobs via LinkedIn – and its definitely something to utilize for business purposes.