Top Five Reasons Why You Should Be On LinkedIn
The biggest complaint about LinkedIn I hear is that people don’t know how to use it. Facebook makes sense. MySpace makes sense. But for some reason there’s a disconnect when it comes to LinkedIn.
For a while, too, I couldn’t see that much value in LinkedIn. The interface was a bit clunky and there didn’t seem to be much you could do with your network.
However, after using LinkedIn aggressively these past months, I know it’s a valuable tool that anyone in business should be using. So here I present my five reasons why you should be on LinkedIn.
1) Build a Virtual Resume
LinkedIn provides an excellent format for you to build a kind of mini-resume. You can post past accomplishments, titles held, jobs performed, associations and more. The best part is that you can make this all publicly visible so that other business connections or even people who find you from a search have a little background on you.
I think the most powerful part of LinkedIn is the ability to collect recommendations from other people. A recommendation is a short paragraph that gives kudos to a person you’ve worked with. It can be a client, partner, supplier or anyone you’ve worked with to produce results.
Recommendations are valuable because testimonials are powerful. They act to reinforce your accomplishments and help build trust, both of which are difficult to do.
2) Connect with People Through Other People
Many people don’t realize this, but the main premise behind LinkedIn is to find people who are out of your network but in the network of one of your connections. You can then go to that connection and request an invitation to the person within their network that you’re trying to reach. I don’t think most people use LinkedIn for this purpose because they haven’t realized that this kind of power is there.
For example, there was a sales guy at another company who had been trying to get in touch with a prospect for many months. The sales guy wasn’t on LinkedIn, saw no value in it and refused to use it. That’s fine. However, a funny thing happened when a contact from the prospective client’s company appeared in one of our networks. A connection was made with the sales guy and months of trying to get in the door were over. LinkedIn also went up a few notches in value for the sales guy.
3) Create a Transition from Networking Events
Networking events are great opportunities to meet new people, learn about their organization and make powerful connections. However, the biggest problem with networking events is that they occur at that moment and require a lot of effort to continue the momentum once the event is over.
I’ve found it extremely useful when ending a conversation with a new connection to ask if they’re on LinkedIn. You’d be surprised at the number of people who say "yes." After the event, I connect with them and I now have that person in my network to continue the conversation at anytime. Even more, I can see that person’s profile to learn a bit more about them. I can also see if there are any other connections within that person’s network that I may know or want to know.
And even if the person you’re networking with says "no" to being on LinkedIn, you have an opportunity to explain it to them and act as an educator. This builds trust and brands you as someone who knows what they’re doing.
LinkedIn provides a great segue from physical to virtual so that you can continue networking with important connections.
4) See What People Are Up To
Keeping in touch with people and seeing what they’ve been up to can be tough without a tool like LinkedIn. How else are you going to find out if a connection changed jobs, won a new award, joined a new group or found a new interest?
You could do it without LinkedIn of course, but it’s slower and requires you to make the request for that information. By getting connected via LinkedIn, you can receive much faster updates on a connection that is provided by them. It’s almost effortless — you just need to stay fresh with your network (which you should be doing anyway).
LinkedIn also features a way for people to post "status" updates. For example, I see many updates for new projects my connections are working on. This gives you real-time knowledge of what a connection is up to. That’s powerful information.
5) Learn Things About People for Conversation-Starters
The great thing about LinkedIn, which I’ve touched on already, is that it provides tons of great background information on a person. This isn’t about being nosy or intrusive. This is background information supplied by the connection that they want you to know about.
Using this information, you can arm yourself with the knowledge you need to spark conversations with connections. If I see that a connection has done something significant such as a new job or award, I’ll inquire about it when I see them. It provides a great platform for starting a conversation and it puts the emphasis of the conversation on the other person.
So there we have it. Five profound (at least in my opinion) reasons to be on LinkedIn and to continue using it as a valuable business tool.
If you’re not on LinkedIn, I hope I’ve convinced to at least try it out. Feel free to use my profile as a template, or to connect with me. Or, leave a comment if you want to learn more.
3 Responses to “Top Five Reasons Why You Should Be On LinkedIn” (Leave a Comment)
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Chris,
Great post. I agree that LinkedIn is a good tool for professional networking and I believe you have hit on most of the top reasons for using it. I would however challenge you on point #2 “Connect with People Through Other People”.
While connecting with your extended network (friends of friends of friends, etc.) is one of the key premises of LinkedIn, I personally have not seen much evidence of this working well. In our anecdotal research (far from scientific), we have found that people have great success with your other 4 points, but when it comes to requesting introductions, results are mixed. It seems to work OK when requesting an introduction via a mutual friend, but when the chain gets any longer (e.g. friends of friends of friends) the process breaks down.
All that said, I am biased since we are launching a professional networking service focused on reciprocal exchange with your extended network.
Mike
http://www.favorang.com/
GREAT Entry Chris…
Seriously I love your 5 and think it’s just the beginning. I especially love you mentioning the “transitioning from networking events” We all meet lots of great contact daily, weekly, monthly, etc… and its hard to keep them in 1 place. LinkedIn is a GREAT help here and recently we have seen some awesome clients find us long after the networking event had passed.
Keep up the great thought leadership and I cant wait to see the next entry.
In my opinion, Linked-in is hacking away the professional side of social media from the grasp of Facebook; who have yet to even make a dent in that realm. Although I’ve been registered with Linked-in for quite a few years now, I haven’t used it for more than simply making contacts in my business network. Nevertheless, over the past 6 months I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in the number of requests I’ve received. I can now see enough of a community building up in my own circle that it might be time to increase my exposure. I do feel they need some serious work on its usability, but I think that now they have a critical mass, they will be able to focus more resources on the interface and tools available.