Linkedin – Professional Social Networking
Linkedin is a social networking site that is predominently used by professionals and businesses alike. It allows users to store contact details about other business people they know and trust. Users of this social networking platform can awsk to be introduced to other peoples contacts to assist them finding work and other business opportunities.
Watch this online video below about how to use the ‘Search’ functionality of Linkedin
The top 5 main benefits of Linkedin for business is listed below.
1. Ask the business community for advice – “Linkedin Answers” is an excellent resource that enables users to ask others in the community questions about specific topics. The answers you receive will generally supply quick and accurate information that can assist in your business requirements. For example, if you are looking for a specialist to provide your business with another improvement or function OR you just want to find out the viability of a possible new product line before you spend a lot of time, money and effort.. linkedin is a great place to start.
2. Create groups of business like minded users – usually in business there are many times that you may feel alone and unsure of yourself. Creating a group with other similar types of business people can be very rewarding. For example, if you are a small business with only a few staff, it may be comforting to know that others out there struggle in similar ways to you. These other users may be able to offer comforting suggestions and alternatives that may assist you in reaching a business decision that just seemed ‘too difficult’.
3. Increase your brand name visibility - adding connections will increase the likelyhood that other people will find your profile when they are searching for someone to do business with. Businesses would much prefer to build relations with other businesses that their friends know and trust.
4. Improve your search engine ranking – Linkedin allows you to make your profile available for search engines (such as google, bing, yahoo). By alowing your profile to be public, search engines generally rate these links highly making your postings more ‘searchable’ by users.
5. Research potential business markets – Linkedin can be used to find people who have worked for competitors or other companies that may have failed. From the information you can source from discussions with these people, you can learn a vast amount that may assist in your final decision about whether you should start your business in a market OR if you do start, what pitfalls do you need to avoid.
If you have your own business or a professional business person, I would definitely recommend Linkedin. In my opinion it is one of the best web 2.0 professional social networking sites around…
