Regardless of your profession, we all at times find ourselves in a situation where it would be helpful to have an “in” with a particular individual or company. LinkedIn fills this need quite nicely with a huge network of more than 17 million people willing (at some level) to open doors using their own personal and business connections, share their expertise, and expand their social network.
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Practical Uses:
- Create your own LinkedIn profile to market yourself online (LinkedIn profiles invariably end up being ranked highly in Google and Yahoo search results)
- Gather background intelligence before ever meeting your prospective clients
- Land a great job using your own network of contacts and connections
- Circumvent the phone tree from hell and find someone inside the company that sold you your broken laptop for the third time
Insider Tips:
- If you’re interested in receiving job offers and business opportunities be sure to review and adjust your Contact Settings accordingly and I would recommend including your email address somewhere in your profile
- Avoid simply uploading your resume and address book. Spend some time writing your profile to be read by a wide audience and solicit requests for Recommendations from trusted friends/co-workers using LinkedIn
- Make yourself available to help others. Offer to write Recommendations, match up colleagues with job opportunities, and respond to questions on LinkedIn Answers.
What We Liked:
- Extremely large base of users means you have a better chance of finding the right people to meet your needs
- Offers a series of powerful features such as LinkedIn Answers, Job Postings, Colleague and Classmate Search
- LinkedIn profiles (similar to resumes) tend to index very well within Google and Yahoo search results meaning better online visibility
What We Didn’t Like:
- Like many social networking sites, your privacy becomes diminished as you share more information about yourself
- In most cases, contacting people outside of your personal network requires subscribing to one of LinkedIn’s paid plans which tend to be rather costly as compared to other online services
- To realize maximum results, a decent amount of your time is needed to maintain your LinkedIn profile, create and maintain your network, and answer requests from other users
Alternatives:
Company Info:
- Launched in: 2003
- Privately Held
- Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA
- Founder: Reid Hoffman
- Web site: http://www.linkedin.com
Costs:
- Free for most users
- Premium plans start at $19.95/month
Rating:
- 4 out of 5 (strongly recommended)
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