LinkedIn The Social Network of Choice For Professionals

LinkedIn is where it is at for professionals of my age and caliber. Facebook is for college and newly employed persons. Yes I have a Facebook site and keep it updated, but by far the number of colleagues, clients, and prospects at LinkedIn beats Facebook four to one.

I have found that more of my peers are on LinkedIn and if not eager to join. LinkedIn is easy to join and set up, but the real power is in your connections. I sent out my Outlook contact book at LinkedIn and in less than 30 minutes I had 30 connections. People are actively using LinkedIn and want to connect with you there. As a comparison, I sent out the same number of invitations on Facebook and got three connections in one day. Professionals are simply using LinkedIn more than Facebook.

So what’s the benefit of using LinkedIn to connect with others? Wow, there are many benefits to using LinkedIn, here are just a few:

  1. People are hungry to connect – no really starving to connect! I have not had a single person turn me down, not even those who did not have an account, they set one up to get into the fun.
  2. The ability to use Questions and Answers is fabulous – wow, that is a powerful tool. I asked a question and got extremely savvy answers from professionals who really took time to point me to links, answer my question, give their personal experience in less than 12 hours. What an excellent way to not only poll others on a topic but to connect with others with common interests.
  3. I sent out a few requests for recommendations and got four in less than 30 minutes. I was able to then ask to be able to use their comments beyond LinkedIn for marketing on my own website. The recommendations that I got from clients were worth their weight in gold. Not only do they appear on my LinkedIn profile, but with the speaker’s permission I will be able to use them any where and any time. Wow! That alone was worth the 10 second investment to send out a mass request.
  4. LinkedIn is very easy to use. LinkedIn shows you what to do to complete your profile, add business history, get referrals, and any additional information to make your profile really work for you.

If you are not using LinkedIn yet, now is the time to jump in and see just how easy and fun this network can be, you may end up as surprised as I am at how friendly, sharing, and interactive it is.