I have, it’s true, been somewhat underwhelmed with my LinkedIn experience. For me, it has proved nothing more than an extra step in the day-to-day process of keeping in touch. But as the comments on my blog have shown, that is not the case for everyone. And my policy is always to open the field to as many opinions as people can shout out. So I sent out a message to the YahooGroup for TopLinkedIn users, asking what LinkedIn does for them. Below are the responses I got, together with a bit of professional background on each of the respondents.
In addition to my “9 to 5″ job I edit a daily e-mail publication, the Transportation Communications Newsletter. The newsletter has over 6,500 subscribers and most of my contacts are people who are readers of the newsletter.
While I don’t use LinkedIn daily, it is helpful if I’m trying to find a contact in a company that I report on in the newsletter or if I want more information about one of my readers. I also find LinkedIn to be helpful in terms of staying up-to-date on what my contacts are doing. By checking it daily I see who’s updated their profile and know about new jobs contacts have.
I also do freelance voice work. Again, LinkedIn has been helpful in identifying contacts in companies of potential customers.
I don’t use the forwarding feature of LinkedIn, but I do tap my own contacts directly to get leads.
Bernie
Positions: Operations manager, editor
Industry: Transportation
In the past week or so I’ve spent some time recruiting people for the Ex-Convex LinkedIn group that I manage, and clarifying our membership policy. Being in a leadership position here provides opportunities for me to stay in better touch with my former co-workers and keep my name fresh in their minds.
I’ve been helping a long-time colleague and new LinkedIn connection learn his way around LinkedIn. We’ve both been experimenting with improving our visibility by answering questions in LinkedIn Answers. Our continued discussions have led him to become a new advertising client of mine. It’s never as simple as getting an introduction request and then signing a new business deal.
Danny
Position: Owner/consultant
Industry: Software
The fact that your LinkedIn profile is reviewed by people from within and outside your immediate network is a benefit, but I have yet to dollarize the results to date, and I am now hovering around 920 active members in my network. I probably will not grow my network into the thousands, as I prefer to connect to people where we can mutually benefit one another. So the long and the short of it, IMHO, is that LinkedIn, like many social networks, is a way to garner visibility, and hopefully have people link to your homepage, blog, etc… where you can build a following, create interest, and ultimately gain a business opportunity.
Mark
Position: Managing director
Industry: Information technology & services
I’ve only recently become more active on LinkedIn so am probably not a good example, but I did have someone recently contact me about some possible work through someone who was in our joint network. We’ll see if anything comes out of it. Also I think your LinkedIn profile comes up on a Google search, and someone once contacted me for a quote after doing a search, but nothing came out of that one.
Yvette
Position: Virtual assistant
Industry: Information services
I use LinkedIn for my ventures in the Entertainment business. Mostly, I use it to connect to other creatives and production people with ideas for reality shows, scripts and other entertainment ventures.
Dylan
Position: Freelance television producer
Industry: Entertainment
I am a legal recruiter and have been trying to understand why lawyers have not adopted LinkedIn in the same number as other industries. The key complaint is based in the Q&A piece: Lawyers want to use the system by answering legal questions! But the system allows anyone to answer and incorrect answers to be marked “best answer” etc..
R. Raymond May
Position: Recruiter/managing partner
Industry: Legal services
Blog: www.zebriod1.blogspot.com
One Response to “LinkedIn Diaries IV — Other People’s Comments”
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February 12th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Lena,
Don’t let yourself be fooled. 90% of these positive comments probably came from LinkedIn employees.
Readers of Entrepreneur.com (small business owners, etc.) will be much better served by spending time on business networks like Fast Pitch! (www.fastpitchnetworking.com) and Xing (xing.com). Both are designed to help people to not only network but more importantly MARKET their business. In fact, one of your networking experts (Ivan Misner) recently blogged about Fast Pitch! here:
http://networking.entrepreneur.com/2008/02/11/fast-pitch-networking/
LinkedIn is nothing more than a glorified resume service. If I’m not looking for a job, what good does it do me?