Online communities like MySpace, Facebook and Friendster have totally revolutionized the way we keep in touch with friends and family members online. While this is great and all for leisure and entertainment, these sites don’t really offer any benefits for business-minded people. Its this void that sites like LinkedIn aim to fill.
LinkedIn is an online community for business professionals to meet, share ideas and keep in contact with each other. Networking in any business setting is essential if you plan to grow and expand your company. As I have said before, its all about “who you know”, especially in the tech industry. You really do need to know as many people as you can and get your name out there. You never know when having the right contact will benefit you.
The site is free to join and once you have created an account, you can begin to set up your profile. If you have worked with any online communities, you should already be familiar with most everything.
Your profile page is more or less an online resume. You can list previous jobs and your education background, as well as provide as little or as much detail about each as you wish. You can even receive recommendations from others on your connections list, like a business reference or a letter of recommendation. Stuff like this goes a long way when job hunting!
The meat and potatoes of LinkedIn, however, is the networking. A powerful search tool is provided which makes it pretty easy to find contacts you have worked with. Once you have established a contact, you can look at their connections list to find others you might know or have done business with. You can request that a friend introduce you to a new contact or elect to initiate contact yourself.
LinkedIn also offers a ton of other features, like job searches and a very neat question and answer section where you can post questions to your contacts or the community in general.
I joined LinkedIn last year but just recently started making a heavy push for new contacts and it is already starting to pay off as a few new business opportunities have developed. If you are already on LinkedIn, feel free to add me as a connection. See you there!
